After submission, OJUKWU JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SERVICES’s editors conduct an initial screening of the paper to determine if it is appropriate for review or if it should be desk-rejected. In some cases, editors may suggest revisions before proceeding to the review stage. This initial screening typically takes less than a week. Submissions that pass this screening are assigned to at least two reviewers for double-blind peer review. Based on the reviewers’ feedback, the editors will make their first decision. There are four possible outcomes:
- Accept the submission without revisions
- Accept the submission after minor changes (no further review needed)
- Request revisions and resubmission after significant changes (new review round)
- Decline the submission, meaning it will not be published in OJUKWU JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SERVICES
The time it takes to reach a final decision (acceptance or rejection) depends on factors such as the number of review rounds and the authors’ responsiveness. On average, the process takes between 1 to 2 months from submission to the final decision. The total time for publication also depends on the submission date, the journal’s publication schedule, and adherence to submission guidelines. Accepted submissions are typically published in OJUKWU JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SERVICES within 1-2 months.
Ensuring a Blind Review
To maintain the integrity of the blind peer-review process, it is essential that the identities of the authors and reviewers remain unknown to each other. Authors, editors, and reviewers should take the following steps to ensure anonymity:
- Authors should remove their names from the manuscript, replacing them with “Author” and the publication year in references and footnotes.
- In Microsoft Office documents, author identification should be removed from file properties. This can be done by navigating to: File > Save As > Tools (or Options on a Mac) > Security > Remove personal information from file properties on save > Save.
- In PDFs, authors’ names should be removed from the document’s properties, which can be found under File in Adobe Acrobat’s main menu.
These steps are crucial to maintaining the blind review process for submissions.