Peer Review

A review process designed to be rigorous, proportionate and accountable.

The journal is being designed around double-anonymised external peer review for research articles, with editorial screening before review and independent handling where conflicts arise.

Planned workflow

Editorial screening will consider scope, scholarly contribution, ethical adequacy, methodological fit and basic reporting quality. Manuscripts proceeding to review will ordinarily be evaluated by at least two qualified reviewers. Decisions will distinguish clearly among reject, major revision, minor revision and accept; acceptance will not be based on author status, institutional prestige or presumed citation potential.

Review quality

Reviewers will be asked to evaluate the coherence between research questions, theory, method, evidence and claims. The journal will discourage requests for unnecessary citation, coercive citation, methodological gatekeeping unsupported by the research question, or demands that authors make claims broader than their evidence warrants.