Peer Review and Editorial Procedure
Purpose of Peer Review
Peer review supports the accuracy, clarity, originality, and technical quality of articles published in ASTESJ. Reviewers provide independent expert assessment of manuscripts and help editors decide whether a submission is suitable for revision, acceptance, or rejection.
ASTESJ requires external peer review for all primary research articles. A manuscript that passes editorial screening is normally sent to at least two independent external reviewers before any acceptance decision. Editorial office staff coordinate technical checks and correspondence, but these tasks do not replace scientific peer review.
Review Workflow
- Technical check: The Editorial Office checks file completeness, metadata, formatting, ethics declarations, authorship details, conflict-of-interest statements, and submission requirements.
- Scope and editorial check: The Editor-in-Chief, an assigned academic editor, or another authorized editor checks whether the manuscript fits the journal scope and is suitable for peer review.
- Reviewer invitation: The Editorial Office invites independent external reviewers with relevant expertise and no declared conflict of interest.
- Review reports: Reviewers assess the manuscript and submit confidential reports with comments and recommendations.
- Revision: Authors may be asked to revise the manuscript and respond point by point to reviewer and editor comments.
- Final assessment: The academic editor evaluates reviewer reports, revisions, ethical compliance, and technical quality before making or recommending a decision.
- Production: Accepted manuscripts move to copy-editing, proofreading, final correction, and online publication.
Editorial Decisions
Reviewers recommend an editorial outcome, but reviewers do not make final publication decisions. Final decisions are made by authorized academic editors according to journal scope, reviewer reports, author responses, ethical compliance, and technical quality.
For special issue manuscripts, Guest Editors may advise on technical fit and reviewer selection, but special issue articles follow the same external peer-review and conflict-of-interest requirements as regular submissions. Manuscripts submitted by a Guest Editor or related author must be handled by an independent editor.
Reviewer Profile and Eligibility
Reviewer Eligibility
ASTESJ invites reviewers who have relevant subject expertise, a recognized academic or professional affiliation, and no conflict of interest with the manuscript. Reviewers should have a publication record or professional experience that matches the manuscript topic.
- No conflict of interest with any author, institution, funder, or manuscript topic.
- Not from the same institution as any author.
- No recent co-authorship, active collaboration, direct supervision, or close professional relationship with any author.
- Relevant expertise in the manuscript topic, method, data type, application area, or discipline.
- Recognized academic, research, clinical, industrial, or professional affiliation.
- Ability to complete the review within the requested timeline.
- Ability to provide a clear, constructive, and evidence-based report.
Reviewer Independence
ASTESJ invites reviewers who can assess a manuscript independently and objectively. Reviewers must not be part of the journal office, must not work at the same institution as any author, and must not have a recent collaboration, co-authorship, financial interest, personal relationship, academic rivalry, or other conflict that could affect their judgment.
Editorial Board Members and Guest Editors may review manuscripts only when they meet the same independence requirements as other reviewers. Their editorial role does not replace the need for independent external peer review.
Reviewer Responsibilities
Core Responsibilities
- Accept review invitations only when the manuscript falls within your area of expertise.
- Declare any real or perceived conflict of interest before accepting the review.
- Decline the invitation if a conflict prevents fair assessment.
- Complete the review on time or request an extension as early as possible.
- Assess originality, technical soundness, methods, data, results, conclusions, references, and ethical compliance.
- Identify possible plagiarism, duplicate publication, data concerns, image concerns, citation manipulation, or undisclosed conflicts.
- Keep manuscript content, data, reviewer comments, and editorial correspondence confidential.
- Provide specific, constructive comments that help editors and authors understand the strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript.
- Use a professional, objective, and respectful tone. Personal remarks are not acceptable.
Reviewers may consult the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers for additional guidance.
Conflicts of Interest
Reviewers must declare any potential conflict of interest before accepting a review. If there is uncertainty about whether a relationship or situation is a conflict, the reviewer should contact the Editorial Office for guidance before accepting the invitation.
Examples of Possible Conflicts
- Working at the same institution as any author.
- Recent co-authorship, active collaboration, joint grant activity, or direct academic relationship with any author.
- Supervisor, student, mentor, close colleague, close personal relationship, rivalry, or direct competition with any author.
- Financial benefit or loss that could result from publication or rejection of the manuscript.
- Personal, political, religious, ideological, academic, intellectual, or commercial interests that could bias judgment.
- Prior involvement in the manuscript, dataset, project, funding review, or related confidential assessment.
Expected Action
- Disclose any real or perceived conflict to the Editorial Office.
- Decline the review if the conflict prevents independent assessment.
- Do not use confidential information from the review for personal, professional, financial, or competitive advantage.
Confidentiality and Anonymity
Manuscripts under review are confidential documents. Reviewers must not share the manuscript, abstract, figures, data, supplementary files, review invitation, review report, or editorial correspondence with anyone unless the Editorial Office gives written permission.
ASTESJ applies double-blind peer review where practical. Reviewers should not reveal their identity to authors in comments, file metadata, document properties, uploaded files, or annotations.
If a reviewer wants a student, colleague, trainee, or assistant to contribute to the review, the reviewer must obtain permission from the Editorial Office before sharing any manuscript material. Any approved contributor must follow the same confidentiality and conflict-of-interest requirements.
Review reports are confidential unless optional open peer review is applied and the reviewer gives explicit permission for disclosure.
Use of AI Tools by Reviewers
Reviewers must protect manuscript confidentiality when using any software or AI-assisted tool. Manuscripts, figures, tables, data, code, supplementary files, review reports, and confidential editorial correspondence must not be uploaded to public or third-party AI tools unless ASTESJ has provided explicit permission and confidentiality is protected.
AI tools cannot replace expert reviewer judgment. Reviewers remain fully responsible for the accuracy, fairness, confidentiality, and integrity of the review report.
Detailed requirements are provided on the ASTESJ AI Policy page.
Review Report
Assessment Criteria
Reviewers should assess the manuscript as a complete scholarly work and comment on both technical quality and reporting quality.
- Scope fit: Does the manuscript fit the ASTESJ aims and scope?
- Originality: Does the manuscript provide a clear contribution beyond existing literature?
- Method: Are the methods, models, experiments, simulations, data sources, or analysis procedures clear and appropriate?
- Results: Are results presented clearly and supported by the data?
- Conclusions: Do the conclusions follow from the results and limitations?
- Ethics: Are ethics approval, consent, trial registration, animal research approval, data handling, or other required statements present where applicable?
- References: Are key references included, relevant, and accurately used?
- Figures and tables: Are visual materials clear, necessary, and consistent with the text?
- Language and clarity: Is the manuscript clear enough for technical assessment?
Overall Recommendation
Reviewers should provide one overall recommendation and explain the reason for that recommendation in the report. The final decision is made by the academic editor.
- Accept: The manuscript is suitable for publication without technical revision.
- Minor revision: The manuscript needs limited clarification, correction, or presentation improvement.
- Major revision: The manuscript needs substantial technical, methodological, analytical, or reporting revision before further assessment.
- Reject and encourage resubmission: The current manuscript is not suitable, but a substantially revised new submission may be considered.
- Reject: The manuscript has serious technical, ethical, originality, scope, or reporting problems and is not suitable for ASTESJ.
Review Report Structure
A useful review report gives editors a clear basis for decision-making and gives authors specific guidance for revision.
- Brief summary: One short paragraph summarizing the manuscript aim, main contribution, and overall assessment.
- Major comments: Main technical issues related to originality, method, data, analysis, validation, interpretation, limitations, ethics, or scope.
- Specific comments: Numbered comments referring to sections, equations, tables, figures, line numbers, references, or supplementary files.
- Recommendation: A clear recommendation with a short explanation.
- Confidential comments to editor: Any ethical concern, suspected misconduct, conflict issue, or sensitive information that should not be sent directly to authors.
Reviewers should focus on scientific and technical content. Minor spelling, formatting, and copy-editing issues may be noted briefly, but they should not replace technical assessment.
Citation Ethics
Reviewers may recommend additional references only when those references clearly improve the manuscript. Reviewers must not request citation of their own work, colleagues' work, ASTESJ articles, or any other articles for the purpose of increasing citation counts.
If key references are missing, reviewers should explain why the references are relevant to the manuscript's methods, results, context, or claims.
Timely Review Reports
Reviewers should accept or decline invitations promptly. If more time is needed, reviewers should request an extension before the deadline. If a reviewer can no longer complete the review, the reviewer should notify the Editorial Office as soon as possible.
Reviewer Board
Term and Membership
The Reviewer Board is a group of qualified researchers and professionals who regularly support ASTESJ peer review. Reviewer Board members are reviewers, not editorial decision-makers. They do not replace the Editorial Board and do not make acceptance or rejection decisions.
- Initial appointment is two years.
- Membership may be renewed, paused, or ended after the term.
- Members must continue to meet reviewer eligibility and conflict-of-interest requirements.
- Public listing on the Reviewer Directory is for service recognition only.
Benefits and Recognition
ASTESJ recognizes reviewer service while keeping peer review independent from editorial decisions and author privileges. Recognition does not influence manuscript acceptance, peer-review outcomes, publication fees, or editorial handling.
- Reviewer certificate for completed and approved review reports.
- Annual acknowledgment of reviewers where appropriate.
- A reviewer voucher of 15 USD is issued for each completed and approved review report. The vouchers may be used only toward the article processing charge of an accepted ASTESJ publication and become usable after the reviewer has completed at least five approved reviews.
- Public listing in the Reviewer Directory for approved Reviewer Board members.
- Recognition through the Recognition Central for Peers page where applicable.
- Eligibility to propose a special issue through the Special Issue Proposal Application, subject to editorial approval and conflict-of-interest checks.
- Ability to record reviewing activity through recognized reviewer-profile services, such as Web of Science Reviewer Recognition or ORCID-compatible services, where available.
Invitation to Join ASTESJ Volunteer Reviewer Board
Researchers and professionals interested in reviewing for ASTESJ may register their contact details, institutional affiliation, short CV, ORCID where available, subject areas, and five to six expertise keywords through the reviewer application page: Apply as Reviewer.
The Editorial Office reviews applications and may contact approved applicants when a manuscript matches their expertise. Approval as a reviewer does not guarantee review invitations and does not provide editorial decision authority.
Prospective reviewers may consult peer-review training resources such as the Web of Science Reviewer Recognition Services and COPE reviewer guidance.
Ethical Concerns and Reviewer Misconduct
Reviewers should report suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabricated or falsified data, manipulated images, unethical research, missing consent, missing trial registration, undisclosed conflicts, citation manipulation, or peer-review manipulation through confidential comments to the editor.
Reviewer misconduct includes breach of confidentiality, undisclosed conflict of interest, use of manuscript content for personal advantage, coercive citation requests, hostile or discriminatory comments, review delegation without permission, or submission of a false or AI-generated review without expert verification.
ASTESJ may remove reviewers from the reviewer database or Reviewer Board if serious or repeated misconduct is confirmed.
Editorial Contact
Reviewer questions, conflict-of-interest declarations, deadline extension requests, and ethics concerns may be sent to the Editorial Office at m-editor@astesj.com. General contact information is available on the Contact ASTESJ page.