Review Guidelines

Review Process of Manuscript:

a. Initial Review

  1. Read the abstract to be sure that you have the expertise to review the article. Don’t be afraid to say no to reviewing an article if there is a good reason.
  2. Read information provided by the journal for reviewers so you will know: a) The type of manuscript (e.g., a review article, technical note, original research) and the journal’s expectations/parameters for that type of manuscript.; b) Other journal requirements that the manuscript must meet (e.g., length, citation style).
  3. Check the manuscript for plagiarism.
  4. Know the journal’s scope and mission to make sure that the topic of the paper fits in the scope.
  5. Ready? Read through entire manuscript initially to see if the paper is worth publishing- only make a few notes about major problems if such exist: a) Is the question of interest sound and significant?; b) Was the design and/or method used adequately or fatally flawed? (for original research papers); c) Were the results substantial enough to consider publishable (or were only two or so variables presented or resulted so flawed as to render the paper unpublishable)?
  6. What is your initial impression? If the paper is: 
    1. Acceptable with only minor comments/questions: solid, interesting, and new; sound methodology used; results were well presented; discussion well formulated with Interpretations based on sound scientific reasoning, etc., with only minor comments/questions, move directly to writing up review;
    2. Fatally flawed so you will have to reject it: move directly to writing up review;
    3. A mixture somewhere in the range of “revise and resubmit” to “accepted with major changes” or you’re unsure if it should be rejected yet or not: It may be a worthy paper, but there are major concerns that would need to be addressed.
    4. Once you have completed your review, please write you review notes in the Form of Reviewer-Author response (download here) to ease the author address your comment. In addition, this form will help quickly help an Editor to review the author response.
  7. This journal uses double-blind review, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process. Thus, please make sure that you remove any identifying information in your evaluation

b. Full Review

  1. Ready? Read through entire manuscript initially to see if the paper is worth publishing- only make a few notes about major problems if such exist: a) Is the question of interest sound and significant?; b) Was the design and/or method used adequately or fatally flawed? (for original research papers); c) Were the results substantial enough to consider publishable (or were only two or so variables presented or resulted so flawed as to render the paper unpublishable)?
  2. What is your initial impression? If the paper is: a) Acceptable with only minor comments/questions: solid, interesting, and new; sound methodology used; results were well presented; discussion well formulated with Interpretations based on sound scientific reasoning, etc., with only minor comments/questions, move directly to writing up review; b) Fatally flawed so you will have to reject it: move directly to writing up review; c) A mixture somewhere in the range of “revise and resubmit” to “accepted with major changes” or you’re unsure if it should be rejected yet or not: It may be a worthy paper, but there are major concerns that would need to be addressed.
  3. This journal uses double-blind review, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process. Thus, please make sure that you remove any identifying information in your evaluation.

New Reviewing and Decision Making Scheme at JCEF

To facilitate the work of Section Editor, JCEF proposes a Final Decision Table, which will ease the work of Section Editor. The table below is reviewing results from reviewer since Reviewers should assist Section Editor in making an editorial decision following the criteria set by the journal to improve the quality of the paper.

However, ss a consequence of implementing this table below, JCEF/Section Editor is required to assign three reviewers. However, in the case of three appointed reviewers, there are only two reviewer comments; the section editor can provide the third comment and decide the status of the manuscript (Accept, Revision or Reject).

Table 1. Basic conditions to make the final decision of a review