About the Journal
Author fees
This journal charges authors an APC of 400USD.
Publisher Information
Global Association of Educational and Research in Psychology (GERPSY) Publishing
Peer review
Summary
The IJSPSY has a Virtual Editorial Assistant (VEA) attached to it, substantially reducing the traditional editorship's burden. This benefit includes the VEA's ability to follow up on the review's progress more efficiently and update the author (s) accordingly. For example, the VEA is a personal administrator to the journal’s editor and editorial board members. The VEA builds a database of potential reviewers for the IJSPSY and receives all papers submitted to the IJSPSY on behalf of the editor. Once the VEA receives the paper (s), she/he passes the desk review, including a check to ensure they fit into the journal’s scope. He/she approaches the potential reviewers on the IJSPSY database on behalf of the editor. When the VEA approaches potential reviewers, he/she lists available papers for review, ensuring reviewers can pick papers that interest them. When the VEA has received the requisite number of reviews for a paper, he/she sends them to the editor. The role of the editor here basically is to review the review of the reviewers and raise additional issues not captured by the reviewers, if necessary, not to carry out a fresh review of the paper. Almost all papers submitted to us and reviewed are either rejected outright or require Major or Minor Corrections.
Components of the review process
Phase 1: Basic checking
The VEA initially receives articles and checks their academic quality, plagiarism, and proofreading tests. These may determine their fitness to the vision, scope, and aims of the IJSPSY.
- Academic quality test
The VEA reviews the academic quality of the paper, which consists of checking the rigor, thoroughness, and relevance it demonstrates in its research, analysis, and writing, ensuring it meets the standards expected in academic discourse.
- Plagiarism test
Every paper that has passed the academic quality stage of the review process is taken through a plagiarism test. This consists of a similarity check, uses software to compare a piece of writing against a database of existing content, and identifies any copied or paraphrased text without proper attribution (see Plagiarism policy). The journal’s VEA coordinates the plagiarism test.
When submitting papers for evaluation, authors are strongly encouraged to run their papers through anti-plagiarism software to ensure the similarities are within the acceptable threshold. Without prejudice to this, however, every paper accepted for publication in the journal will also have to pass the company’s similarity check (See plagiarism policy).
- Proofreading test
After the second state, the language proofreading tests how well each accepted paper has been proofread. Author (s) is advised to professionally proofread his/her paper after it (they) has been accepted for academic quality. When the author (s) submits a clean copy of his/her paper after the revised copy has been accepted, we give our language editors a sample of the work, who will use track changes to proofread it. If the work is rejected, the affected authors will see clearly through the track changes why that was the case, and they are advised either to read over the work more carefully or to get the paper professionally proofread depending on the extent of the proofreading errors identified. Though we offer a proofreading service, it is not a condition for publishing any paper.
Generally, once we comment on the quality of the proofreading, we decline to offer our proofreading service to avoid any conflict of interest. If we offer a proofreading service, authors are asked to grade the quality of the
proofreading, and where an author grades it less than 6/10, the paper is sent out for another round of proofreading at our expense. The VEA also coordinates the proofreading test of the paper.
After assessing the rudimentary checking of the paper, the following decisions could affect the paper:
- Paper rejection: If the paper lies outside the scope of the IJSPSY or the submission is not in conformity with established requirements,
- Paper submission elsewhere: The VEA may recommend that the author (s) submit the paper elsewhere.
- Accept after major revisions (Conditional acceptance): A paper is deemed accepted for publication only after passing through the three components of the review process, as discussed above.
The IJSPSY will publish the article if the author (s) make suggested changes by the VEA, reviewers, and/or editors. The author (s) must attend all requested updates and resubmit the paper. After corrections are made, the VEA editor will review the updated version to see if the suggested changes have been faithfully attended.
- Assign reviewers: The paper will go through the peer review process.
Phase 2: Academic peer review process
The IJSPSY provides detailed explanations of the academic peer review process.
- Internal and external article reviews
The IJSPSY may employ internal and/or external article reviews.
Internal article review means that a Member of the Editorial Board of the Journal can be asked to review an article (provided the person is not connected to any of the article's authors).
External article review means that scholars who have no connection to the journal but have relevant expertise can also be approached to review a paper for the journal. Here, in approaching a potential Review, the VEA lists available papers for review, which ensures the scholar picks papers in his/her areas of interest.
- Double-blind reviewed
The IJSPSY adopts a double-blind review for each article, meaning that the identities of the reviewer and author in each case must be concealed throughout the review process. This also means that in submitting articles for consideration, authors should have a separate page for their names and institutional affiliations and should take care to ensure that their names or institutional affiliations are not revealed in the article they wish to be considered for publication.
- Using peer review form
The IJSPSY recommends that all reviewers comment on the reviewed article on the peer review form. This is a structured tool that peer reviewers can use to address feedback or comments on a paper. Reviewers are further encouraged to make other comments on the body of the article to better guide the author (s) when revising the paper.
The comments of an article are based on the average score provided by various peer reviewers. The peer reviewers mark a submitted paper on four scales: Excellent (4), Good (3), Moderate (2), and Poor (1).
A paper with an average score of under three (3) may be rejected for publication. However, a paper with a score higher than three (3) is accepted when an editor, VEA, or reviewer considers it suitable for publication.
After completion of the procedures mentioned above, the editorial office will issue official letters mentioning one of the following decisions:
Rejection of the paper/Not recommended for publication
IJSPSY can still not recommend a paper for publication or reject it if it is deemed unsuitable. Various reasons could be considered as follows.
- The paper lacks scientific objectivity, rigour, or lack of originality,
- The paper is outside of the aim and scope for the publication,
- The submission does not conform to the formal requirements or Publication Ethics, Submission Guidelines,
- The author (s) failed to make sufficient changes based on the reviewers’ comments and the IJSPSY policies,
- The paper contains some emotional content that could mislead readers,
- The paper reveals confidential information without appropriate authorisation, etc.
Revisions of the paper are required
Paper revision guidelines
In resubmitting the paper after revision, the author (s) must outline how the recommended corrections were implemented and addressed on a separate page. This should be done in a two-column table with the relevant number of rows. The first column should indicate the reviewer’s comments being addressed, the second column of the corresponding row should indicate how each comment/recommendation was implemented, and the page number where the implemented corrections can be found. Author (s) who
- disagree with a particular reviewer’s comments can also state such in the correction log and give their reasons for disagreeing with the reviewers' views on the issue.
- Where two reviewers recommended a major revision, the revised paper should be sent to one or both reviewers to confirm that the recommended corrections were satisfactorily implemented.
- Where the editor disagrees with the opinion of one or both reviewers, he/she can ask for a third reviewer. An editor cannot override the concurrent opinion of two reviewers.
- Where the original reviewer (s) declines to review the work again, the revised paper and the original paper are submitted for review, and the reviewers' comments shall be sent to another reviewer, who will decide whether the recommended corrections have been implemented satisfactorily or not.
- Where one reviewer recommends major corrections and another reviewer recommends minor corrections, the journal’s editor (or Guest editor, as the case may be) shall decide which of the recommended corrections the author will implement.
- Where both reviewers recommended minor corrections, the editor can decide, based on the resubmission of the paper and the review of the corrections log, whether the recommended corrections were satisfactorily implemented or not.
Publication Scheduling
This journal publishes 3 issues in 1 volumes a year.
