Home > Peer Review Policy

Peer Review Policy

As a condition of agreeing to assess the manuscript, all reviewers undertake to keep submitted manuscripts and associated data confidential, and not to redistribute them without permission from the journal. If a reviewer seeks advice from colleagues while assessing a manuscript, he or she ensures that confidentiality is maintained and that the names of any such colleagues are provided to the journal with the final report. By this and by other means, BJH endeavour to keep the content of all submissions confidential until the publication date other than in the specific case of its embargoed press release available to  registered journalists. Although we go to every effort to ensure reviewers honour their promise to ensure confidentiality, we are not responsible for the conduct of reviewers.

Reviewers should be aware that it is our policy to keep their names confidential, and that we do our utmost to ensure this confidentiality. Under normal circumstances, blind peer-review is protected from legislation. We cannot, however, guarantee to maintain this confidentiality in the face of a successful legal action to disclose identity in the event of a reviewer having written personally derogatory comments about the authors in his or her reports. For this reason as well as for reasons of standard professional courtesy, we request reviewers to refrain from personally negative comments about the authors of submitted manuscripts.

Consistent with the policy of blind review, the author(s)’ name(s) should be listed only on a cover page that will be removed before the manuscript is sent to the reviewers. References to the author(s)’ previous work should be listed as Author(s) in the citations and references.

The first author will receive a notice of receipt of the manuscript within one week. If the manuscript is accepted for review, the reviewers’ responses will be sent to the first author within two weeks. Four types of decisions are made: Accept as submitted, Accept with revisions, Revise and resubmit, or Not accepted.

All manuscripts will be judged on the significance of the content, the inclusion of a valid discussion of implications for practice in the broader field of education, social and humanity sciences, and the clarity and cohesion of the text.

Acknowledgment of cooperating scholars or professionals and funding sources should be added to the end of the manuscript.

Frank comments about the scientific content of the manuscripts, however, are strongly encouraged by the editors. This journal employs double blind reviewing, where both the referee and author remain anonymous throughout the process. Referees are matched to the paper according to their expertise. We welcome suggestions for referees from the author though these recommendations may or may not be used. Referees are asked to evaluate whether the manuscript:

• Is original;
• Is methodologically sound;
•  Follows appropriate ethical guidelines;
•  Has results which are clearly presented and support the conclusions;
• Correctly references previous relevant work.

 A final decision to accept or reject the manuscript will be sent by via mail to the author along with any recommendations made by the referees, and may include verbatim comments by the referees.