Peer Review Process

All articles are received through the submission email to the journal at [email protected]. The Editorial Advisor and Chief Reviewer initially review the articles for scope, fit, quality, originality, interest for the readership. After this review, if the paper is deemed suitable for the journal – based on subject matter and relevance and meeting submission guidelines – but has some issues to be clarified, is sent back to author to amend. If it is not suitable, it is rejected at this stage.

If the paper is deemed relevant, the Editorial Advisor identifies the best subject matter reviewer from the list of available reviewers plus others. The paper is usually sent to at least two people to review at the same time using the SSMJ reviewer guidelines. A double blind review process is followed, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from each other throughout the review process.

It usually takes between 4-6 weeks for the process to complete. Once comments are received from reviewers, they are sent to the authors to address and incorporate in their revised papers for re-submission. The Editorial Advisor, together with other members of the SSMJ team,  supports the authors in finalizing the paper based on the reviews. A final version for publication is then set in the pipeline for the next available issue.

The Editor-in-Chief decides in which issue the article is published. All authors receive a pre-publication pdf of their papers for final review.