Peer Review Policy

The decision to publish a paper in TRJ is based on an editorial assessment and peer review. Initially, all papers are assessed by an editorial committee consisting of two or more members of the editorial team. The prime purpose is to decide whether to send a paper for peer review and to give a rapid decision on those that are not.

Editorials and Letters may be accepted at this stage but in all other cases, the decision is to reject the paper or to send it for peer review. The Papers which do not meet basic standards or are unlikely to be published irrespective of a positive peer review, for example, because their novel contribution is insufficient or the relevance to the discipline is unclear, may be rejected at this point to avoid delays to authors who may wish to seek publication elsewhere. Occasionally a paper will be returned to the author with requests for revisions to assist the editors in deciding whether send it out for review or not. Authors can expect a decision from this stage of the review process within 1–2 weeks of submission.

Manuscripts going forward to the review process undergo a double-blind peer review by two or more reviewers, under the supervision of the journal editor and the editor-in-chief. We aim to complete the review process within 4-8 weeks of the decision to review although occasionally delays do happen, and authors should allow at least 6 weeks from submissions before contacting the journal. The Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to the final decision regarding acceptance. You may find the journal’s article reviewing procedure, below.

 

Editorial Decision and Revision

All the articles, reviews and communications published in TRJ journals go through the peer-review process and receive at least two reviews. The in-house editor will communicate the decision of the academic editor, which will be one of the following:

Accept after Minor Revisions: The paper is in principle accepted after revision based on the reviewer’s comments. Authors are given 7 days for minor revisions.

Resubmit after Major Revisions: The acceptance of the manuscript would depend on the revisions. The author needs to provide a point-by-point response or provide a rebuttal if some of the reviewer’s comments cannot be revised. A maximum of two rounds of major revision per manuscript is normally provided. Authors will be asked to resubmit the revised paper within 2 weeks, and the revised version will be returned to the reviewer for further comments. If the required revision time is estimated to be longer than 2 months, we will recommend that authors withdraw their manuscript before resubmitting to avoid unnecessary time pressure and to ensure that all manuscripts are sufficiently revised.

Reject and Encourage Resubmission: If additional experiments are needed to support the conclusions, the manuscript will be rejected, and the authors will be encouraged to re-submit the paper once further experiments have been conducted.

Reject: The article has serious flaws, and/or makes no original significant contribution. No offer of resubmission to the journal is provided.

All reviewer comments should be responded to in a point-by-point fashion. Where the authors disagree with a reviewer, they must provide a clear response.

Author Appeals

Authors may appeal a rejection by sending an e-mail to the Managing Editor of the journal. The appeal must provide a detailed justification, including point-by-point responses to the reviewers' and/or Editor's comments using an appeal form. Appeals can only be submitted following a “declined submission” decision and should be submitted within three months from the decision date. Failure to meet these criteria will result in the appeal not being considered further. The Chief Editor will forward the manuscript and related information (including the identities of the referees) to a designated Editorial Board Member. The Editors being consulted will be asked to provide an advisory recommendation on the manuscript and may recommend acceptance, further peer-review, or uphold the original rejection decision. This decision will then be validated by the Editor-in-Chief. A reject decision at this stage is final and cannot be reversed.

Production and Publication

Once accepted, the manuscript will undergo professional copy-editing, English editing, proofreading by the authors, final corrections, pagination, and publication on TRJ website.