Peer Review Process
All submitted manuscripts undergo an initial editorial screening before entering the peer-review process. This preliminary assessment is conducted by the Editor-in-Chief and/or at least two members of the Editorial Team to determine whether the manuscript falls within the journal's scope, complies with the journal's editorial policies and submission requirements, and meets the minimum standards of scientific quality, originality, ethical compliance, and methodological rigor required for external review.
Editorials, Letters, and other invited contributions may be accepted following editorial assessment. For all other manuscript types, the Editorial Team may decide to reject the manuscript without external review if it is clearly outside the journal's scope, does not meet the journal's scientific or ethical standards, lacks sufficient originality or methodological quality, or is unlikely to be considered for publication regardless of the outcome of peer review. This early editorial decision is intended to provide authors with a timely response and to avoid unnecessary delays.
Where appropriate, authors may be invited to make minor technical or editorial revisions before a decision is made on whether the manuscript should proceed to external peer review.
Manuscripts that successfully pass the editorial screening are evaluated through a double-blind peer review process by at least two independent external reviewers with recognized expertise in the relevant subject area. Reviewers are selected based on their academic qualifications, research experience, and the absence of conflicts of interest. When reviewers' recommendations differ substantially or additional specialist advice is required, the Handling Editor or the Editor-in-Chief may invite one or more additional reviewers before making a final editorial decision.
The journal takes all reasonable measures to preserve the anonymity of both authors and reviewers throughout the peer-review process. Authors are responsible for ensuring that manuscripts submitted for review are fully anonymized and do not contain information that could directly or indirectly reveal their identity.
The peer-review process is coordinated by an Associate Editor or Handling Editor, who evaluates the reviewers' comments and submits a recommendation to the Editor-in-Chief. The final decision regarding acceptance, revision, or rejection of a manuscript rests exclusively with the Editor-in-Chief.
The journal aims to complete the peer-review process within 2 to 4 months. Authors are normally expected to submit revised manuscripts within two weeks after receiving the reviewers' comments, unless an alternative deadline has been agreed upon with the Editorial Office.
Further details of the journal's peer-review workflow are available here.
Reviewers Role
Reviewers are the main members contributing for the benefit of the journal being a peer reviewed (double-blind referee) journal they are insisted not to disclose their identity in any form.
A reviewer should immediately decline to review an article submitted if he/she feels that the article is technically unqualified or if the timely review cannot be done by him/her or if the article has a conflict of interest.
All submissions should be treated as confidential, editorial approval might be given for any outside person’s advice received.
No reviewer should pass on the article submitted to him/her for review to another reviewer in his own concern, it should be declined immediately.
Reviewers being the base of the whole quality process should ensure that the articles published should be of high quality and original work. He may inform the editor if he finds the article submitted to him for review is under consideration in any other publication to his/her knowledge.
There are no hard and fast rules to analysis an article, this can be done on case-to-case basis considering the worthiness, quality, and originality of the article submitted.
In general, cases the following may be checked in a review
- Structure of the article submitted and its relevance to author guidelines
- Purpose and Objective of the article
- Method of using transitions in the article
- Introduction given and the conclusion/ suggestions provided
- References provided to substantiate the content
- Grammar, punctuation and spelling · Plagiarism issues
- Suitability of the article to the need
Guidance for Peer Reviewers
All manuscripts are double-blind reviewed. At Social Welfare Quarterly we believe that peer review is the foundation for safeguarding the quality and integrity of scientific and scholarly research.
As a reviewer you will be advising the editors (Section Editor and Editor in Chief), who make the final decision (aided by an editorial committee for all research articles and most analysis articles). We will let you know our decision. Even if we do not accept an article we would like to pass on constructive comments that might help the author to improve it.
All unpublished manuscripts are confidential documents. If we invite you to review an article, please do not discuss it even with a colleague. When you receive an invitation to peer review, you should fill the journal’s reviewing form. You should try to respond to every peer review invitation you receive. If you feel the paper is outside your area of expertise or you are unable to devote the necessary time, please let the editorial office know as soon as possible so that they can invite an alternative reviewer – it as at this stage you may like to nominate an appropriately qualified colleague. And please remember, if an author's manuscript is sitting with reviewers who have not responded to the peer-review request, the author will not get a timely decision.
Please read the Aims and Scope and the Author Instruction with care. Consideration should be given to whether the paper is suitable for the journal it is submitted to. The journals' aims and scope is available on “Journal Information” menu and pages.
The essential feature of any review is that it is helpful and constructive and we urge reviewers to be robust but polite when making comments to authors. The Peer reviewers should provide an objective critical evaluation of the paper in the broadest terms practicable. Reviewers need to make a recommendation to the Editor-in-Chief on deciding the manuscript. Your report must contain your detailed answers on the journal questions in the reviewing form. If you believe the paper needs revisions to be made before it is acceptable, please make suggestions on how to improve the paper. Likewise, if you feel that a paper is not good enough and has no real prospects of being improved sufficiently to be published you should recommend rejection.
You should also:
- Write clearly and so you can be understood by people whose first language is not English
- Avoid complex or unusual words, especially ones that would even confuse native speakers
- Number your points and refer to page and line numbers in the manuscript when making specific comments
- If you have been asked to only comment on specific parts or aspects of the manuscript, you should indicate clearly which these are
- Treat the author’s work the way you would like your own to be treated
You may find the journal’s article reviewing procedure, here.
Privacy and Confidentiality
(Prepared Based on ICMJE's Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals)
In Social Welfare Quarterly, manuscripts must be reviewed with due respect for authors’ confidentiality. In submitting their manuscripts for review, authors entrust editors with the results of their scientific work and creative effort, on which their reputation and career may depend. Authors’ rights may be violated by disclosure of the confidential details during review of their manuscript. Reviewers also have rights to confidentiality, which must be respected by the editor. Confidentiality may have to be breached if dishonesty or fraud is alleged but otherwise must be honored. Editors must not disclose information about manuscripts (including their receipt, content, status in the reviewing process, criticism by reviewers, or ultimate fate) to anyone other than the authors and reviewers. This includes requests to use the materials for legal proceedings.
Editors must make clear to their reviewers that manuscripts sent for review are privileged communications and are the private property of the authors. Therefore, reviewers and members of the editorial staff must respect the authors’ rights by not publicly discussing the authors’ work or appropriating their ideas before the manuscript is published. Reviewers must not be allowed to make copies of the manuscript for their files and must be prohibited from sharing it with others, except with the editor’s permission. Reviewers should return or destroy copies of manuscripts after submitting reviews. Editors should not keep copies of rejected manuscripts. Reviewer comments should not be published or otherwise publicized without permission of the reviewer, author, and editor.
COPE’s Guidelines & Flowcharts
Social Welfare Quarterly is committed to follow and apply guidelines and flowcharts of Committee on Publication Ethics in its reviewing and publishing process and issues. For more information, please click here.
International Standards for Authors and Editors
Social Welfare Quarterly is committed to follow and apply International Standards for Authors and Editors of Committee on Publication Ethics in designing and leading the Journal’s reviewing and publishing process and dealing with their issues. You may find the International Standards for Authors, here. Also, you may find the International Standards for Editors, here.
Conflict of Interest in Reviewing Process
Although we are applying double bind peer review, research sphere can be a small world. It means many reviewers may know the author out of familiarity with their work. You can certainly give a fair assessment of an article that is written by a friend or competitor, but:
- If there’s a significant conflict of interest, you should reveal this to the editor
- If the conflict of interest causes a large positive or negative bias, then it is better to decline the review request
- Avoid personal judgement and criticism at all times – judge the article. This is more likely to be well received by the author and lead to better work by them.
- Every editor will appreciate honesty about conflicts of interest, even if they then have to look for a replacement reviewer.
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