Peer Review Process

The peer-review process for all NOYAM Journals aims at publishing high quality works by contributing to literature in the research fields of Religious and Theological Studies, Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Our double-blind review process takes about 4 to 12 weeks dependent on the co-operation of authors of submitted manuscripts. Authors would be notified at each stage of the review process.

Outline of the NOYAM Peer Review process

  1. Each submitted paper goes through an initial plagiarism check using the CrossRef’s Similarity Check software powered by iThenticate’s Turnitin. Articles that contain plagiarised content of other published articles would be rejected.
  2.  Articles that pass the plagiarism check go through a blind pre-review process assessing its quality,  accuracy, references (up-to-date, appropriate, sufficient), punctuation, spelling and grammar.
  3. Manuscripts that do not pass the initial blind pre-review stage are sent back to their respective authors to make amends and re-submit where appropriate or rejected.
  4. If a paper passes a pre-review stage it is assigned to a reviewer with expertise relating to the scope of the submitted manuscript for a blind review. (All NOYAM reviewers are officially appointed by our Journals publication team for a particular subject area)
  5. During the blind review process, a reviewer assesses a submitted manuscript, assigns marks and makes comments based on the categories listed below:
    • Originality and creativity
    • Interest of the topic to the readers
    • Significance/usefulness
    • Mastery over subject/ contribution to knowledge
    • Accuracy (Methodology)
    • Comprehensiveness
    • Punctuation, Spelling and Grammar
    • References (up-to-date, appropriate, sufficient)
    • Tables, Charts and Captions
  6. The Reviewer outlines the strengths, weaknesses and other comments to be considered by an author in a review report, provides an overall score and recommends one of the following: Publish as it is, Publish upon minor revisions, Publish upon major revisions or Reject
  7. Once the final report from a reviewer is sent to the Editorial Team, a final decision is made about the manuscript and sent to the author.
  8. Authors of manuscripts that are accepted are expected to make the necessary corrections where appropriate and submit the following.
    • A copy of the revised manuscript
    • A word document outlining point-by-point the corrections they have made according to the reviewer’s comments.