12. Peer Review
We have a transparent, fair, and unbiased system of assessing contributions for publication. Blind peer review is the assessment of a manuscript by two specialists in the relevant field of research. Reviewers are selected by The Garage Journal’s editors, including members of the Advisory Board, and guest-editors. GJ uses the blind peer review system, meaning that the reviewers must not know the identity of the author(s), and vice versa. That is why manuscripts are sent to reviewers in an anonymized form. This implies that no personal data of the author(s)—their name and surname, affiliation, etc.—are made available. In case the reviewer recognizes the identity of the author(s) whose manuscript he/she is reviewing, they are asked not to proceed with the review. A new reviewer is then appointed by the editors.
As part of the submission, you will be asked to provide two files:
- a ‘Manuscript with Full Author Information’ (a complete text of the contribution, with the author’s name / authors’ names, the title page, acknowledgements, and self-references) and
- an ‘Anonymized Manuscript’ (a complete text of the contribution without the author’s name / authors’ names), the title page, acknowledgements, self-references, or any running headers of author names, to allow blinded review.
To prepare the ‘Anonymized Manuscript,’ please remove all references to the authors from the submission. Self-references should also be anonymized (e.g., Author 2019). Moreover, please check the settings on your computer to make sure your name does not appear in the file name and/or history.
Reviews are discussed in an editorial meeting, which is minuted. As a result of this meeting, the editors make their final decision regarding the publication of the manuscript.
Reviewers assess the quality of the submitted contributions including their compliance to the international scholarly and ethical research standards. Important aspects of a review are originality and novelty of the author’s approach to the subject. Based on the reviewers’ recommendation, The Garage Journal’s editors will:
- accept the manuscript for publication without any revisions;
- accept the manuscript but ask the author(s) to make revisions. GJ editors will assess the quality of the revisions. If they are not satisfied with the revisions, the editors may reject the manuscript or invite a re-submission (see 3 and 4);
- recommend that the author(s) re-work the manuscript and make a re-submission to the journal. This means that the re-worked version of the manuscript will undergo a new round of blind peer reviews; and
- reject the manuscript.
The Garage Journal carries out reviews of submitted work in a polite, constructive, and professional way.
As a result of the review, the author(s) are most likely to be asked to use reviewers’ feedback to revise their contribution. The purpose of revisions is not to ‘penalize’ the authors, but to improve the quality of the submission. Reviewers’ feedback and advice on revisions will be provided. The author(s) may ask the editors to clarify some recommendations, but generally it is expected that the author(s) are able to work with the recommendations on their own. The author(s) can either revise the manuscript as per recommendations, so that it is published in GJ, or they can withdraw the manuscript from publication altogether.
The author(s) cannot re-submit a manuscript if it has been accepted for publication with revisions. ‘Making a re-submission’ means that the author(s) are encouraged to significantly re-work the manuscript in accordance with the reviewers’ recommendations, after which they can submit the paper to the journal again. Once re-submitted, the manuscript will go through another round of peer review.
In case of disagreement, The Garage Journal’s editors will assign a team of assessors consisting of members of the Advisory Board. They will provide an independent, unbiased assessment of the situation and put forward a recommendation for action. Their decision is final and cannot be contested.
As part of the submission process, the authors will be asked to provide the names of two or more peers who could be invited to review the manuscript. Recommended reviewers should be experts in the relevant field and should be able to assess the manuscript objectively. Please be aware of any conflicts of interest when recommending reviewers. The reviewer should have no prior knowledge of the submission, should not have recently collaborated with any of the authors, and should not be affiliated with the same institution as any of the authors. The editors will consider inviting proposed candidates to review the submission, but are not obliged to do so.
