Reviewer guidelines

  1. How does the journal operate peer review?
  2. Instructions for reviewers
  3. Use of AI in your review
  4. Obligations of reviewers

 

Review by academic peers is an essential part of the scholarly publishing and communication process. By sharing their expert opinion, peers evaluate and improve the research of their peers. However, peer review is not a perfect system.

One of the concerns with the traditional closed model of peer review (where reviewers are anonymised to authors) is that reviewers are seldom credited for their voluntary performance. A further dispute is that unscrupulous reviewers can hamper scholarly progress by demanding questionable changes, either intentionally exploiting anonymity or because they are simply unsuitable. Peer review suffers from a lack of transparency, recognition, and accountability.

The Journal of Experimental Pragmatics is different.

 

How does the journal operate peer review?

The Journal of Experimental Pragmatics operates open peer review via a preprint server and reviewers are invited by an Editor based on subject expertise.

In addition, as the journal operates open peer review and follows the open science principle "open as possible, closed as necessary", the names and affiliations of reviewers are published alongside their review reports, unless an acceptable reason is agreed with the Editors of the journal for the the reviewer to remain anonymous; for example, there is a real risk of potential or perceived harm to the reviewer if their name is made public.

Reviews are submitted to the journal submission system and then published openly online alongside the versioned preprint of the article that has been reviewed, in perpetuity. Each review receives a DOI and is made available under the CC-BY licence. Reviewers are also encouraged to link their ORCID profiles to their report and to add their contribution to accreditation services like Publons and ImpactStory.

 

Instructions for reviewers

If invited for review for Journal of Experimental Pragmatics, you will be sent instructions on how to submit your review in the journals submission system. When posting a review and/or comments in the journal, users agree to these terms and conditions set out below.

Reviewers will be requested to complete a reviewer form. Please follow the instructions and guidance in the form to list your major and minor points, any conclusions that you come to when assessing the article, and your overall impression of it. Keep in mind that the audience for the review includes both authors and readers.

Reviews should result from an in-depth and thorough evaluation of a research manuscript. Reviews should help readers decide if an article is scientifically sound, meets academic standards and is worth reading in its present form. They can either encompass the entire paper or just a single aspect.

We do not expect reviewers to decide if a manuscript is ‘worthy of publication’. Instead, the expert reviews expressed should aim to assist authors and readers, and improve the value of the associated article.

Reviewers should help to guide authors and encourage them to further improve their article. Reports should stick to the aims and objectives set out in the journals aims and scope (https://journals.uclpress.co.uk/jxprag/site/about) and the author guidelines (https://journals.uclpress.co.uk/jxprag/site/authorguidelines).

 

Use of AI in your review

Peer reviewers must treat a manuscript that is under review confidentially and must not submit the manuscript through an AI-assisted technology or tool.

Submitting any manuscript (as well as any data included in the manuscript) through any AI-assisted technology or tool may incur a breach in confidentiality, proprietary rights and data, including personally identifiable information. Peer reviewers must also not upload their report text through an AI-assisted technology or tool.

Further information about the acceptable uses of AI in UCL Press journals can be found here.

 

Obligations of peer reviewers

These obligations of peer reviewers outlines how the journal expects any reviewer for the journal to conduct themselves when undertaking a review of a submission. Readers will also find additional information about this in the journals peer review policies available at https://journals.uclpress.co.uk/jxprag/site/journal-policies.

While the journal welcomes open scholarly debate and discussion, it will not tolerate untoward behaviour towards our authors and reviewers via our Comment system or via social media. When providing a review and/or comments in the journal, users agree to these obligations set out here.

  1. To ensure the highest quality of research in UCL Press publications, reviewers are expected to uphold the following when reviewing:
  2. Provide clearly written, unbiased feedback in a timely manner on the scholarly and/or scientific merits and value of the work, together with a documented basis for the reviewer’s opinion.
  3. Judge the paper on its merits without regard to personal bias, ethnic origin, race, religion, citizenship, language, political or other opinion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, appearance, age, or economic class, seniority, or institutional affiliation of the author(s).
  4. Thoroughly address all review criteria provided by the journal.
  5. Decline to review manuscripts for which the reviewer lacks sufficient time, is not qualified, or has a conflict of interest with any of the authors, including personal or competitive relationships.
  6. Explain and support judgments adequately so that (Action) Editors and Authors may understand the basis of their comments. Any statement by a reviewer on an observation, derivation or argument that has been previously published should be accompanied by the relevant citation.
  7. Provide citations to relevant work by other scientists as appropriate.
  8. Alert the Editor to any significant similarity between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper or manuscript submitted concurrently to another journal. Report any plagiarism or the appearance of plagiarism.
  9. Never use or disclose unpublished information, arguments or interpretations contained in a manuscript under consideration, except with the consent of the author.
  10. Never include personal criticism of the author in reviewing a manuscript