Peer Review Process

Peer Review and Editorial Decision Process

1. Commitment to Rigorous Peer Review

The Journal of Psychology & Education is committed to a rigorous, fair, independent, confidential, and transparent editorial and peer-review process.

The journal aims to complete editorial assessment efficiently while ensuring that peer review is sufficiently thorough and is not compromised by publication schedules, publication charges, author services, or commercial considerations.

All processing times stated on this page are approximate targets rather than guaranteed deadlines. Actual processing times may vary depending on manuscript complexity, reviewer availability, research-integrity checks, the need for specialist or statistical review, the extent of revision required, and the responsiveness of authors and reviewers.

The journal does not guarantee acceptance, peer-review completion, a first decision, or publication within a fixed timeframe.

2. Peer Review Model

The journal operates a double-anonymous peer-review process. The identities of authors are not disclosed to reviewers, and the identities of reviewers are not disclosed to authors.

Original research articles, review articles, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, theoretical articles, methodological articles, philosophical and ethical analyses, and other substantive scholarly submissions that pass the initial editorial assessment are normally evaluated by at least two independent external reviewers with relevant subject expertise.

Editorials, corrections, announcements, letters, and other non-research content may undergo editorial review rather than external peer review. The journal determines the appropriate form of evaluation according to the nature of the submission.

Submissions to special issues are subject to the same standards of editorial assessment, conflict-of-interest management, research integrity, and independent peer review as regular submissions.

3. Submission and Technical Check

After submission, the editorial office conducts a preliminary technical and administrative check to determine whether:

  • the manuscript falls within the journal’s aims and scope;
  • all required submission files have been provided;
  • a separate title page and an anonymous main manuscript have been uploaded;
  • identifying information has been removed from the anonymous manuscript and file properties;
  • authorship, funding, conflicts of interest, ethics approval, informed consent, and data-availability statements have been provided where applicable;
  • the manuscript follows the journal’s basic formatting and reporting requirements;
  • the submission has not been published previously and is not under consideration elsewhere.

Submitted manuscripts may be screened for text similarity using Crossref Similarity Check, powered by iThenticate, as part of the journal’s research-integrity assessment.

Similarity reports are reviewed by the editorial team. A numerical similarity score alone is not used as the sole basis for an editorial decision.

Incomplete, improperly anonymised, or technically non-compliant submissions may be returned to the authors for correction before editorial assessment.

4. Initial Editorial Assessment

The Editor-in-Chief or a designated handling editor evaluates the manuscript’s:

  • relevance to the journal’s aims and scope;
  • originality and potential scholarly contribution;
  • theoretical or conceptual foundation;
  • methodological or argumentative rigour;
  • ethical and reporting compliance;
  • clarity and suitability for external peer review.

At this stage, the editor may:

  • send the manuscript for external peer review;
  • request limited technical or reporting corrections before review;
  • recommend submission under a more appropriate article category;
  • request clarification or supporting documentation;
  • decline the manuscript without external review.

A manuscript may be declined without external review when it is outside the journal’s scope, does not meet minimum scholarly standards, contains fundamental methodological or ethical problems, lacks sufficient originality, or is otherwise unsuitable for publication in the journal.

A decision not to send a manuscript for external review does not imply that the subject of the manuscript lacks scholarly value.

5. External Peer Review

Manuscripts that pass initial editorial assessment are normally sent to at least two independent external reviewers.

Reviewers are selected based on:

  • expertise relevant to the manuscript;
  • appropriate academic or professional qualifications;
  • recent scholarly activity in the relevant field;
  • independence from the authors and their institutions;
  • absence of financial, professional, supervisory, collaborative, institutional, or personal conflicts of interest.

Reviewers are usually invited to return their reports within three to five weeks. Additional time may be granted when necessary to ensure a careful and substantive review.

Where a reviewer fails to provide a report, provides an inadequate report, or discloses a relevant conflict of interest, the editor may invite a replacement reviewer.

Reviewers are asked to evaluate, where relevant:

  • originality and scholarly significance;
  • theoretical foundation and engagement with previous literature;
  • clarity of the research question, objective, or argument;
  • appropriateness of the research design and methodology;
  • statistical, qualitative, conceptual, or argumentative rigour;
  • transparency, reproducibility, and reporting completeness;
  • ethical compliance;
  • interpretation of findings or arguments;
  • limitations and implications;
  • organisation, clarity, and academic presentation.

Reviewer recommendations are advisory. The final editorial decision is made by the Editor-in-Chief or designated handling editor after considering the manuscript, reviewer reports, author responses, and the journal’s editorial standards.

6. Editorial Decisions

After evaluating the manuscript and reviewer reports, the editor may issue one of the following decisions:

  • Accept;
  • Minor Revision;
  • Major Revision;
  • Reject and Resubmit;
  • Reject.

Acceptance without revision is uncommon.

A manuscript is accepted only when the editor is satisfied that the authors have adequately addressed the substantive issues raised during editorial assessment and peer review, and that the manuscript meets the journal’s scholarly, methodological, ethical, and editorial requirements.

When reviewer reports differ substantially, the editor may invite an additional independent reviewer, obtain specialist methodological or statistical advice, request clarification from reviewers, or make an independent editorial judgement based on the available evidence.

7. Revision and Re-evaluation

Authors receiving a revision decision must normally submit:

  • a clean revised manuscript;
  • a marked or tracked-changes version, where requested;
  • a detailed point-by-point response to all editor and reviewer comments;
  • any additional files or documentation requested by the editorial office.

The response document should clearly identify each comment, explain how it was addressed, and specify where the corresponding change appears in the revised manuscript.

Where an author does not adopt a requested change, the response should provide a clear and reasoned scholarly explanation.

Revised manuscripts may be returned to the original reviewers, sent to additional reviewers, assessed by the handling editor, or subjected to further technical, ethical, statistical, or similarity checks.

Submission of a revised manuscript does not guarantee acceptance.

8. Editorial Independence and Conflicts of Interest

Editorial decisions are based on scholarly merit, originality, methodological or argumentative rigour, ethical compliance, clarity, relevance to the journal, and the adequacy of authors’ revisions and responses.

Editorial decisions are independent of the authors’ nationality, institutional affiliation, professional status, gender, ethnicity, religion, political views, or ability to pay publication charges.

Publication charges are requested only after a formal acceptance decision has been issued.

Editors and reviewers must disclose any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest. Individuals with conflicts that could affect, or reasonably appear to affect, their judgement will not participate in the evaluation or decision-making process.

When an editor, editorial board member, reviewer, publisher representative, or journal staff member submits a manuscript, that individual will have no involvement in reviewer selection, access to confidential reviewer reports, or participation in the editorial decision. The manuscript will be assigned to an independent editor and will be subject to the same review standards as other submissions.

The publisher, journal owner, administrative staff, publication charges, and commercial service providers do not determine whether an individual manuscript is accepted or rejected.

9. Language Editing and Author Services

Language editing, formatting assistance, translation, or other author services offered or recommended by the journal are entirely optional and separate from editorial assessment and peer review.

The use or non-use of an author service has no influence on whether a manuscript is sent for peer review, returned for revision, accepted, rejected, or published.

Author services do not guarantee acceptance, preferential treatment, accelerated peer review, or publication.

Manuscripts receiving language or formatting assistance must satisfy the same scholarly, methodological, ethical, and peer-review standards as all other submissions.

10. Confidentiality

Editors and reviewers must treat submitted manuscripts, supplementary files, reviewer reports, author responses, and editorial correspondence as confidential materials.

Submitted material must not be shared with unauthorised persons or used for personal research, professional advantage, financial benefit, or any purpose unrelated to editorial assessment.

Reviewers and editors must not upload confidential manuscript content to publicly accessible generative artificial intelligence systems or other platforms that may retain, reuse, disclose, or train on the submitted material.

Reviewers must not contact authors directly or attempt to identify anonymous authors. Authors must not attempt to identify or contact anonymous reviewers.

11. Research Integrity and Ethical Concerns

The journal may suspend editorial assessment, peer review, acceptance, production, or publication when concerns arise regarding:

  • plagiarism or unattributed copying;
  • duplicate or redundant publication;
  • fabricated or falsified data;
  • inappropriate image manipulation;
  • inaccurate or misleading statistical reporting;
  • inappropriate authorship;
  • undisclosed conflicts of interest;
  • unethical human or animal research;
  • lack of required informed consent;
  • manipulated citations;
  • compromised or fabricated peer review;
  • undisclosed use of artificial intelligence;
  • other potential breaches of publication ethics.

Where appropriate, the journal may request original data, ethics approval documentation, informed-consent documentation, authorship and contribution statements, study protocols, preregistration records, statistical files, analysis code, image files, permissions for third-party material, or other supporting documentation.

Depending on the nature and timing of the concern, the journal may reject, withdraw, correct, retract, or issue an expression of concern regarding the affected work.

12. Appeals and Complaints

Authors may appeal an editorial decision when they believe that a significant factual error, procedural irregularity, conflict of interest, or material misunderstanding affected the outcome.

An appeal must be submitted within 30 calendar days of the decision and should clearly explain the grounds for appeal. Appeals are normally reviewed by an editor who was not directly responsible for the original decision.

An appeal does not guarantee reconsideration, further peer review, acceptance, or publication.

Complaints concerning editorial conduct, peer review, publication ethics, conflicts of interest, or journal procedures may be submitted to the journal’s designated editorial contact. The journal will acknowledge and investigate legitimate complaints in a fair and timely manner.

13. Production and Online Publication

Accepted manuscripts enter production only after a formal final acceptance decision has been issued.

During production, manuscripts may undergo copyediting, language and formatting checks, typesetting, metadata preparation, reference and DOI verification, author proof review, and final quality-control checks.

Authors are responsible for reviewing their proofs carefully and returning corrections promptly.

The journal uses a rolling publication model. Articles may be published online individually after production, author proof approval, and completion of final publication checks, and may subsequently be assigned to an issue.

A DOI is assigned to each published article and resolves to the permanent article landing page.

14. Processing-Time Transparency

The journal periodically reviews its editorial performance, including time to technical check, time to initial editorial assessment, time to first decision, reviewer completion rates, time required for revision, time from acceptance to publication, and reasons for substantial delays.

For manuscripts sent for external peer review, the first post-review decision commonly takes approximately five to eight weeks from submission, although this may be shorter or longer depending on reviewer availability, manuscript complexity, research-integrity checks, and the need for revision or specialist review.

Accepted manuscripts are normally published online within one to three weeks after production checks and author proof approval.

Any processing times reported by the journal represent typical or approximate targets and do not constitute a promise of acceptance or a guaranteed decision or publication date.

The journal will not compromise the independence, fairness, confidentiality, or thoroughness of editorial assessment and peer review solely to meet a processing target.