Reviewer Guidelines

Independent, reasoned assessment by specialists

A reviewer report should separate material scientific concerns from stylistic preferences and justify recommendations.

These guidelines govern invitation, acceptance, assessment, recommendation, and later conduct. Reviewers advise the editor through an independent report; they do not decide, act as co-authors, or use the manuscript for personal benefit.

Acceptance confirms expertise, time, confidentiality, and absence of conflict. Any later impediment is reported immediately so reassignment does not cause delay.

Principles

Reviewers must assess manuscripts competently, objectively, respectfully, independently, and confidentially. They should accept only work for which they have sufficient expertise and time.

Report

Summarize the contribution without revealing identity.

Assess relevance to higher education, originality, theoretical framework, and methods.

Check coherence among results, discussion, and conclusions.

Identify limitations, ethical issues, and essential omitted references.

Separate author comments from confidential comments to the editor.

Avoid offensive language and citation demands intended for personal benefit.

Conflicts and confidentiality

Every conflict must be disclosed before acceptance. The manuscript may not be shared, used, or uploaded to external artificial intelligence tools. Suspected misconduct should be reported to the editor without independent investigation.

Recommendation

The recommendation must be supported by the report. The editor makes the final decision.

Before accepting

The invitation is assessed for topic, method, deadline, and conflicts. The reviewer responds promptly, declares relevant relationships, and suggests alternatives only without exposing confidential information. Acceptance entails delivering an independent report within the agreed period.

Lack of expertise in a central area, recent collaboration with possible authors, direct competition, hierarchical relationships, or financial interests require consultation or decline. Theoretical disagreement alone is not a conflict but must be managed objectively.

Report content

The report begins with a brief assessment of the contribution and separates major from minor comments. Each criticism states the problem, why it matters, and what evidence or correction is needed. Authors are not required to adopt the reviewer’s perspective, and irrelevant citations are not requested.

Review covers the question, novelty, higher education context, design, sample, instruments, analysis, presentation of results, interpretation, limitations, ethics, data, and conclusions. Reviewers identify unsupported causal claims and verify that results and conclusions address the objective.

Conduct and submission

Language must be professional and free of personal remarks. Suspected plagiarism, implausible data, manipulation, or consent problems are reported confidentially to the editor with concrete grounds. Reviewers do not contact authors or attempt to discover their identity.

The recommendation must match the report. After submission, reviewers answer reasonable clarifications and disclose any new conflict. They do not retain or reuse manuscripts, data, or ideas and do not delegate review or upload files to external AI tools.

Preparing and submitting a peer review

Respond to the invitation and disclose conflicts before opening complete files.

Read the manuscript, supplements, criteria, and review form.

Summarize the contribution and assess relevance to higher education before detailing concerns.

Separate major, minor, and confidential comments to the editor.

Support every criticism and propose verifiable corrections without imposing preferences.

Choose a recommendation consistent with the report and submit on time.

Delete files and maintain confidentiality after completion.

Substantiating the review

Invitation, acceptance, and conflict disclosure in OJS.

A dated complete report and recommendation.

Records of timeliness and report quality.

Communications about ethics concerns or clarifications.

Maintaining review quality

The editor assesses usefulness, respect, depth, expertise, and timeliness. Coercive self-citation, offensive language, disclosure, unauthorized AI use, or superficial reports may lead to warning or removal from the reviewer database.

Discipline-specific instructions for substantive reviews

Comments should assess whether a study explains a higher education phenomenon, uses pertinent literature and appropriate evidence, and distinguishes observed findings from unsupported inference. Educational technology research calls for examination of effects and bias; curriculum work of indicator validity; student pathway studies of privacy and contextual variables; and policy studies of data sources and analytical levels.

Recommendations should distinguish major scholarly problems from minor presentational changes. Reviewers must not request citations to themselves, the journal or a publisher to boost indicators, and null findings are not penalized where methods are sound.

Substantive review and evidentiary reasoning

The report distinguishes critical validity threats, remediable issues and optional suggestions. Each major concern identifies the affected component and explains its significance for interpretation or contribution. Citation requests must answer an identifiable scholarly need, not promote a reviewer’s work. The recommendation must correspond to the report’s reasoning and does not replace the editor’s decision.

Protection of participants and sound inference

Reviewers of university teaching, dropout, well-being or management studies must not assume that satisfaction measures learning or that correlation establishes causality. They assess construct–measure alignment, selection biases, personal-data safeguards and inference limits; qualitative studies are judged through congruence, reflexivity and transparency rather than inappropriate experimental standards.