Peer Review Process

Every research article, review article and case study published in the International Journal of Business, Arts and Scientific Study (IJBASS) has undergone double-blind peer review by at least two independent expert reviewers. Under double-blind review, the identities of the authors are concealed from the reviewers, and the identities of the reviewers are concealed from the authors, throughout the process and after publication.

Editorials, letters to the editor and book reviews are assessed by the editorial board but are not sent for external peer review. The type of review applied to each article is stated on the article's landing page.

1. Initial Editorial Screening

On receipt, every submission is checked by the editorial office against the following criteria:

• the subject falls within the stated scope of the journal;
• the manuscript follows the Author Guidelines in structure, length, referencing and format;
• the manuscript is anonymised, with author names, affiliations and identifying acknowledgements removed from the main file and confined to the separate title page;
• ethical approval and informed-consent statements are present where the research involves human participants or animals;
• conflict-of-interest and funding statements are present;
• the language is of a standard that permits the work to be assessed.

Submissions that do not meet these requirements are returned to the author for correction before review begins. This stage is normally completed within seven days.

2. Similarity Screening

All manuscripts that pass initial screening are checked with Turnitin before being sent for review, in accordance with the journal's Plagiarism Policy. Manuscripts whose similarity exceeds the journal's thresholds are returned or rejected at this stage and are not sent to reviewers.

3. Assessment by the Handling Editor

The Editor-in-Chief assigns each manuscript to a handling editor with relevant subject expertise. The handling editor reads the manuscript in full and decides whether it is of sufficient originality, methodological soundness and significance to warrant external review. Manuscripts that are unlikely to succeed in review are rejected at this point, with reasons, so that authors are not kept waiting unnecessarily. This stage is normally completed within ten days.

Where the handling editor has any competing interest in the submission, the manuscript is reassigned to another editor.

4. Reviewer Selection and Invitation

The handling editor identifies at least two reviewers with demonstrated expertise in the subject of the manuscript, drawn from the journal's reviewer database, from the reference list of the manuscript, and from published literature in the field. Reviewers are selected so as to represent, where possible, more than one institution and more than one country.

The following are not invited to review a manuscript:

• anyone from the same institution as any author;
• anyone who has co-authored with any author within the preceding three years;
• anyone with a financial, personal or professional interest in the outcome;
• reviewers suggested by the authors, unless independently verified and used in addition to, never in place of, editor-selected reviewers.

Invited reviewers are asked to confirm that they have no conflict of interest before the manuscript is released to them.

5. The Review

Reviewers are asked to complete their assessment within three weeks. The review form asks for a structured judgement on:

• originality and contribution to existing knowledge;
• clarity and justification of the research question or objective;
• appropriateness and rigour of the methodology, including sampling and statistical treatment;
• whether the results are presented accurately and support the conclusions drawn;
• adequacy and currency of the literature reviewed;
• ethical compliance;
• clarity of language, tables and figures;
• a recommendation, with confidential comments to the editor and separate comments to the author.

Reviewers are asked to keep the manuscript confidential, not to share it with any third party, and not to upload it to artificial-intelligence or other external services.

6. Editorial Decision

The handling editor considers the reviewers' reports together with their own reading of the manuscript. Where two reviewers disagree substantively, a third reviewer is invited, and the decision is taken on the basis of all three reports. The reports are advisory; the decision rests with the editor.

One of the following decisions is communicated to the corresponding author, together with the anonymised reviewer comments:

• Accept submission — the manuscript is accepted without further change.
• Revisions required — minor changes are needed; the revised manuscript is assessed by the editor and does not normally return to the reviewers.
• Resubmit for review — substantial changes are needed; the revised manuscript is returned to the original reviewers for a second round.
• Decline submission — the manuscript is not suitable for publication in the journal.

Authors are normally given four weeks to submit a revision, together with a point-by-point response to each reviewer comment. Extensions are granted on request.

7. Acceptance and Publication

Accepted manuscripts proceed to copyediting, typesetting and proofreading. The corresponding author receives proofs and is asked to confirm or correct them within five days. Only typographical and factual corrections are accepted at proof stage. Each published article is assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) and is deposited with Crossref.

8. Indicative Timeline

Stage	Indicative duration
Initial editorial screening	7 days
Similarity screening	2 days
Handling editor assessment	10 days
External peer review	3 weeks
First decision to author	approximately 6 weeks from submission
Author revision	4 weeks
Final decision	2 weeks after revision received
Publication after acceptance	3 to 4 weeks

These are indicative periods. Individual manuscripts may take longer where reviewers are difficult to secure or where more than one round of revision is required. Authors who have not heard from the journal within the indicative period are welcome to enquire at editor@ijbassbd.com.

9. Appeals

Authors may appeal an editorial decision by writing to the Editor-in-Chief within thirty days, stating the specific grounds of the appeal and responding point by point to the reviewers' comments. Appeals are considered by an editor who was not involved in the original decision. Where an appeal is upheld, the manuscript re-enters review with new reviewers. The outcome of an appeal is final.

10. Confidentiality

Submitted manuscripts are confidential documents. Reviewer identities are not disclosed to authors, and author identities are not disclosed to reviewers. Reviewer reports are not published. The editorial record of a submission is retained by the journal and is not shared with third parties except where it is required in the investigation of suspected misconduct, in which case it may be shared with the authors' institution or with another journal.