What is peer review?
Peer review (also known as refereeing) is the process of an author’s scholarly work, research, or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are the experts in that particular field. It requires a community of experts in a given field, who are well qualified and able to perform the review. Especially of work in less narrowly defined or inter-disciplinary fields, may be difficult to accomplish; and the significance of an idea may never be widely appreciated among its contemporaries.
Referees’ evaluations include a recommendation of what to do with the manuscript or proposal, often chosen from options provided by the Editorial board. Most recommendations are along the lines of the following:
- to unconditionally accept the manuscript or proposal,
- to accept it in the event that its authors improve it in certain ways,
- to reject it, but encourage revision and invite resubmission,
- to reject it outright.
IJESIR follows a strict blind peer-review process, wherein the reviewers are not aware of the identities of the authors of the papers which are being reviewed by them. This policy is a recent amendment to the existing set of guidelines so as to prevent any sort of favoritism. The IJESIR reviewers are selected after a thorough screening process. However, the publisher also individually contacts and invites competent individuals to join the esteemed board of IJESIR reviewers.