The peer-review process

Welcome to the first issue of IJMEST in 2024.

This is a different style of Editorial from my previous ones, and is focused on the peer-review process in IJMEST, with some suggestions about how this might be conducted as effectively as possible. I am very grateful to the Associate Editors and other members of our Editorial Board for commenting on a draft version of this, but the final version is my responsibility.

It can never be said too often that our peer reviewers carry out an absolutely critical role within the journal in generously offering their expertise to comment on the submissions that we receive. It is a truism to say that a peer-reviewed journal cannot exist without peer review. In this Editorial, I want to offer some suggestions about how the process of peer review might be carried out as helpfully and as painlessly as possible for everyone concerned. I hope that this will be of interest not only in supporting reviewers in the work that they do – and hopefully saving them some time – but also to authors by improving transparency over what reviewers are likely to be looking for in the articles that are submitted.

The vast majority of the reviews that we receive are enormously helpful, both to me as Editor-in-Chief and also, I hope, to the authors. Authors often get in touch to say how much they appreciate the constructive and helpful comments in the reviews that they have received. Taylor and Francis reviewer guidelines request that ‘Reviewers should provide a constructive, comprehensive, evidenced, and appropriately substantial peer review report’, and the vast majority of reviews that I see tick all these boxes and more.

The first stage in the process, when an article is submitted, is for our Editorial Office to check that the necessary elements in the submission have been correctly included. Authors may receive emails from the Editorial Office about this or about any similarity-checking issues that arise. Once this stage is complete, the article proceeds to the handling Editor, who oversees the manuscript from that point on.

IJMEST continues to receive a very high number of submissions, and this is very pleasing. However, this forces us to apply high standards to all submissions, only proceeding with papers that we believe will make a distinct contribution and be important and informative for the readership of the journal. Desk rejection (i.e. rejection without review) is an important way to reduce unnecessary peer review of papers that are out of scope or are clearly not of the quality to review well. We want to use our reviewers’ time as effectively as possible, and this means desk rejecting papers that do not need to progress to review. In particular, we continue to receive quite a large number of unsuitable papers, often consisting entirely of mathematical text, with no pedagogical ‘angle’.

I am always conscious of how precious reviewers’ time is, and we try to design our systems so that reviewers’ time is never wasted. This is why we do not provide a form with lots of different boxes and questions, that may or may not be relevant to the particular manuscript in question or to what the reviewer wishes to say about it. Instead, we provide just one main box for the reviewer to use as they wish. There is a second, smaller box, for any confidential comments to the Editor, but it is normally not necessary to put anything into this box – there is certainly no need to paste a copy of the review into this box.

Speaking personally, a lengthier review is not always preferable to a shorter one. People sometimes ask me, ‘How long should a review be?’ and I always say, ‘As long as necessary – and no longer!’ There is never any need to ‘pad out’ a review because it seems too short. If you have said everything that you need to say, then please stop! A good example of when a short review is completely adequate is when an author has carried out revisions and the reviewer provides a recommendation of ‘Accept’ along with a one-sentence review saying something like, ‘The author’s revisions have completely addressed my previous concerns’. There may be no need to say anything further, and, if both reviewers agree, this is likely to lead directly to an ‘accept’ decision with no further amendments needed. In particular, there is no need to begin the review with a summary of the paper. The paper’s abstract should do this, and, at any rate, the Editor will have already read the paper, so this is not a good use of the reviewer’s time.

The most important thing to see in a review is the reviewer’s honest, constructive opinion on the paper. If they feel that the paper is unsuitable for publication in IJMEST, it is very helpful to be provided with the main reasons for this recommendation. Whenever we reject a paper after review, we try to give a clear explanation of that decision to the authors and, if possible, some suggestions about how the manuscript might be improved or where else it could be submitted.

If the reviewer thinks that the manuscript is potentially publishable in IJMEST, then a detailed list of the changes that they think are necessary (or desirable) is very helpful. It is very unusual for a paper to be accepted without undergoing at least minor revisions; more commonly, major revisions come in the first round, followed by minor revisions in the second round, before acceptance. It hardly needs saying that reviewers’ comments should show consideration for the author as a colleague and be as constructive as possible (Baglini & Parsons, 2020). We always try to approach the same reviewers again for the review of a revision, so that the reviewers can comment on the extent to which the authors have addressed any concerns they previously raised. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to secure reviews by the same reviewers, as they may not have capacity to review the revision at that time, or may not wish to, and this means approaching new reviewers to review the revision. I am always very grateful when reviewers agree to review a revision of a paper they did not review themselves at the previous stage.

It is not necessary to spend time worrying about minor formatting and typographical issues, spelling and punctuation errors and incorrect formatting of references, as these will be picked up at copyediting if the paper is eventually accepted. We are fortunate to receive papers from many authors for whom English is an Additional Language. Many of these authors write better than many native English speakers, and I do not think that we should try to edit out the author’s distinctive style. However, if English language errors are so obtrusive as to make careful peer review impossible, then I apologise, because we try to screen that out before sending papers out for review. If you do feel that that is the case, please say so, and we will ask the authors to improve the language.

Occasionally, reviewers refer to rules such as that citations should be no older than 10 years, or that there must be a certain number of citations to other articles in IJMEST or that the percentage allocation of words between introduction & literature, research methods and results & discussion should be 15, 10, and 75, or something like that. I would like to take the opportunity here to ‘myth bust’ these and any other similar rules! Certainly, there should be some currency in referencing, but often older works are seminal and necessary.

Another question I am often asked by reviewers concerns the recommendations available, and how to distinguish between ‘Major revisions’ and ‘Minor revisions’. I think this really is not something to worry about. I will be happy to discern from the extent of the reviewer’s comments and suggestions, when combined with those of the other reviewer(s), whether, overall, I think the decision should be major or minor revisions or a rejection. So please don’t worry if you are unsure what to recommend. Sometimes two ‘minor revisions’ recommendations might add up to ‘minor revisions’, but sometimes – if they address quite different aspects of the paper requiring changes – they could combine to produce a recommendation of ‘major revisions’. Similarly, two recommendations of ‘major revisions’ might lead to a decision of ‘major revisions’ or to a rejection. It is a matter of judgment and will differ from case to case.

Finally, I want to comment on the reviewing of Classroom Notes. In our email to reviewers for a Classroom Note, we say

Please note that the Classroom Notes section is for shorter articles, and these need not contain original research. They are often new ideas on how to teach a particular topic in a different way or results that may be useful in teaching.

Sometimes reviewers seem to miss this, or perhaps are not very familiar with this rather unusual section of IJMEST, and they give recommendations based on treating the paper as an original research article; for instance, asking where the research questions are or what the ‘findings’ are supposed to be, and complaining about the style. It is hard to capture what makes a good Classroom Note, and the best suggestion is probably just to be familiar with that genre of article within the journal.

I hope that these reflections are helpful both to reviewers and to authors, and I would like to take the opportunity again to thank reviewers for the fantastic work that they do for the journal.

As always, please do continue to support IJMEST by writing, reviewing, citing and talking about the journal with your colleagues, at conferences and in your professional networks. We are always pleased to receive submissions from as diverse and international a range of contributors as possible, including teachers and early-career academics.

With best wishes,