Developmental Peer Review

Our aim at the Journal of Global Higher Education is to publish high-quality manuscripts while also providing support to our community of scholars. One way we do this is through a developmental peer review process. In most peer reviews, submitted manuscripts are reviewed under an evaluative framework, whereby a manuscript is assessed on its quality and recommendations are made as to whether it is strong enough to be considered for publication. In a developmental peer review, a manuscript is not only evaluated for its quality, but is also offered feedback and guidance to the author(s) on how a paper may be improved through revisions. The idea is to support the work as well as provide feedback for authors to learn and grow.

 As part of our support for our community, we have created an option for authors to submit via a developmental review route, which provides an initial review round with suggestions for improving the manuscript as well as the authors’ academic writing. Through this route, once the editor has decided that a manuscript fits within the journal's aims and scope, they will send it to a single reviewer for developmental review. While we do not guarantee eventual acceptance of a manuscript through this process, papers submitted under this path will receive a constructive peer review of the initial draft and consideration for sending out for review of a revised draft that addresses comments and concerns with the initial submission. Authors wishing to go through the developmental review process should indicate this in their cover letter to the editor with their submission.

After developmental review, authors will be given three months to revise and resubmit their manuscript based on the feedback they receive. If the journal does not receive the revised manuscript by this deadline, the manuscript will be removed from publication consideration and authors will have to begin a new submission should they wish to continue pursuing publication of the manuscript. Manuscripts are eligible to undergo developmental review only once.

The developmental route is an academic service that our reviewers offer on a voluntary basis to support fellow scholars. We ask that authors kindly only use this route if they they intend to eventually resubmit their article to the journal. We reserve the right to remove this support mechanism if this offer is misused.