Reviewer Guidelines

As is the case with any peer-reviewed journal, academic reviewers play a crucial role in the editorial process of the journals published by Scholarly Research Exchange. However, there are a few important differences that distinguish the transparent review process used by Scholarly Research Exchange from the traditional “blind” peer review process used by many scholarly journals.

Once a manuscript has been submitted for consideration to any of our journals, our Editorial Office will identify potential reviewers for the submitted manuscript. These reviewers must be experts within the field of the submitted manuscript, with an appropriate seniority in order to ensure a rigorous peer review process. If a reviewer submits a review report, the reviewer's identity will be communicated to the authors of the manuscript. Reviewers are asked to submit their review reports as quickly as possible, with a maximum of four weeks following the initial review request. Once an article has been accepted for publication, the names and evaluations of the peer reviewers will be posted alongside the published article.

The transparent peer review system used by Scholarly Research Exchange publicly acknowledges the reviewers' contribution to the peer review process and enables them to publish a written commentary that will be displayed alongside the article, if they choose to do so. This model of transparent peer review provides the journals' readers with a more in-depth analysis of each published article, and it enables reviewers to present a more nuanced evaluation of the articles that they review. The system also publicly acknowledges the important contributions of peer reviewers in the review process.

Another important aspect of the editorial model used by our journals is that the acceptance of an article is entirely dependent on the evaluations made by the peer reviewers. In addition to any written comments that a reviewer makes, each review report includes a rating of the article on a scale from zero to five stars, with the following meanings:

	Outstanding Quality
	Strong Manuscript
	Reasonable/Average Quality
	Below Average Quality
	Minimum Publishable Quality
	The Manuscript Should Not be Published

If a manuscript receives more than one review report with a ranking of zero stars, it will be rejected without further review. Otherwise, the manuscript can be accepted or revised according to the evaluations made by the peer reviewers. If a revision is required, the reviewers will be asked to review the updated version of the article. Once an article is published, the evaluations made by each of the peer reviewers will be published on the journal's web site, along with the names of each reviewer.