The review process is supported by ScholarOne Manuscript Central.
Submissions’ review process goes through the following stages before the final decision is made:
- Admin checklist: The staff of the Editorial Office checks the content of submission for completeness and identifies original submission and resubmission.
- If the manuscript information or content is incomplete, the manuscript is returned to the author as ‘unsubmitted’.
- If the manuscript is complete, the manuscript is passed to the Editor-in-Chiefs (EiC).
- Associate Editor (AE) assignment: The EiC selects an AE to handle the submitted manuscript. For resubmissions, the same AE is assigned unless for special reasons.
- Reviewer selection: The assigned AE selects a group of potential reviewers. For resubmissions, the AE can choose to invite the same or a different group of reviewers.
- Reviewer invitation: The AE sends review invitations to selected reviewers. The invitation contains the title, author list, and abstract of the submitted manuscript.
- Reviewer assignment: The invited reviewers who do not declare a conflict of interests and accept the invitation are assigned to the manuscript. The assigned reviewers receive an e-mail with instructions and the link to the ScholarOne Manuscripts page that includes the manuscript and evaluation forms.
- Reviewer scores: The reviewers are given 1 month to finish the review and upload scores and comments onto ScholarOne Manuscripts. After the due date, ScholarOne Manuscripts will send an automatic e-mail reminder until the review is returned. If requested by the reviewer, the Editorial Office can grant an extension to the deadline in ScholarOne Manuscript Central. The AE can also choose to change the number of required reviewers if necessary.
- AE recommendation: After all the reviews are returned, the AE makes the accept or reject recommendation to the EiC, based on reviewers’ comments.
- Editor-in-Chief (EiC) decision: The EiC makes the final decision based on reviewers’ comments and the AE recommendation.
Acceptance criteria
Acceptance criteria are available in the Review Form below (e.g., scope, originality, creativity, clarity, innovation of the content, strength of analysis or theory, and strength of a literature review).
