Appealing a decision
Authors may appeal a rejection once, from their manuscript tracker, within 30 days of the decision, giving the grounds. An editor who took no part in the original decision considers it and gives reasons for the outcome.
The time for an appeal runs from the day the decision was sent to you. An appeal is a request to look again at a decision that may have gone wrong. It is not a second round of review, and it is not a way of submitting a different version of the paper.
While an appeal is pending, please do not submit the paper to another journal. If you decide to send it elsewhere instead, please tell the editors, and the appeal will be closed.
Grounds for an appeal
An appeal is most likely to succeed when it shows that something specific went wrong. Good grounds include:
- a factual error in the decision or in a review on which the decision relied;
- a clear misreading of the paper, such as criticism of an argument the paper does not make;
- a conflict of interest on the part of a reviewer or editor that was not declared;
- a failure to follow the journal’s published procedure;
- evidence of bias or unfair treatment.
Disagreement with a reviewer’s opinion, or with the editors’ view of the paper’s quality or fit with the journal, is not on its own a ground for appeal. Please set out your grounds clearly and courteously, point to the passages of the paper and of the reviews that you rely on, and keep to the facts. New material that was not in the paper cannot be considered on appeal.
How an appeal is decided
The appeal is given to an editor who took no part in the original decision and has no conflict of interest in the paper. That editor reads the paper, the reviews, the decision and your grounds, and may ask for a further independent review where it would help.
There are two possible outcomes. The original decision may be upheld, in which case it stands. Or the decision may be reconsidered, in which case the paper returns to the stage at which it was declined and continues from there; this does not mean that it will be accepted. Either way, you receive the outcome in writing, with reasons, and it is recorded on your manuscript. Each decision can be appealed only once, and the outcome of the appeal is final.
Complaints
Anyone may complain about the Journal’s processes, an article or the conduct of an editor or reviewer. We acknowledge each complaint and pass it to someone who was not involved in the matter. Every complaint is closed with a written outcome. Concerns about misconduct are handled under our ethics policy, which follows the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
A complaint may concern, for example, a delay or failure to reply, the way a manuscript was handled, the conduct of an editor, reviewer or author, a published article, or the journal’s policies themselves. Authors, reviewers, readers and members of the public may all complain. A complaint about an editorial decision on your own manuscript should normally be made as an appeal, as described above.
How a complaint is handled
- You receive an acknowledgement by email, with a reference number for the complaint.
- The Editor-in-Chief passes the complaint to an editor who was not involved in the matter. If the complaint concerns the Editor-in-Chief, you may send it instead to Centre for Legal Research and Studies, which owns the journal.
- That person looks into it. They may ask you for more information, and they may ask the people concerned for their account. Anyone complained about is told what has been said and is given a fair chance to respond.
- The complaint is closed with a written reply to you, saying whether it is upheld, partly upheld or not upheld, with the reasons and any action the journal has taken or will take.
Complaints are dealt with in confidence, and the information you give is used only to deal with the complaint. Making a complaint never affects the handling of any manuscript of yours. The journal keeps a record of every complaint and its outcome, and uses what it learns to improve how it works.
Concerns about published work
If you believe that a published article contains a serious error, or that it involves plagiarism, fabricated sources, an undisclosed conflict of interest or another breach of publication ethics, please give the article’s title or DOI and the evidence for your concern. The editors handle such concerns under the Publication ethics policy. The outcome may be a correction, an expression of concern or a retraction, published with a notice linked to the article.
If you are an author of the article and have found an error in it yourself, please report it from your manuscript tracker instead.
If you are not satisfied
If a complaint about the Journal’s handling of publication ethics is not resolved, you may write to Centre for Legal Research and Studies, which owns the journal. The University considers it against the COPE guidance that the Journal follows, and it can ask someone outside the Editorial Board to review how the complaint was handled.