Consortia Academia is committed to high academic standards, treating publication as a collaborative process between Author, Reviewers and Editors. The goal of the peer review process is to improve the academic and scientific quality of the submissions. Reviewers will work with the Author through a collaborative process to ensure academic and scientific integrity. Constructive criticism is a necessary part of this collaborative effort and as such shall be offered and received in a professional manner. The Editor’s role includes that of being a moderator, in a literal way, of the discourse between Reviewers and Authors, and will enforce ethical standards of behavior in the review and response process.
Note: Reviewers are expected to return their reviews within two to three weeks (14-21 days), unless otherwise specified by the Editor.
The two basic components to the review of a manuscript are the Scientific Content and Quality of the manuscript. Either or both of these can be grounds for rejection of the submission and both should be considered within the review.
SCIENTIFIC CONTENT
Although there can be no simple formula for what is acceptable scientific content, below are some basic principles that generally apply.
Relevance – Manuscripts to be considered for publication should falls under the focus and scope of the journal. The journal Editor reserves the right to reject a manuscript if the paper fails to fit into the overall theme of the journal.
Timeliness – Manuscripts should be of significance to the general readership of the current age. Studies that solely consider data coming from a decade ago, unless the findings are currently relevant, are deemed not acceptable.
Originality – Manuscripts that simply reproduces the results of an already published work with no change and adds nothing else is not acceptable. However, in some instances, studies that are of value to a particular community (or context) are acceptable. More specifically, if the analysis methods of an already published work are reproduced, but with a different set of data, or an expanded data set considered, would be more likely to be acceptable.
References – References are used to provide support for assertions within a paper. There is no simple way to determine what assertions do or do not require substantiation. It is within the purview of a reviewer to request references if the reviewer believes a reference is needed where none was provided. Typically, the use of principal source references is encouraged. Refereed publications are more acceptable, thus, if the author uses a non-refereed reference, this may not be considered as an acceptable support. NOTE: All manuscripts submitted to the journal should use the American Psychological Association (APA) formatting and style guide version 6.
Significance – In times when an author uses statistical tools in their calculations of the results, the confidence that can be placed on a calculation based on real data is considered essential to any scientific paper. Failure to provide statistical analysis of results is not acceptable. Sample size is an important aspect of statistical confidence limits and small samples need to be identified as such.
Reproducibility – Generally, a scientific paper should be possible for anyone reading the manuscript to reproduce the results. The manuscript, therefore, should provide any and all information necessary for a reader to repeat any analysis contained therein. Any withholding of needed information is unacceptable. However, it is acceptable to use references to accomplish this. To the maximum extent possible consistent with a concise presentation, a manuscript should be self-contained. Extensive mathematical derivations can be moved to an Appendix. Large datasets and detailed software information need not be provided, although it is encouraged to make information regarding software and data available whenever possible.
Comparisons with existing work – To the maximum extent possible, comparisons within a manuscript with already published work should be as unambiguous as possible. If a comparison with previous work is made, the same definitions should be used, as well as the same data. If it is felt that the definitions and/or data of an existing work have problems, then a comparison with that existing work should be done both with the original definitions and/or data, as well as with the changed definitions and/or data.
QUALITY
Quality of the English – All manuscript are expected to be written in good English (American or British usage is accepted, but not a mixture of these). For non-native English speakers, and perhaps even for some native English speakers, the grammar, spelling, usage, and punctuation of the text are very important for an effective presentation. The journal editor will not put a paper into review if the English presentation is inadequate. Furthermore, if the reviewer feels the paper is not readable, the reviewer may reject such a paper on those grounds alone.
Organization – The quality of manuscript includes the issue of how the paper is organized. To some extent, the organization of the content is a style issue and the author should be allowed to do whatever s/he wishes, provided the resulting content can be followed reasonably easily. However, it is appropriate for a reviewer to make recommendations for reorganizing a paper’s content in an effort to improve the presentation. Generally, authors should go over the details mentioned in the Author’s Submission Guidelines for proper manuscript organization.
Quality of Figures/Tables – Figures and tables should be legible as well as easy to read and understand. The journal follows the American Psychological Association (APA) style for figures and tables. Authors should therefore format their manuscript in compliance with APA guidelines. Generally, figures and tables provide supporting documentation and illustrate some important point within the paper. Hence, reviewers can request authors for additional information to make the figures and tables more easily understood.
Completeness – An important issue is whether or not everything that needs to be in the manuscript is actually there. Of particular significance is that all the literature citations should be included in the reference list, and all the items in the reference list should actually be cited somewhere in the text. All figures and tables should have captions that describe their content sufficiently well that interpretation of their content is straightforward. Equations in the text need not all be numbered, but all equations cited in the text should have numbers.
Lastly, peer reviewing is purely a volunteer service, reviewers are not paid. In most cases, members of the editorial boards and previous authors are invited to help the reviewing process. For interested parties, please email the subject area editors.