Demographic Research

Information for Scientific Review Board Members

The review process for submissions to Demographic Research is designed to ensure high quality and rapid turn-around. Quality will be ensured by peer reviews similar to those employed by other academic journals. Rapid turn-around will be accomplished through an expedited review system that will use Internet communication techniques and streamlined procedures.

Members of the Scientific Review Board are welcome to submit articles to the journal and to encourage other authors to submit articles to the journal. All articles are subject to the same review process.

The Review Process

Persons who agree to review a submission can access the material online at srb.demographic-research.org. They will receive a reminder e-mail a few days before the due date. If a reviewer needs more time, then an extension can be granted. All votes and comments will have equal weight and will be sent to the editor responsible for the submission.

The Review Website

Reviews will be posted to a special site on the World Wide Web accessible only to members of the Scientific Review Board. A simple form will enable reviewers to select one of three options: "Accept as is", "Revise and resubmit" or "Reject".

Each of these three options leads to a form with space for any comments the reviewer wishes to make to the author(s) as well as space for any comments to the Editor.

When the "Reject" option is selected, two check-box items will appear in addition to the comment spaces. The check-box items have been included in order to give reviewers a quick way to indicate their reason(s) for rejection, e.g., "English language presentation requires substantial editing", "Material requires substantive changes".

Please note that different criteria may apply to submissions of analytical material, descriptive findings, and reflexions.

After the review has closed and the editor has seen all votes and comments, a support staff member will forward all votes and comments to the corresponding author without the names of the reviewers. Comments to the Editor will be private (not posted on the SRB website for general viewing), and the editor will have access to all reviewers’ names.

The Decision Process

• If two or more reviewers recommend "Accept as is" and no reviewer recommends against immediate publication or requires revisions to be made, the article will generally be published after being cleared by the editor.

• If two of more reviewers give the article a combination of votes containing only the "Accept as is" or "Revise and resubmit" options, and no reviewer votes to "Reject" the article, then the author(s) of the submission will be encouraged to make revisions and resubmit their work. However, if the number of "accept as is" is at least double that of the "revise and resubmit" votes, the Editor will be called upon to adjudicate. The author(s) will be given the opportunity to respond to the Review Board regarding the revisions recommended and the changes they have made in a "reply to reviewers" letter, which will be distributed by the office staff. The second review will be open only to those reviewers who participated in the first review. Should there be need for a third round of review, this will also be limited to those SRB members who took part in the first or second review. If after the third review the reviewers are still not satisfied with the paper, the article will be sent to the Editor for final adjudication.

• If two or more reviewers are in favour of publication ("Accept as is" or "Revise and resubmit") and one (or more) is against publication ("Reject"), and the number of recommendations in favour of publication exceeds the number of recommendations against publication, the Editor will adjudicate and determine further steps to be taken.

There are three adjudication possibilities - (1) the submission is accepted and will be published, (2) the submission needs revision before it can be published, or (3) the submission is rejected. If the Editor determines that revisions must be made before the submission can be published, he will also specify what steps must be taken before publication. This may entail sending the submission only to those SRB members who participated in the original review(s), or sending it back to the Editor for final approval. The Editor, at his own discretion, may make another decision.

Author(s) of a rejected submission also have the option to rework their paper and resubmit it to Demographic Research. It will then be treated as a new submission. Authors may also decide to withdraw their submission from the review process in order to submit it to the journal as a new submission, or to submit it elsewhere.

At the end of each review cycle, the reviewers who voted on a submission will receive information about the final vote tally for that cycle. They will also receive a copy of all the comments made in the "Comments to Author" box and information about any check-box comments. Reviewer names will not be released, not even to other reviewers, unless reviewers have explicitly expressed their wish to have their names made public.

Reflexions

Demographic Research also publishes reflexions on published articles and other Demographic Research topics. Reflexions are usually brief contributions that critically assess various aspects of the content published in our journal or elsewhere. They may also focus on currently-discussed or "hot topic" Demographic Research findings, data, theory, tools, methods, or publications. Authors may submit reflexions in either written format (text) or multimedia format (video or sound-clip). The review process for reflexions is similar to that used for other articles. In the case of a reflexion commenting on a particular article in Demographic Research, reviewers will consist of (1) the original reviewer pool for the article eliciting the commentary and (2) the author(s) of that article.

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