The Double-Blind Peer Review Process

2. Editorial Office Assessment
Editorial Office checks the paper’s composition and arrangement against the journal’s Author Guidelines to make sure it includes the required sections and stylizations. The quality of the paper is not assessed at this point.

3. Appraisal by the Editor-in-Chief
The Editor-in-Chief assigns submission to Section Editor to see through the editorial process. Section Editor checks that the paper is appropriate for the journal and is sufficiently original and interesting. If not, the paper may be rejected without being reviewed any further.

4. Invitation to Reviewers
The Section Editor sends invitations to individuals he or she believes would be appropriate reviewers. As responses are received, further invitations are issued, if necessary, until the required number of acceptances is obtained – commonly this is 2.

5. Response to Invitations
Potential reviewers consider the invitation as anonymous against their own expertise, conflicts of interest and availability. They then accept or decline. If possible, when declining, they might also suggest alternative reviewers.

6. Review is Conducted
The reviewer sets time aside to read the paper several times. The first read is used to form an initial impression of the work. If major problems are found at this stage, the reviewer may feel comfortable rejecting the paper without further work. Otherwise, they will read the paper several more times, taking notes so as to build a detailed point-by-point review. The review is then submitted to the journal, with a recommendation to accept or reject it – or else with a request for revision (usually flagged as either major or minor) before it is reconsidered.

7. Journal Evaluates the Reviews
The Section Editor considers all the returned reviews before making an overall decision. If the reviews differ widely, the editor may invite an additional reviewer to get an extra opinion before making a decision.

8. The Decision is Communicated
The Section Editor sends a decision email to the author including any relevant reviewer comments as anonymous.

9. Next Steps
If accepted, the paper is sent to language Editor. If the article is rejected or sent back for either major or minor revision, the Section Editor should include constructive comments from the reviewers to help the author improve the article. At this point, reviewers should also be sent an email or letter letting them know the outcome of their review. If the paper was sent back for revision, the reviewers should expect to receive a new version, unless they have opted out of further participation. However, where only minor changes were requested this follow-up review might be done by the Section Editor.

After these;
• Copyedit submission
• Layout
• Corrections
• Publishing the submissions on the web page as early print
• Creating issues
• Organize Table of Contents
• Publishing the issue on the web page and printing hardcopy

We are applying the same steps on The Double-Blind Peer Review Process when we got the in-house submission.