Peer-Review Proces

Peer Review Process

Sustainability Education Review (SuER) is committed to a rigorous, fair, independent, and transparent peer review process. Scholarly manuscripts submitted to the journal are evaluated on the basis of their academic quality, originality, methodological rigor, relevance to the journal's aims and scope, and contribution to scholarship in education and sustainability.

1. Peer Review Model

SuER applies a double-anonymous peer review model for scholarly manuscripts. Under this model, the identities of the authors are not disclosed to reviewers, and the identities of reviewers are not disclosed to authors.

Authors are responsible for preparing an anonymized manuscript and removing information that could reasonably reveal their identity, including names, affiliations, acknowledgements, and identifying references to institutional projects where appropriate.

2. Initial Editorial Screening

All submitted manuscripts undergo an initial editorial assessment before being sent for external peer review. During this stage, the Editor-in-Chief or a designated editor assesses whether the submission:

  • falls within the aims and scope of the journal;
  • meets the basic requirements stated in the Author Guidelines;
  • presents a sufficiently clear and relevant scholarly problem;
  • demonstrates an appropriate level of originality and academic contribution;
  • uses a research design and methodology that are sufficiently described for editorial consideration;
  • complies with relevant research and publication ethics requirements;
  • contains appropriate declarations concerning authorship, competing interests, funding, ethics, data, and the use of artificial intelligence where applicable;
  • does not show indications of plagiarism, duplicate publication, data fabrication, citation manipulation, or other research-integrity concerns.

A manuscript may be declined without external review when it is clearly outside the journal's scope, does not meet minimum scholarly or methodological standards, does not follow essential submission requirements, or raises unresolved publication-integrity concerns. A desk rejection does not imply that the subject itself lacks scholarly value.

3. Selection of Reviewers

Manuscripts that pass initial screening are normally evaluated by at least two independent reviewers with appropriate expertise in the subject area, methodology, or research context of the manuscript.

Reviewers are selected on the basis of scholarly expertise, independence, availability, and absence of relevant conflicts of interest. Reviewers should normally be external to the authors' immediate institutional and collaborative networks.

Authors may suggest potential reviewers when permitted by the submission system; however, the journal is under no obligation to invite suggested reviewers. Reviewer selection remains the responsibility of the editorial team. The journal may also consider reasonable requests to exclude particular reviewers, although such requests are not automatically binding.

4. Reviewer Responsibilities

Reviewers are expected to evaluate manuscripts objectively, constructively, confidentially, and within their area of expertise. Reviewers should assess, as appropriate:

  • the significance and originality of the research problem;
  • engagement with relevant national and international scholarship;
  • theoretical or conceptual coherence;
  • appropriateness and transparency of the methodology;
  • quality and adequacy of data analysis;
  • relationship between evidence, interpretation, and conclusions;
  • contribution to sustainability education;
  • clarity, organization, and scholarly readability;
  • ethical and research-integrity considerations;
  • limitations and implications of the study.

Reviewers must declare relevant conflicts of interest and decline an invitation when they cannot provide an impartial assessment. Manuscripts and associated materials received for review must be treated as confidential documents.

5. Confidentiality and Artificial Intelligence in Peer Review

Reviewers must protect the confidentiality of unpublished manuscripts. Manuscripts, figures, data, supplementary materials, or identifiable portions of a submission must not be uploaded to publicly accessible generative artificial intelligence systems or other external services where confidentiality, intellectual property, or data protection cannot be assured.

Any permitted use of artificial intelligence or AI-assisted tools by reviewers must comply with the journal's Artificial Intelligence Policy. Reviewers remain fully responsible for the content, accuracy, reasoning, and recommendations contained in their review reports.

6. Editorial Decisions

After considering the reviewers' reports and the editor's own assessment, an editorial decision may include:

  • Accept;
  • Minor Revision;
  • Major Revision;
  • Reject.

Reviewer recommendations are advisory. The final editorial decision is made by the Editor-in-Chief or an authorized handling editor based on the manuscript's scholarly quality, the reviewers' assessments, compliance with journal policies, and relevance to the journal's aims and scope.

Where reviewer reports differ substantially, the editor may seek clarification, consult an additional reviewer, or undertake further editorial assessment before reaching a decision.

7. Revision and Re-evaluation

When revision is invited, authors are expected to submit a revised manuscript together with a clear point-by-point response explaining how reviewer and editor comments have been addressed. Where an author disagrees with a recommendation, a scholarly justification should be provided.

A revised manuscript may be returned to the original reviewers, assessed by new reviewers, or evaluated editorially, depending on the nature and extent of the revisions required. An invitation to revise does not constitute a guarantee of acceptance.

8. Editorial Independence and Conflicts of Interest

Editorial decisions must be based on scholarly merit and must not be influenced by commercial considerations, author identity, institutional affiliation, nationality, ethnicity, gender, religious or political beliefs, or other factors unrelated to academic quality and relevance.

Editors must recuse themselves from handling manuscripts in which they have a personal, professional, financial, institutional, or collaborative conflict of interest.

9. Manuscripts Submitted by Editors or Editorial Board Members

Submissions authored or co-authored by the Editor-in-Chief, editors, editorial board members, or individuals closely associated with the journal are not given preferential treatment.

Such manuscripts are handled by an independent editor who has no relevant conflict of interest. The author-editor has no access to confidential reviewer identities, reviewer selection, or editorial deliberations concerning the manuscript. The same peer review criteria and editorial standards apply as for all other submissions.

10. Special Issues and Guest-Edited Collections

Articles submitted to special issues, thematic collections, or guest-edited sections are subject to the same standards of originality, research integrity, peer review, and editorial quality as articles submitted to regular issues.

Guest editors must declare relevant conflicts of interest and must not make unilateral publication decisions where their independence may reasonably be questioned. The Editor-in-Chief retains oversight of the editorial process and may intervene when necessary to protect scholarly quality and publication integrity.

11. Exceptions to External Peer Review

Original research articles, review articles, conceptual or theoretical articles, and other substantive scholarly contributions are subject to peer review.

Editorials, editorial introductions, corrections, retraction notices, expressions of concern, or other journal-generated material may undergo editorial review rather than external peer review. Where a published item has undergone a review process different from the journal's standard procedure, its status should be made clear to readers where appropriate.

12. Research-Integrity Concerns During Review

If editors or reviewers identify possible plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, inappropriate image manipulation, undisclosed competing interests, unethical research, authorship problems, citation manipulation, duplicate submission, or other potential misconduct, the journal may suspend the normal review process while the concern is assessed.

Such cases will be handled according to the journal's Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement and relevant internationally recognized publication-ethics guidance.

13. Appeals

Authors may appeal an editorial decision when they believe that a substantial factual, procedural, or scholarly error affected the decision. Appeals must provide a clear academic justification and should not merely express disagreement with reviewer opinions.

Appeals are handled according to the journal's Complaints and Appeals Policy. An appeal does not guarantee reconsideration or acceptance.

14. Review and Publication Transparency

SuER does not guarantee acceptance of submitted manuscripts and does not guarantee a specific review outcome. The journal seeks to conduct editorial and peer review processes efficiently while prioritizing the quality, independence, and integrity of scholarly evaluation.

For published scholarly articles, the journal should provide relevant publication-history information, such as the dates of receipt, revision, acceptance, and publication, where applicable.