Guidelines for Reviewers

The aim of the review is to provide an expert opinion on the editorial quality of the manuscript and give the author an appropriate feedback.

The aim of the review is to offer the editor’s office an expert opinion on the quality of the manuscript and offer feedback to the author.

The reviewer expresses their opinion on whether:

  • the topic is a valuable contribution towards development in a research area
  • the article is methodologically elaborate and terminologically clear
  • the manuscript is logically structured
  • style and formulations are understandable

In the final evaluation of the manuscript, the reviewer selects one of the options:

  • strongly recommended for publication – accept the manuscript without changes
  • recommended for publication with necessary changes – accept the manuscript with minor rewrites (suggestions for rewrites provided)
  • recommended for publication with reprocessing and re-assessment – accept the manuscript with major rewrites (suggestions for rewrites provided)
  • not recommended for publication – refuse the manuscript (explanation provided)

Good quality reviews can be found here: sample 1, sample 2.

Editorial board has the exclusive right to have a final decision on publishing the manuscript, or suspend / exclude manuscript in any stage of the review process based on generally deductible reasons. However, the authors of manuscripts have no legal claim to the publication of their manuscripts at any stage of the review process.

More on journal publication principles here.

The editor’s office archives the reviews and article texts in individual steps of the review process for at least ten years.

Form for review reports

The review process follows:

  1. The editor confirms the receipt of the manuscript to the author.
  2. Research articles are anonymized as follows: the executive editor enters xxxx instead of the name and affiliation of the author or instead of any mention that would enable recognizing the affiliation, such as the grant title or in formulations such as “in my article (surname, 2002)”.
  3. The anonymized manuscript is sent to the research article editor with a request for appointing two reviewers. Further on, the executive editor addresses the two reviewers and sends them the article. However, if the research article editor considers the manuscript to be thematically or genre-wise inappropriate (e.g., the manuscript is a text of popular science) or it is not at an appropriate level, it is returned to the executive editor who notifies the author of the refusal of the manuscript.
  4. After obtaining the reviews, the executive editor sends them to the author with a request to edit the text according to the reviewers’ suggestions.
  5. After receiving the edited manuscript, the executive editor sends it to the research article editor to check the incorporation of the reviewers’ suggestions. In case the suggestions were not incorporated sufficiently, the research article editor announces it to the executive editor and the cycle repeats. When the research article editor finds the incorporated changes satisfactory, the process continues with instruction point no. 7. In case of a dispute between the author and the research article editor, the executive editor has the final decision, made in accordance with his/her own professional conscience.
  6. The executive editor sends the manuscripts of book reviews and news items directly to the section editor to assess, who in turn announces the decision on publication to the executive editor and possibly inserts minor editing changes.
  7. The executive editor de-anonymizes the final version of the research article manuscript and sends it to the proofreader. The text then awaits listing in the journal issue, which is dependent on the editor-in-chief’s decision. The order of the contributions in the individual sections of the journal is decided by the section editors.
  8. Before publication of the texts in the electronic form of the journal, the executive editor checks the accepted articles for plagiarism and ensures their proofreading.
  9. Before publication of the research article in the electronic form of the journal, the executive editor arranges the written license agreement between the author and the publisher (Faculty of Humanities, Tomas Bata University in Zlín), requesting an exclusive license and securing a CC BY license. The principle is unlimited online access to scientific information that is enabled by the auto-archiving of the articles in open access journals.
  10. The executive editor sends notification to the authors upon publication of a new issue of the journal.
  11. The executive editor securely archives and backs up in two separate repositories any correspondence between the editor’s office and authors and manuscripts in various stages of the editing process.
  12. The executive editor ensures, among others, ongoing communication with the readers and authors of the articles, registering the publications with given databases, issuing the certificates to the reviewers, preparing the calls for the authors, managing work of the graphic designer and webmaster, addressing the foreign authors, indexing of the journal in databases and coordinating the work of language proofreaders.

Research Article Editor

The workflow of the research article editor is as follows:

  1. After receiving the anonymized manuscript, the research article editor approves insertion of the article in the editorial process. He/she does so by filling in the form (Review Sheet for Research Article Editors of SocEd). Further on, the editor agrees with the executive editor’s suggestions of two independent reviewers. When the research article editor considers the manuscript to be thematically or genre-wise inappropriate (e.g., the manuscript is a text of popular science) or it is not at an appropriate level, it is returned it to the executive editor who notifies the author of the refusal of the manuscript by a standard email.
  2. After receiving the contribution with the reviewers’ suggestions incorporated in the text, the research article editor confirms the appropriateness of the author’s changes. If the changes related to the reviewers’ suggestions have not been made, the research article editor notifies the executive editor, and the cycle repeats.

Sociální pedagogika | Social Education journal (SocEd) invites you to respect the publishing recommendations made by the American Psychological Association, which for these purposes has issued Publication Manual (Publication Manual of the APA, 6th edition, 2010). Please read the manual before publishing / reviewing manuscripts for the SocEd.

Book Review and News Items Editor

The workflow of the book review and news items editor is as follows:

  1. After receiving the manuscript, the book review and news items editor approves inclusion of the text in the following journal issue and then announces the decision to the executive editor and possibly makes minor editorial changes.

Notification of the authors / reviewers

An author can publish one individual contribution or two collective contributions in the journal per year. A book written by an editor’s office or editorial board member cannot be reviewed for the journal by another member of the editor’s office or the editorial board.

Information on the authorship of the research article manuscript is considered confidential throughout the review process.

The number of the original research articles and overviews authored or co-authored by someone affiliated with the publishing institution cannot exceed one-third of all research articles and overviews published in the given calendar year.

Conflicts of interest

An original research article or overview is published only after an independent review process, the outcome of which is two reviews. None of the reviewers can be employed by the same institution as the author or one of the co-authors or have by any means a conflict of interest with regard to the reviewed text.

Submissions from editors, employees, or members of the editorial board strictly follows the usual peer-review procedure. None of the reviewers can be employed by the same institution as the author or one of the co-authors or have by any means a conflict of interest with regard to the reviewed text.

The graphical description of the review process of the SocEd is HERE.

More on the journal publication principles can be found HERE.

Current and previous issues can be found on the journal homepage or by clicking HERE.