Editorial Preliminary Review (Internal Review)

BEU Journal of Faculty of Theology operates a two-stage process in the evaluation of submitted articles, namely editorial preliminary review and external referee evaluation. After the submission of the manuscript, the editor-in-chief, assistant editors and editorial board (publication boards) first review the manuscript in terms of compliance with the purpose and scope of the journal, adherence to the accepted standards and ethical acceptance in scientific research writing. Besides these criteria, the journal editor scans the article in the iThenticate application for plagiarism detection. If the similarity rate is higher than 20% and there are similarities that match one-to-one, these are marked on the "preliminary review copy" of the article. The articles that pass this first review are directed to the field editors in accordance with their subjects. Field editors complete the preliminary review by evaluating the article in general in terms of subject, method, contribution to the field, and sources, and pointing out issues such as form and conditions, spelling and spelling mistakes, and fluency of the text. The article is sent back to the author to make the corrections pointed out in this process, which is the first review phase. When the author completes the preliminary review corrections, the article is processed to the external referee evaluation stage.

External Double-Blind Peer-Review

In the external review process, the relevant field editor selects two referees among expert researchers who have close/similar studies on the subject and method of the article. (Peer-Review Guide can be found here). If experts with studies directly related to the subject of the article cannot be found, experts with similar studies in terms of subject/method, or if the subject of the article is interdisciplinary, experts from related fields with at least a doctorate degree are selected as referees. The referees evaluate the article in detail in terms of its subject, method and results and give their opinion on whether it should be published or not. (If these first two referees do not make a detailed evaluation and do not make a sufficient contribution to the scientific content of the article, the study can be sent to the 3rd and 4th referee evaluation in order to provide this contribution. Referee evaluations that contribute to the scientific content of the article are taken into consideration.) Articles that receive two positive (acceptance and minor) results from the referee evaluation are accepted for publication with the decision of the Editor-in-Chief after the necessary revision is made. If one of the reviewers has a negative opinion, the manuscript is sent to a third reviewer. If a major revision decision is made during the referee process, the revised text is reviewed by the editor and the field editor after the completion of these revisions and is sent to the relevant referees again. Studies, whether or not subject to the second round of evaluation, can only be published with the positive decision (acceptance) of at least two referees.

Language Proofreading, Redaction and Final Reading

The manuscript accepted for publication is first sent to the language editor and then to the layout editor. After both edits, the manuscript is returned to the author for final reading and pre-publication approval. After the final reading, the article is checked by the editor and the field editor and becomes suitable for assignment to the issue.