Peer Review Process

PUBLICATION & PEER REVIEW PROCESS

1. Initial Submission and Technical Pre-Check (Triage)

  • 1.1. Technical Screening: Upon submission through JMI's online portal, the Editorial Office conducts an initial technical and ethics pre-check. Manuscripts are assessed for baseline formatting, legibility, and adherence to submission limits (including a structured abstract of maximum 200 words and 3 to 10 keywords).
  • 1.2. Metadata Validation: The Responsible Corresponding Author (RCA) must provide a valid ORCID iD at submission to ensure accurate digital attribution.
  • 1.3. Plagiarism Detection: All manuscripts are screened for text overlap and self-plagiarism using industry-standard tools (iThenticate or Crossref Similarity Check).
  • 1.4. Advanced Integrity Checks: JMI utilizes advanced integrity screening, including the AI-powered "Ethicality" system, to detect anomalies such as paper mill activity, fabricated metadata, or suspicious referencing patterns.
  • SDG Alignment (SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions): Enforcing automated screening and metadata validation (ORCID) at triage blocks peer-review fraud and paper mill submissions. This ensures that JMI remains a clean, reliable, and trustworthy database of evidence-based governance strategies.

2. Editorial Pre-Check (Triage)

  • 2.1. Academic Assignment: Submissions passing technical screening are assigned to an academic editor who evaluates the paper's transdisciplinary scope fit, theoretical significance, and methodological soundness.
  • 2.2. Desk Rejection: Manuscripts that are significantly flawed, out of scope, or of insufficient scholarly quality may be desk-rejected by the Academic Editor at this stage, with a brief, professional justification sent to the authors.
  • SDG Alignment (SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production): Decisive desk rejections prevent "review inflation." By filtering out-of-scope papers early, JMI prevents wasting the valuable professional time and cognitive resources of volunteer academic reviewers.

3. Double-Anonymized (Double-Blind) Peer Review

  • 3.1. Absolute Anonymity: JMI utilizes a strict double-anonymized review process. The identities of the authors are concealed from the reviewers, and the reviewers’ identities remain hidden from the authors throughout the evaluation.
  • 3.2. Expert Selection & Identity Verification (COPE/Scopus Alignment): The Academic Editor invites a minimum of two independent subject-matter experts. To eliminate peer-review manipulation, JMI verifies all reviewers' credentials, requiring them to register with institutional email addresses or linked ORCID profiles, and cross-references their publishing histories prior to assignment.
  • 3.3. Reviewer Turnaround Timelines: Reviewers are expected to provide objective, constructive, and evidence-based feedback within JMI’s standardized turnaround windows: typically, 7–14 days for original submissions and 3 days for revised manuscripts.
  • SDG Alignment (SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities): Double-blind anonymity removes unconscious geographical, institutional, and socio-economic biases. This ensures that management insights submitted by authors in low- and middle-income countries are evaluated strictly on academic merit, promoting global equity in scientific publishing.

4. Editorial Decision-Making & The Double-Decision Policy

  • 4.1. Decision Authority: The Academic Editor holds the final authority for all editorial decisions, guided by the scientific merit of the paper and the quality of the peer-review reports.
  • 4.2. Decision Categories: Decisions are classified as
    1. Accept in Current Form: The manuscript is ready for production.
    2. Minor Revision: The paper is accepted contingent upon small, specific edits.
    3. Major Revision (Reconsider): The paper requires extensive restructuring and will undergo a second round of review.
    4. Reject and Encourage Resubmission: The study is currently insufficient but shows potential for a future, redesigned submission.
    5. Reject and Decline Resubmission: The work is fundamentally flawed or fails to meet the journal's standards.
  • 4.3. Double-Decision Policy (COPE Alignment): If an academic editor recommends accepting a manuscript despite a reviewer's explicit recommendation for rejection, JMI's "double decision" policy is activated. The editor must provide a clear written justification, and a second independent opinion is mandated from the editor-in-chief or an editorial board member before a final decision is issued.
  • SDG Alignment (SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions): The double-decision guardrail prevents arbitrary editorial bias, guaranteeing that final acceptance is balanced, transparent, and ethically sound.

5. The Revision Process

  • 5.1. Submission Requirements: When revisions are requested, authors must provide a revised manuscript (with changes highlighted or tracked) alongside a detailed point-by-point response explaining how each reviewer's and editor's comment was addressed.
  • 5.2. Revision Timelines: Authors are given strict, predictable revision windows to maintain scholarly momentum: 5 days for minor revisions and 10–14 days for major revisions (extensions are available upon reasonable request).
  • SDG Alignment (SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth): Structured, realistic revision timelines and flexible extension policies protect the work-life balance of academic researchers, preventing burnout and supporting sustainable professional labor practices.

6. Post-Acceptance, Production, and Open Access Release

  • 6.1. Technical Production: Upon formal acceptance, the manuscript enters the production phase, undergoing professional copy-editing, English language refinement, and formatting checks.
  • 6.2. JATS XML Conversion (Scopus Alignment): To ensure high-fidelity indexing, discoverability, and permanent citation tracking, files are converted into machine-readable JATS XML format alongside high-quality PDFs.
  • 6.3. Proofreading and Immediate CC BY 4.0 Release: Authors are given a final opportunity to review proofs. Once approved, the article is assigned a unique, persistent Crossref DOI and is immediately and permanently published on the journal's website under a CC BY 4.0 license.
  • SDG Alignment (SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals): Immediate open access under CC BY 4.0, combined with global machine-readable metadata standards (JATS XML and persistent DOIs), integrates JMI with international libraries, academic databases, and policymaking networks, fostering seamless cross-border research partnerships.

7. Artificial Intelligence (AI) Guardrails in Peer Review

  • 7.1. Confidentiality Upload Ban (COPE Alignment): Peer reviewers and handling editors are strictly prohibited from uploading submitted manuscripts, abstracts, figures, or metadata into public generative AI tools (such as ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude). Public LLMs retain user inputs to train future models, meaning uploading manuscripts violates authors' intellectual property rights and compromises review confidentiality.
  • 7.2. Acceptable AI Reviewer Use: Reviewers may use AI tools only to assist with improving the written quality of their own review reports (e.g., spelling and grammar checks), and this use must be transparently disclosed to the handling editor.
  • 7.3. Human-in-the-Loop Principle: While JMI employs automated triage systems, no manuscript is ever desk-rejected or sanctioned solely based on an automated tool. All flagged anomalies must be manually investigated and validated by a human editor.
  • SDG Alignment (SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure): Protecting authors' proprietary findings from unauthorized AI data training ensures that early-stage organizational and strategy innovations are safe from intellectual theft, encouraging authors to share pioneering research.

8. Multi-Tiered Complaints, Appeals, and Conflict Resolution (COPE Alignment)

  • 8.1. Right to Appeal: Authors have a formal right to appeal a rejection within three months of the decision date by submitting a detailed, objective justification to the Editorial Office.
  • 8.2. Independent Evaluation: Appeals are forwarded to an independent academic editor not involved in the original workflow for a fresh evaluation. This independent editor delivers a recommendation to the editor-in-chief.
  • 8.3. Multi-Tiered Independent Escalation Path: If the author remains dissatisfied with the internal decision validated by the Editor-in-Chief, the appeal is escalated beyond the terminal authority of the Editor-in-Chief (aligning JMI with COPE Core Practices). The issue is referred to an independent Editorial Advisory Board, an external independent ombudsperson, or the publisher’s institutional ethics board for an impartial, final resolution.

SDG Alignment (SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions): Replacing single-editor terminal authority with a democratic, multi-tiered independent appeals pathway establishes administrative justice and procedural fairness, cementing absolute trust in JMI's governance.