Processing manuscript submissions

As part of ensuring journal's quality, all manuscripts submitted to this journal should undergo process as follows:

Desk Review

Manuscripts that have conformed to such mentioned criteria, and if they are judged suitable for this publication, will be forwarded to the desk review.

This step is optional. Typically, for submissions that undergo the desk review stage, the Editorial Board will provide common feedback in ensuring submissions have conformed to the journal's standard to ease the peer-reviewer in reviewing the manuscript. If authors do not meet these conditions, they will get feedback and will have an opportunity to revise their manuscript according to the given criteria. However, there is also the possibility that the Editorial Board will directly reject the manuscript.

Peer Review

The review process applies the double-blind peer review method, in which case neither authors nor reviewers know each other’s identities. When the manuscript has passed the desk review stage, editors will deliver manuscripts to two reviewers who are experts in the field of the submitted manuscript. The task of reviewers is to assess originality, clarity of presentation, contribution to the legal knowledge. The final decision of manuscript acceptance is solely decided by the editors according to reviewers' comments. Typically, reviewers will complete the review process within six weeks. Manuscripts that did not successfully pass the desk review process will not proceed to this stage and will be rejected.

Reviewers' Decision

The reviewers will provide the following recommendations:
1. Accepted (the manuscript is acceptable for publication);
2. Accepted with minor revisions
 (the manuscript is acceptable for publication after it undergoes a revision in response to the reviewers’ concerns);
3. Accepted with major revisions
 (substantive inadequacies in the manuscript, such as data analysis, the main theory used and rewriting of paragraphs, need to be revised); or
4. Rejected
 (the manuscript is not acceptable for publication, or the given reviews relate to fundamental issues).

The final decision of manuscript acceptance is solely decided by the Editorial Board by taking into account reviewers' comments. The Editorial Board cannot unilaterally make a decision without the recommendation from reviewers.

Revision

Once the manuscript has been received with notations of minor or major revisions, it will be returned to the author with a review summary form. For manuscripts accepted with major revisions, authors are allotted three weeks to revise. Whereas for manuscripts accepted with minor revisions, one week is allotted for revision. When returning the revised manuscript, the author is required to fill in and attach the review summary form. 

Final Decision

At this stage, the manuscript will be re-evaluated by the Editorial Board to ensure that the author has revised in response to the reviewers’ concerns. In this final decision, the manuscript may still be rejected if the author did not seriously conduct the revisions necessary.