Peer Review Process

All manuscripts submitted to Educatum: Journal of Education Studies undergo an initial editorial assessment and a rigorous double-blind peer-review process to evaluate their originality, scholarly contribution, methodological or conceptual quality, ethical compliance, and relevance to educational research, policy, and practice.

Initial Editorial Assessment

Upon submission, each manuscript is evaluated by the Editorial Team to determine whether it meets the journal's Focus and Scope, Author Guidelines, manuscript preparation requirements, ethical standards, and basic academic quality criteria.

The initial editorial assessment includes evaluation of:

  • alignment with the journal's focus and scope;

  • originality and potential scholarly contribution;

  • clarity of research objectives, questions, or conceptual arguments;

  • appropriateness of research methods or conceptual approaches;

  • ethical compliance and research integrity;

  • similarity screening and originality assessment; and

  • compliance with journal formatting and submission requirements.

Manuscripts that do not meet the journal's minimum requirements may be returned to authors for improvement or rejected without external review. Manuscripts that successfully pass the editorial assessment proceed to the external peer-review stage.

Double-Blind Peer Review

Educatum applies a double-blind peer-review process, in which the identities of authors and reviewers are concealed from each other throughout the evaluation process.

This review system is implemented to ensure objective, impartial, independent, and academically rigorous assessment of submitted manuscripts.

Selection of Independent Reviewers

Each manuscript that proceeds to external review is evaluated by at least two independent reviewers with relevant expertise in the subject area of the submitted manuscript.

Reviewers are selected based on their academic expertise, research experience, publication record, and familiarity with the topic or methodology of the manuscript.

Editors ensure that selected reviewers have no conflicts of interest that may affect the fairness and objectivity of the evaluation process.

Peer Review Criteria

Reviewers evaluate manuscripts based on the following criteria:

  • originality, novelty, and scholarly significance;

  • relevance to the journal's focus and scope;

  • clarity and significance of research objectives or scholarly arguments;

  • appropriateness and rigor of methodology or conceptual framework;

  • quality, validity, and reliability of data analysis and interpretation;

  • logical consistency between findings, discussion, and conclusions;

  • adequacy and relevance of scholarly references;

  • clarity, structure, and academic presentation;

  • ethical compliance and research integrity; and

  • theoretical, practical, or policy implications for educational development.

For review articles and conceptual papers, reviewers assess the quality of literature analysis, theoretical foundation, conceptual development, originality of synthesis, and contribution to educational scholarship.

Reviewers are expected to provide objective, constructive, evidence-based, and sufficiently detailed comments that assist editors in making decisions and help authors improve the academic quality of their manuscripts.

Conflict of Interest

Reviewers must disclose any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest that may affect their impartiality.

Reviewers should decline assignments when personal, professional, financial, institutional, collaborative, competitive, or other relationships may reasonably compromise the objectivity of their evaluation.

Editors are responsible for selecting qualified reviewers and maintaining the independence, confidentiality, and integrity of the peer-review process.

Editorial Decision

Based on reviewers' evaluations, editorial assessment, and the overall quality of the manuscript, the Editor-in-Chief or handling editor may make one of the following decisions:

  • Accept
  • Minor Revision
  • Major Revision
  • Reject

Authors receiving a revision decision are expected to respond carefully to reviewers' and editors' comments and submit a revised manuscript together with a detailed response explaining the revisions made.

Submission of a revised manuscript does not guarantee acceptance. Revised manuscripts may be evaluated by the original reviewers or additional reviewers when necessary.

The final decision regarding publication is made by the Editor-in-Chief based on scholarly merit, reviewer recommendations, quality of revisions, ethical compliance, and conformity with journal policies.

Confidentiality

All submitted manuscripts, reviewer reports, editorial correspondence, and related materials are treated as confidential documents.

Editors, reviewers, and editorial staff must not disclose, distribute, copy, discuss, or use unpublished information obtained during the review process for personal, academic, professional, financial, or commercial purposes.

Reviewer identities remain confidential according to Educatum's double-blind peer-review policy.

Research Integrity and Ethical Review

Reviewers should notify editors when they identify potential ethical concerns, including plagiarism, duplicate publication, inappropriate authorship, citation manipulation, fabricated or falsified data, unethical research practices, undisclosed conflicts of interest, or other forms of publication misconduct.

The peer-review process follows Educatum's Publication Ethics, Plagiarism Policy, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Policy, and is guided by the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and internationally recognized standards of responsible scholarly publishing.

Editorial decisions are made independently based on academic quality, relevance, methodological or conceptual rigor, ethical compliance, and scholarly contribution, regardless of authors' nationality, institutional affiliation, gender, religious belief, political perspective, financial status, or other characteristics unrelated to research quality.