Peer Reviewer Process

Peer Review Process

Manuscripts submitted to Wellspring: Journal of Sustainable Public Health will undergo a selection and assessment process by the Board of Editors to ensure their accordance with the writing guidelines, focus, and scope, and that they are of excellent academic quality. The manuscripts will be reviewed using the “double-blind peer review” method in which case neither authors nor reviewers know each other’s identities.

1. Prereview

At the desk review stage, manuscripts will be examined to ensure that they have met the writing guidelines, focus, and scope with excellent academic quality. If they do not meet the conditions, the author will be given the opportunity to revise their manuscript according to the given criteria. However, there is also the possibility that the manuscript will be directly rejected.

2. Peer Review

When the manuscript has passed the desk review stage, it will then be delivered to two reviewers who are experts in the field of the submitted manuscript. The review process will be done within four weeks. Manuscripts that did not successfully pass the desk review process will not proceed to this stage.

3. Reviewer’s Decision

The reviewers will provide the following recommendations:

  • Accepted; means that the manuscript is acceptable for publication;
  • Accepted with minor revisions; means that the manuscript is acceptable for publication once it is revised in response to the reviewers’ concerns;
  • Accepted with major revisions; means that substantive inadequacies in the manuscript, such as data analysis, the main theory used, and rewriting of paragraphs, need to be revised;
  • Rejected; means that the manuscript is not acceptable for publication or the given reviews relate to very basic issues.

The reviewer’s decision will be considered by the Board of Editors to determine the ensuing process of the manuscript.

4. Revision Stage

Once the manuscript has been received with notations of minor or major revisions, it will be returned to the author with a review summary form. For manuscripts accepted with major revisions, authors are allotted four weeks to revise. Whereas for manuscripts accepted with minor revisions, two weeks is allotted for revision.

5. Final Decision

At this stage, the manuscript will be re-evaluated by the Board of Editors to ensure that the author has revised in response to the reviewers’ concerns. In this final decision, the manuscript may still be rejected if the author did not seriously conduct the revisions necessary.

6. Manuscript Editing

Once the manuscript has been deemed acceptable by the Board of Editors, it will undergo a proofreading process to maintain linguistic quality and copyediting to ensure it aligns with the manuscript template.

7. Journal Publishing

At this stage, the final layout of the manuscript will be sent to the author to ensure that the content is in accordance with the author’s writing. At this stage, the author may revise any typographical errors found in the final manuscript. Once confirmation from the author is given, the Editorial Secretary will process the manuscript for online publication on the website as well as print publication.