Peer-Review Process

In order to sustain the peer review system, authors have an obligation to participate in peer review process to evaluate manuscripts from others.  When appropriate, authors are obliged to provide retractions and/or corrections of errors to the editors and the Publisher.  All papers submitted to IER journal will be peer reviewed for at least one round. IER journal adopts a double-blinded review policy: authors are blind to reviewers, but reviewers are not blind to authors. The peer review process is conducted in the online manuscript submission and peer-review system. After a manuscript is submitted to the online system, the system immediately notifies the editorial office. After passing an initial quality check by the editorial office, the manuscript will be assigned to two or more reviewers.  After receiving reviewers’ comments, the editorial team member makes a decision. Because reviewers sometimes do not agree with each other, the final decision sent to the author may not exactly reflect recommendations by any of the reviewers.

The decision after each round of peer review may be one of the following:

1. Accept without any further changes.
2. Manuscript needs minor revision. The revised manuscript may or may not be sent to the reviewers for another round of comments.
3. Decline with re-submission encouraged. Major changes are necessary for resubmission. The revised manuscript will be peer reviewed for another round. Typically, it will be sent to the original reviewers. manuscript with major revisions may or may not be rejected at the end.
   
4. Decline without encouraging re-submission. The manuscript is rejected for publication by IER.