Peer Review Process

Manuscripts submitted to JBE will undergo a selection and assessment process by the Board of Editors to ensure their accordance with the writing guideline, focus, and scope, and that they are of excellent academic quality. The manuscripts will be reviewed using the double blind peer review method in which case neither authors nor reviewers know each other's identities.

Desk Review. At the desk review stage, manuscripts will be examined to ensure that they have met the writing guideline, focus, and scope with excellent academic quality. If they do not meet the conditions, the author will be given the opportunity to revise their manuscript according to the given criteria. However, there is also the possibility that the manuscript will be directly rejected.

Peer review. When the manuscript has passed the desk review stage, it will then be delivered to two reviewers who are experts in the field of the submitted manuscript. The first initial review takes at least 2 weeks up to 1 month. The review process will take at least 1 month to complete for first round. The review process can pass more than one review rounds. Manuscripts that did not successfully pass the desk review process will not proceed to this stage.

Reviewer's decision. The reviewers will provide the following recommendations:

1. Accepted; means that the manuscript is acceptable for publication
2. Accepted with minor revisions; means that the manuscript is acceptable for publication once it is revised in response to the reviewers' concerns
3. Accepted with major revisions; means that substantive inadequacies in the manuscript, such as data analysis, the main theory used, and rewriting of paragraphs, need to be revised
4. Rejected; means that the manuscript is not acceptable for publication or the given reviews relate to very basic issues

The reviewer's decision will be considered by the Board of Editors to determine the ensuing process of the manuscript.

Revision Stage. Once the manuscript has been received with notations of minor or major revisions, it will be returned to the author with a review summary form. The manuscripts accepted with major revisions, authors are allotted 3 weeks to revise. Whereas for manuscripts accepted with minor revisions, 1 week is allotted for revision. When returning the revised manuscript, the author is required to fill in and attach the review summary form.  

Final decision. At this stage, the manuscript will be re-evaluated by the Board of Editors to ensure that the author has revised in response to the reviewers' concerns. In this final decision, the manuscript may still be rejected if the author did not seriously conduct the revisions necessary.

Proofread. Once the manuscript has been deemed acceptable by the Board of Editors, it will undergo a proofreading process to maintain linguistic quality. Manuscript Proofreading is carried out centrally at institutions recommended by JBE. 

Publication confirmation. At this stage, the final layout of the manuscript will be resent to the author to ensure that the content is in accordance with the author's writing. At this stage, the author may revise any typographical error found in the final manuscript. Once confirmation from the author is given, the Editor will process the manuscript for online publication on the website as well as print publication.