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Review Process - African Journal of E-commerce, Logistics and Transport Studies (AJELTS)

Our Review Process – Summary of How It Works

Under our system each journal has a Virtual Editorial Assistant (VEA), attached to it, which substantially reduces the burden of traditional editorship. The VEA is like a PA to the journal’s Editor and members of the Editorial Board. The VEA builds a database of potential reviewers for the journal, receives all papers submitted to the journal on behalf of the editor, and once the received papers have passed the Desk Review, (including a check to ensure that they fit into the journal’s scope), he/she approaches the potential reviewers on the database on behalf of the editor. When the VEA approaches potential reviewers, he/she lists available papers for review which ensures that scholars can pick papers in their areas of interest. When the VEA has received the requisite number of reviews for a paper he/she sends them to the Editor. The role of the editor here basically is to review the review of the reviewers and raise additional issues not captured by the reviewers if necessary, not to carry out a fresh review of the paper. Almost all papers submitted to us and reviewed are either rejected outright or require Major or Minor Corrections.  

Components of the review process

There are three components of the paper review process:
A. The peer review for the academic quality of the paper. 
B. Plagiarism test: Every research paper that has passed the academic stage of the review process is taken through a plagiarism test. Our threshold is 15% including in-text citations and references. The plagiarism test is coordinated by the journal’s VEA
C. Proofreading test: The language review tests how well each accepted paper has been proofread. Authors are advised to professionally proofread their papers after it has been accepted for academic quality. When they submit a clean copy of their paper after the revised copy has been accepted, we give a sample of the work to our language editors who will use track changes to proofread the work. If the work is rejected the affected authors will see clearly through the track changes why that was the case and they are advised either to read over the work more carefully or to get the paper professionally proofread  - depending on the extent of the proofreading errors identified. Though we offer a proofreading service, it is not a condition for publishing any paper. Generally once we make comments on the quality of the proofreading, we decline to offer our proofreading service to avoid any conflict of interest. If we offer a proofreading service, authors are asked to grade the quality of the proofreading and where an author grades it less than 6/10; the paper is sent out for another round of proofreading at our expense. The VEA also coordinates the proofreading test of the paper.
A paper is deemed accepted for publication only after passing through the three components of the review process as discussed above
In addition to passing through the three components of the review process, it is important to note:
a): No author is allowed to publish more than one paper (either singly or jointly) in any issue of the paper.
b): No author is allowed to publish in a back -to-back issue of the journal.
c): The maximum number of papers to be published from one institution is two.

Detailed explanation of the Academic Review Process

•Article Review can be either Internal - meaning that a Member of the Editorial Board of the Journal can be asked to review an article (provided the person is not connected to any of the authors of the article). It can also be External – meaning that scholars who have no connection to the journal but who have the relevant expertise can also be approached to review a paper for the journal. Here the VEA in approaching a potential Review lists available papers for review which ensures the scholar to pick papers in his/her areas of interest.

 • Each article for the journal is double-blind reviewed, which means that Reviewer and Author identities in each case, must be concealed from each other throughout the Review Process.  This also means that in submitting articles for consideration, authors should have a separate page for their names and institutional affiliations and should take care to ensure that their names or institutional affiliations are not revealed in the article they wish to be considered for publication. 
•Articles should be submitted to info@adonis-abbey.com, copying editor@adonis-abbey.com. The journal accepts articles all year round.
 •It is recommended that the editor should use the Virtual Editorial Assistant (VEA) attached to the journal in sourcing for reviewers. The advantages of this include the fact that the VEA can more easily follow up on the progress of the review and consequently be able to update the Author(s) accordingly.  
•Comments on the reviewed article must be on the journal’s Review Form. In addition to comments on the Review Form, reviewers are encouraged to make other comments on the body of the article to better guide the Author(s) when revising the paper.  
 •When submitting papers for evaluation, authors are strongly encouraged to run their papers through anti-plagiarism software to ensure that the similarities are within acceptable threshold. Without prejudice to this however, every paper accepted for publication in the journal will also have to pass the company’s similarity check. Our threshold is 15% - including references and in-text citations.
 •The author(s) in re-submitting the paper after revision must outline in a separate page how the recommended corrections were implemented. This should be done in a two column table with the relevant number of rows. The first column should indicate the reviewer’s comments being addressed and the second column of the corresponding row indicates how each comment/recommendation was implemented and the page number where the implemented corrections can be found. Authors who disagree with particular comments of the reviewers can also state such in the correction log – and give their reasons for disagreeing with the views of the reviewers on the issue.
 •Where two Reviewers recommended a major revision, the revised paper should be sent to one or both of the reviewers to confirm that the recommended corrections were satisfactorily implemented.  
•Where the editor disagrees with the opinion of one or both reviewers, he/she can ask for a third reviewer. An editor cannot override the concurrent opinion of two reviewers. 
•Where the original Reviewers decline to review the work again, the revised paper, together with the original paper submitted for review and the comments by the Reviewers shall be sent to another Reviewer who will decide whether the recommended corrections have been implemented satisfactorily or not.
 •Where one Reviewer recommends major corrections and another Reviewer recommends minor corrections, the journal’s editor (or Guest Editor as the case may be)   shall decide which of the recommended corrections the author will implement.
•Where both Reviewers recommended minor corrections, the editor can decide, on the resubmission of the paper and the review of the corrections log, if the recommended corrections were satisfactorily implemented or not.
•No author shall have more than one paper (singly or jointly authored) per issue of the journal.   
•Authors are updated every four weeks on the progress of articles submitted to the journal for publication. It is the journal’s policy that any inquiry is replied within hours of being received - provided it is received during working hours. Authors and inquirers who did not receive acknowledgement to their inquiry within 24 hours (provided the submission was done during working hours) are encouraged to do a follow-up email to info@adonis-abbey.com , copying editor@adonis-abbey.com and putting ‘Complaint’ on the subject line.
 •After the completion of the layout of the papers accepted for publication, a PDF of each article is sent to the corresponding Author to check for errors. The corresponding Author is usually given a time frame of approximately three working days to respond. Given that the journal works within tight deadlines, any Corresponding Author  that fails to respond within the stipulated time frame will be deemed to have approved the article for publication and any error detected after the publication will be the author’s liability. 
•If an author chooses to withdraw his/her paper after the layout is concluded (but before the journal is printed), any publication fee paid cannot be refunded as this will be used to cover the cost of re-doing the layout. 
 •Authors must sign and return the copyright forms before the start of the layout. Without the signed copyright forms, a paper cannot be published.
Each article in any of our journals that is indexed by SCOPUS or IBSS is evaluated by two reviewers (two double-blind review).

Time frame for completing the review of articles

•Our target is to get a decision on any paper submitted to us within 12- 16 weeks.  However given that we depend on the generosity of reviewers, this time frame could be unrealistic for some of our journals with huge submissions.
•It is our policy that authors are updated every four weeks on the progress of articles submitted to any of our journals. It is also our policy that any inquiry to our office is replied within hours provided it was received within working hours. 
•It is equally our policy that authors are updated every four weeks on the progress of articles submitted to any of our journals. 
•If you submitted an article to us or an inquiry but have not received any acknowledgement within 24 hours (provided the submission was done during working hours), kindly do a follow-up email to info@adonis-abbey.com, copying editor@adonis-abbey.com. On the subject line, write ‘COMPLAINT’

Factors that could delay the review process and the publication of accepted articles

In addition to getting reviewers, other factors that could delay the time it takes for a decision to be reached on an article or for the article to be published after acceptance include: 
 •Sending your article to the wrong email address. All submissions are made to: info@adonis-abbey.com (copying editor@adonis-abbey.com).  
•An editor may express displeasure with the quality of the review of an article by one (or both of the reviewers), and ask that a new reviewer (or even another two reviewers for a journal that uses to reviewers) be found for the paper. 
•We do not publish more than two authors from one institution in any issue of our journals so if the journal has already accepted two articles from one institution for the issue of the journal, it delays the publication of other accepted papers from the same institution for the issue of the journal.
•No author is allowed to publish more than one article (either singly or jointly) in any issue of our journals or to publish in successive issues of any of our journals. This means that an author that has more than one paper accepted for publication (either singly or jointly) or has published in the previous issue of the journal, will experience some delays in having his accepted paper published.
•If an Author’s article fails language or plagiarism test, it means that the final decision on the paper is delayed  until the Author’s paper passes the three components of the Review Process – the Academic quality review, the Language Test and the Plagiarism test.

Guest editorship

We recognize that academics work under challenging conditions and that the volume of official work an editor has may suddenly change - such as marking examination scripts, being involved in consultancy works etc. Since publishing timeously is an article of faith for us and we do not want to overburden our editors, we encourage them to inform us of when their volume of work has increased in such a manner that they will be left with little or no time to attend to the demands of the journal. In such a situation we can appoint a Guest Editor to help us birth the affected issue of the journal and the honorarium that should be due to the editor will be paid to the Guest Editor. We may also ask the substantive editor of the journal to nominate someone we can appoint as the Guest Editor in such a circumstance.

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