Guidelines for Reviewers

Transparency and Confidentiality

Manuscripts that successfully complete the preliminary editorial assessment conducted by the Editor-in-Chief (hereafter "the Editor") and the relevant Section Editor are sent to two independent reviewers with expertise in the subject area of the submission. Where the reviewers' assessments differ substantially and an editorial decision cannot be reached on the basis of the available reports, the Editor may seek an additional assessment from a third reviewer.

At IJTASE, all editorial procedures — including correspondence with authors and the evaluations undertaken by the Editor-in-Chief, Section Editors, and reviewers — are conducted in a transparent, consistent, and traceable manner. Nevertheless, all manuscript-related correspondence, reviewer reports, and editorial deliberations are treated as confidential.

IJTASE operates a double-anonymized peer review process. Accordingly, the identities of authors are not disclosed to reviewers, and the identities of reviewers are not disclosed to authors.

Reviewers must notify the Editor of any ethical concerns, suspected breaches of research or publication integrity, problems relating to data integrity, or potential conflicts of interest identified during the review process.

To promote a comprehensive and consistent evaluation process and to provide authors with more constructive scholarly feedback, the Editor may, where appropriate, invite reviewers to comment on one another's reports. In such cases, reports are shared in anonymized form, and the identities of the reviewers remain confidential.

Responsibilities Upon Receiving a Review Invitation

Upon receiving a review invitation, the reviewer should first verify that all relevant files can be opened and accessed without technical difficulty.

The reviewer should then consider whether the manuscript falls within their area of expertise and whether they can complete the evaluation within the specified review period. Reviewers are expected to accept or decline the invitation within one week.

A reviewer who believes that a personal, professional, institutional, academic, or financial relationship involving the authors, their institutions, the funding body, or another relevant party may compromise — or may reasonably be perceived to compromise — the impartiality of the review must disclose the situation to the Editor and decline the invitation where appropriate.

Reviewers must not involve another individual in the evaluation of a manuscript without obtaining prior permission from the Editor. Where such involvement is approved, the name and contribution of the individual concerned must be disclosed to the Editor. Any person who has made a substantive contribution to the review should be appropriately acknowledged and, where appropriate, formally recognized as a co-reviewer.

Publication Policy and Ethical Considerations

As the Editor may not be aware of every relationship or circumstance that could affect the objectivity of the review process, reviewers are responsible for disclosing any competing interest or other situation that may prevent them from providing a fair, independent, and impartial assessment. (Provisions on author-requested reviewer exclusions are set out under "Reviewer Selection" below.)

Despite careful preliminary editorial screening, potential breaches of the Journal's publication policies or ethical principles may not always be detected before peer review. Reviewers, as experts in the relevant field, are therefore expected to alert the Editor to any concerns relating to research ethics, publication ethics, data integrity, plagiarism, redundant or duplicate publication, inappropriate citation practices, or other forms of potential misconduct.

Such concerns should be communicated confidentially to the Editor and should not be raised through direct contact with the authors.

Feedback to Reviewers

The final version of a manuscript accepted for publication may be shared with reviewers who have expressly requested to see the revised or final version, subject to the Journal's editorial procedures.

Following publication, a reviewer may find that some of their recommendations were not incorporated into the final version of the article. This may be because the other reviewers expressed different views, or because the Editor reached a different conclusion after considering all available reports and the authors' responses.

Upon request and at the Editor's discretion, the anonymized reports of the other reviewers may be shared with a reviewer, provided that the confidentiality of the peer review process is fully maintained.

Having considered the reviewers' reports and the authors' responses, the Editor may reach one of the following decisions:

Accept the manuscript for publication;
Request minor revisions;
Request major revisions and, where necessary, initiate a further round of peer review;
Reject the manuscript.

Reviewers may make a clear recommendation regarding the publication of a manuscript. Such recommendations are advisory, however, and the final decision rests with the Editor.

Editorial decisions are not made solely by counting the number of recommendations for acceptance or rejection. The Editor evaluates the methodological and scholarly validity of the reviewers' observations, the strength and coherence of the arguments presented, the evidence supporting those arguments, and the adequacy of the authors' responses.

Accordingly, detailed, well-reasoned, evidence-based, and constructive reports are given greater weight than reports in which evaluation questions are answered only with "yes" or "no," without adequate justification.

Reviewer Selection

A range of factors is considered when selecting reviewers, including subject expertise, experience, publication record in the relevant field, suitability for the topic and methodological approach of the manuscript, availability, previous performance as a reviewer, and the Editor's prior experience of working with the reviewer.

Reviewers must be independent of the authors and free from any personal, professional, institutional, academic, or financial interest that could affect — or reasonably be perceived to affect — the objectivity of their assessment.

Authors may request that their manuscript not be sent to particular individuals because of a potential conflict of interest; such requests must be supported by an appropriate justification. Although the Editor will take these requests into consideration, final responsibility for reviewer selection rests with the editorial office, and such requests do not automatically determine the final selection of reviewers.

The reviewer list is periodically evaluated and updated by the editorial team. The names of reviewers who have contributed to the Journal may be acknowledged on the Journal's masthead or editorial information page, in accordance with the Journal's confidentiality policy.

Upon request, reviewers may be issued a certificate of recognition after the issue containing the manuscript they reviewed has been published.

Preparation of Review Reports

IJTASE Manuscript Evaluation Form

Reviewers are required to complete the reviewer evaluation form provided with the review invitation. Where necessary, they may supplement the form with additional comments or a separate report.

Reviewer assessments should address, in particular, the following questions:

Does the manuscript make an original and meaningful contribution to the existing body of knowledge in the field?
Is the manuscript grounded in current and relevant scholarly literature?
Are the research design, methodology, analysis, and conclusions scientifically sound and appropriately presented?

Reviewer reports should be critical yet constructive, objective, impartial, respectful, and supported by clear scholarly reasoning.

Comments must focus on the manuscript and its scholarly content. Reviewers should refrain from making personal remarks or statements concerning the personal, professional, or academic competence of the author or authors.

In addition to completing the criteria included in the evaluation form, reviewers should provide detailed explanations for any significant criticism or negative assessment. The reasoning underlying their conclusions should be clearly stated in the designated section of the form or in an accompanying report.

Reviewers who recommend rejection must clearly identify the manuscript's principal weaknesses and provide specific, coherent, and adequately substantiated reasons for their recommendation. Wherever possible, comments should help authors understand the scholarly basis of the decision.

The Editor reserves the right to make limited editorial amendments to reviewer reports before they are shared with the authors. Such amendments may include correcting spelling or grammatical errors, clarifying ambiguous wording, removing inaccurate information, and revising or removing statements that are personal, offensive, insulting, humiliating, derogatory, discriminatory, or otherwise inconsistent with professional academic communication.

Any such editorial intervention is limited to maintaining clarity, accuracy, confidentiality, and professional standards, and does not alter the substantive scholarly content or overall recommendation of the reviewer's report.

Review Timeline

Reviewers are normally given 30 days to complete their assessment of a manuscript.

A reviewer who is unable to complete the evaluation within the specified period should request an extension from the Editor as early as possible. Where a reviewer is unable to undertake or complete a review because of time constraints or other circumstances, they should notify the Editor promptly.

Timely notification enables the Editor to appoint an alternative reviewer without unnecessary delay and helps prevent avoidable disruption to the manuscript's evaluation and publication process.