Peer Review Policy

Papers that meet the general criteria of the Journal are sent for formal triple-blind review. The OJS has a system that shall indicate to the author that their paper is under review.

The Editor will assign external reviewers ( not coming from the University of Southeastern Philippines) who have an h-index of 4 or higher. The assigned reviewers must not come from the institution of the authors of the paper they are evaluating. Guided by a peer-review criteria, these experts will conduct the review given a specified duration.

When the peer review reports are ready, the author obtains a copy, prompted by the web-based system. The author goes through a maximum duration of 3-month revision process improving the content taken from peer review feedback.

The initial peer review report is expected to be submitted by the reviewer three (3) weeks after securing a copy of the draft online. In certain cases, a 2nd/further review may be deemed necessary. Overall, manuscript refinement involving peer review report/s and author revisions should be covered within 3 (three) months duration.

The following are possibilities of the reviewer's decision/advice:

1. ACCEPTABLE content in present form. (will progress to publication)
2. ACCEPTABLE, advised to revise to address minor concerns in the manuscript's content, no further review is needed
3. ACCEPTABLE, advised to revise to address major concerns in the manuscript's content, further review needed
4. REJECTED and returned to the author, but can be resubmitted after doing further work (NOTE: In such case, the article upon new submission follows the same process)
5. REJECTED due to lack of conceptual/methodological advancement and has serious problems in its interpretation/analyses