Peer Review Mechanism

The Editor acknowledges the receipt of every submitted paper within two days and handles the initial screening to ascertain fit or suitability with the scope of JOLAN. The paper is screened for plagiarism to ensure originality before internal editorial assessment is carried out to rate the quality of the paper in terms its academic merit and linguistic potential. The next stage is the selection of the reviewers who are experts preferably Professors or Associate Professors with expertise in the content area to be evaluated. Two or three reviewers are invited for a double blind review. This entails that the identity of the author is not known to the reviewer and vice-versa. The purpose is to ensure peer review integrity. This implies that the quality, validity and relevance of the submitted paper is assessed by external and independent peers in the field.  JOLAN provides quality assurance and services that ensure a thorough peer review process and vibrant editor’s feedback mechanism.

Peer reviewers and Editorial Board members are given structured peer review evaluation form/template to ensure the objectivity of the review process. Reviewers are urged to disclose any potential conflicts of interest pertaining to the execution of particular reviews. Peer reviewers are anticipated to provide both affirmative and constructive critiques aimed at enhancing the quality of the manuscript. They are expected to furnish precise, and constructive observations. The peer review process takes six to ten weeks maximum. The Editor receives the reviewer’s report, evaluates it and sends feedback to the corresponding author immediately after the second (or third) review. Depending on the magnitude of the revision, four to six weeks are usually given to the author to resubmit the revised manuscript. A final decision is communicated to the author. At this point, the paper is rejected or accepted for publication. The time span between decision, production (copyediting) and publication is three weeks. Generally, every research article published in JOLAN has to pass a thorough peer review process, which includes initial editor screening, anonymous peer review process by impartial, knowledgeable referees, and subsequent author revision of the manuscript.