Cogitatio undertakes a very serious double-blind peer-review and carefully selects reviewers for submitted manuscripts from among the top scholars in the field. Reviewers must fulfill the following criteria:
- Hold a PhD degree and/or be a recognized expert in the field;
- Not have co-authored publications with the author(s) for the last 5 years;
- Not be affiliated with the same institution as the author(s);
Researchers will only be invited to review a maximum of two manuscripts per year. Also, in order to guarantee the swiftness of the editorial process and to avoid overloading the reviewers, each manuscript will have a single round of external peer-review, after which a final decision must be made.
Reviewers are asked to conform to the following guidelines:
- Reviewers shall not disclose any information regarding the manuscript to any other party, or use any part of the content on their own behalf;
- Reviewers who wish to suggest other potential reviewers or share the reviewing task with other colleagues shall always inform the Editorial Office of the journal before making any contact with the suggested (co-)reviewers.
Cogitatio does not accept spontaneous applications to join our pool of reviewers. Experts will be directly contacted by our Editorial Office to review articles submitted to our journals.
Peer-Review Policy
Cogitatio undertakes a double-blind peer-review and guarantees the confidentiality of the reviewers’ identities and contact details. Reviewers’ identities are only disclosed to the Editorial Board members of the journal in order to guarantee full transparency among Editors and reassure the academic community that the journal does apply a stringent peer-review process.
Review Report Form
Reviewers should fill in the peer-review report form provided by the Editorial Office through the online submission system. This form is immediately available after review acceptance and is divided into five different sections:
I. Overall Assessment
You can make an overall assessment of five different aspects of the manuscript.
- Originality of the paper: is the research or approach of the manuscript innovative?
- Interest to the readers: is the manuscript appealing to other scholars and non-experts interested in the topic?
- Scientific soundness: are the methodology and literature review well performed? Are the conclusions supported by the results?
- Clarity of presentation: are the ideas and structure of the manuscript clear and logical?
- English language level: is the English language comprehensive and flawless?
II. Recommendation
You should select recommendation for a decision regarding the manuscript from the following:
- Accept submission: the manuscript is considered to be of sufficient quality to warrant publication and no changes are needed in terms of content.
- Revisions required: you consider the manuscript to be free of any major flaws that could put into question the scientific soundness of the article, but the authors should still be asked to perform some minor revisions.
- Decline submission: the manuscript is considered to have major flaws which could not be resolved through revision and resubmission.
III. General Comment for Authors
In this section you can make a brief and general assessment of the paper. Recommended maximum length: 150 words.
IV. Suggestions and Revisions Required
In this section include all suggestions for improvement and changes needed for the article to be accepted for publication. Please insert each different suggestion/revision needed into a new paragraph. It is extremely important that you indicate a single suggestion/revision needed per paragraph, as that will ease the process for both authors and reviewers (authors will be asked to reply point-by-point to each of the topics raised by all reviewers in their resubmission cover letter).
V. Comments for Editors (will not be revealed to the authors)
In this section you can include comments that you do not wish to be revealed to the authors.
Turnaround Period
The usual turnaround period for the delivery of the review report is two weeks. We are aware that for some researchers this period may be tight, and reviewers are always welcome to inform the Editorial Office should they need some extra time to complete the review.