Peer Review Policy
The Religious Education Journal (REJ) is a double-blind peer-reviewed academic journal.
The submitted manuscripts are subject to a peer review process. The purpose of peer review is to assist the editors in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communication with the author it may also assist the author in improving the manuscript.
All of the reviewers of a manuscript remain anonymous to the authors before, during and after the evaluation process and the authors remain anonymous to reviewers until the end of the review procedure.
The choice of reviewers is at the discretion of the editors. The reviewers must be knowledgeable about the subject area of the manuscript; they must not be from the authors' own institution and they should not have recent joint publications with any of the authors.
All of the reviewers of a manuscript act independently and they are not aware of each other’s identities.
If the decisions of the reviewers are not the same (accept/reject), the editors may assign additional reviewers.
During the review process, the editors may require authors to provide additional information (including raw data) if they are necessary for the evaluation of the scholarly merit of the manuscript. These materials shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.
The editorial team shall ensure reasonable quality control for the reviews. With respect to reviewers whose reviews are convincingly questioned by authors, special attention will be paid to ensure that the reviews are objective and high in academic standard. When there is any doubt with regard to the objectivity of the reviews or quality of the review, additional reviewers will be assigned.
Members of the editorial team are permitted to submit their own papers to the journal. In cases where an author is associated with the journal, they will be removed from all editorial tasks for that paper and another member of the team will be assigned responsibility for overseeing peer review.
Review Process
The manuscript submitted to the Religious Education Journal (REJ) is reviewed by the editors within 4 weeks. The manuscript is critically reviewed based on the journal’s submission criteria:
- aims and scope of the journal
- quality of manuscript
- journal writing rules (including APA 7 citation and reference guidelines)
- publication language.
If the manuscript does not meet the above-mentioned criteria, it will be rejected. If it does meet the criteria, it will proceed to the main review phase.
In the main review phase, the editors send submitted manuscripts to two external experts in the field. The reviewers’ evaluation form contains a checklist in order to help reviewers cover all aspects that can decide the fate of a submission. In the final section of the evaluation form, the reviewers must include observations and suggestions aimed at improving the submitted manuscript; these are sent to authors, without the names of the reviewers.
Reviewers may choose one of the following five decisions regarding the reviewed manuscript:
- Accept Submission – The manuscript is accepted for publication with no revisions required.
- Revisions Required – Minor revisions are necessary; the revised manuscript will be reviewed by the editors before final acceptance.
- Resubmit for Review – Major revisions are needed; the revised manuscript will undergo a second round of peer review.
- Resubmit Elsewhere – The manuscript does not fall within the scope of the journal and is therefore rejected with a recommendation to submit to a more appropriate publication.
- Decline Submission – The manuscript is not suitable for publication and is formally rejected.
The review process may take up to 8 weeks for the first decision.
After reviews are completed, reviewers' comments and views are examined for at least 2 weeks by editors. Editors make the final decision for the manuscript by taking into consideration reviewers' decisions and suggestions. The final decision is sent to the author.
