Peer Review Process

Peer Review Process and Editorial Decision-Making

Language, Technology, and Social Media applies a rigorous, independent, and double-anonymous peer-review process to safeguard scholarly quality, methodological rigor, ethical integrity, originality, and relevance to the journal’s aims and scope.

Policy Overview

LTSM applies peer review to safeguard the academic quality, originality, methodological rigor, ethical integrity, and disciplinary relevance of the scholarly content it publishes.

Original research articles, review articles, systematic reviews, integrative reviews, conceptual papers, methodological papers, and other substantive scholarly manuscripts are subject to external peer review before acceptance.

LTSM operates a double-anonymous peer-review model, also commonly referred to as double-blind peer review. The identities of the authors are not disclosed to reviewers, and reviewer identities are not disclosed to authors.

• Author names, affiliations, acknowledgements, and identifying details must be removed from the review manuscript.
• Reviewer reports are not published with the article.
• Reviewers are not publicly identified in connection with specific manuscripts.
• Authorised editors and editorial staff may access identities where required to administer and protect the integrity of the process.

Every submission undergoes administrative and technical screening before academic assessment. The editorial office may examine:

Administrative screening does not constitute peer review and does not imply that a manuscript will proceed to external evaluation. Incomplete, inadequately anonymised, ethically problematic, duplicated, or seriously non-compliant submissions may be returned or rejected before review.

A submission that passes administrative screening is assigned to the Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor, or an authorised Handling Editor. The editor evaluates whether the manuscript:

• falls within the stated aims and scope of LTSM;
• addresses a relevant and sufficiently defined scholarly problem;
• demonstrates an identifiable theoretical, methodological, or empirical contribution;
• uses an appropriate and sufficiently rigorous research design;
• presents evidence adequate to support its conclusions;
• complies with applicable research and publication ethics; and
• is sufficiently clear and complete for expert evaluation.

Manuscripts proceeding to external review are normally evaluated by at least two independent external reviewers. Reviewers are selected primarily on the basis of:

Publication counts, citation counts, and h-index values may provide supplementary information about scholarly activity, but they are not sufficient or determinative criteria for reviewer appointment.

Authors may suggest qualified potential reviewers and may identify individuals whom they prefer not to evaluate their manuscript. Suggestions and exclusion requests are advisory and are not binding on the journal.

Suggested reviewers must possess relevant expertise, have a verifiable professional identity, be independent of the authors, and have no recent collaboration, supervision relationship, or other conflict of interest.

Editors independently verify the identity, expertise, institutional affiliation, publication record, contact details, and potential conflicts of suggested reviewers. Institutional email addresses are preferred where available.

Before accepting an invitation, reviewers must confirm that they:

• have the expertise necessary to evaluate the manuscript;
• can complete the review within the requested period;
• have no conflict that could compromise their judgment;
• will preserve confidentiality; and
• will comply with the journal’s reviewer and publication-ethics policies.

Conflicts may be financial, personal, professional, institutional, academic, intellectual, political, ideological, or religious. A reviewer who is uncertain whether a relationship constitutes a conflict must disclose it to the editor before reviewing.

Submitted manuscripts, supplementary files, datasets, reviewer reports, editorial correspondence, and editorial decisions are confidential materials.

A reviewer wishing to involve a trainee or co-reviewer must obtain written permission from the editor in advance. Any approved contributor must be identified to the journal and comply with the same confidentiality obligations.

Reviewers normally receive the anonymised manuscript and any supporting materials necessary to evaluate the study. Supplementary files, research instruments, appendices, analytical documentation, datasets, multimedia materials, and reporting checklists may be examined as part of the scholarly record.

Reviewers should state when their assessment does not cover a specialised component, such as advanced statistics, programming code, qualitative coding, linguistic datasets, or multimedia analysis. The editor may appoint an additional methodological, statistical, linguistic, or technical reviewer.

Reviewer reports must be independent, evidence-based, constructive, respectful, and sufficiently detailed to support editorial decision-making. Reviewers should assess, where applicable:

Reviewers must not require citations primarily to increase their own citation counts or those of associates. Citation recommendations must be directly relevant and academically necessary.

Reviewer recommendations are advisory. Decisions are not made by automatically counting recommendations. The editor evaluates the reasoning, evidence, relevance, and consistency of each report and may reach a different conclusion where academically or ethically justified.

The Handling Editor evaluates the manuscript, reviewer reports, author responses, ethical documentation, and relevant journal policies before issuing a recommendation or decision.

The Editor-in-Chief retains overall responsibility for the integrity and consistency of editorial decision-making. A final decision may be issued by the Editor-in-Chief or by an authorised editor acting under delegated editorial authority.

When reviewer reports differ substantially, the editor does not automatically follow the majority recommendation. The editor may:

• assess which report is better supported by evidence;
• request clarification from one or more reviewers;
• invite an additional independent reviewer;
• appoint a specialist methodological or statistical reviewer;
• undertake an additional editorial assessment; or
• reject the manuscript where the evidence reveals fundamental deficiencies.

A third review is not mandatory in every case. The final determination remains an editorial judgment based on the quality and substance of the available assessments.

Authors invited to revise must submit:

Authors may respectfully disagree with a comment but must provide a reasoned academic response supported by evidence. A revision invitation does not guarantee acceptance.

Revised manuscripts may be assessed by the editor, returned to the original reviewers, sent to new reviewers, or evaluated by an additional specialist. Inadequately addressed concerns may result in further revision or rejection.

Substantial changes to the objectives, data, methodology, interpretation, or authorship must be disclosed and may require additional review or documentation.

Manuscripts authored or co-authored by the Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor, editorial-board members, reviewers, publisher representatives, or persons closely associated with LTSM are not given preferential treatment.

Such manuscripts are assigned to an independent editor who has no relevant conflict and who controls reviewer selection, correspondence, evaluation, and the editorial decision without involvement from the author-editor.

Special issues, thematic collections, and guest-edited sections are subject to the same peer-review, ethical, originality, and acceptance standards as regular submissions.

Guest editors must disclose conflicts and may not handle manuscripts they authored, co-authored, sponsored, supervised, or otherwise have a close relationship with. The Editor-in-Chief retains oversight and may require additional review, replace reviewers, reject submissions, or discontinue a collection where editorial integrity cannot be assured.

Editorial screening, reviewer selection, peer review, revision requirements, acceptance, and rejection are based solely on scholarly quality, methodological rigor, originality, ethical compliance, and relevance to the journal.

An author’s nationality, institutional affiliation, professional position, ability to pay an Article Processing Charge, or eligibility for a waiver does not influence editorial decisions.

Editors and reviewers are not involved in the administrative handling of author payments and should not be informed of waiver or discount requests during manuscript evaluation.

Authors may appeal an editorial decision when they believe it resulted from:

• a material procedural error;
• a substantial factual misunderstanding;
• an undeclared conflict of interest;
• demonstrable reviewer or editorial bias; or
• a serious misapplication of journal policy.

An appeal is not automatically granted because authors disagree with an academic judgment. Whenever practicable, the appeal is examined by an editor who was not substantially involved in the original decision. Normally, only one appeal is considered for each decision.

Where possible misconduct is identified, the editorial process may be placed on hold while the concern is assessed. The journal may request explanations, original data, ethics approvals, authorship documentation, similarity reports, or institutional confirmation.

Concerns may include plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabricated or falsified data, manipulated images, inappropriate authorship, undisclosed conflicts, citation manipulation, unethical research, confidentiality breaches, or interference with peer review.

Serious matters may be referred to an author’s institution, research-integrity office, ethics committee, funder, or other appropriate authority. Allegations are handled confidentially and fairly in accordance with the journal’s publication-ethics policies.

LTSM seeks to conduct peer review efficiently but does not guarantee acceptance or a fixed decision date. Any processing times published by the journal are indicative and should reflect actual editorial records.

When a substantial delay occurs, the editorial office should inform the corresponding author. Reviewers who cannot complete an assessment within the agreed period must notify the editor so that an extension or replacement may be arranged.

Authors may request withdrawal before formal acceptance, subject to the journal’s withdrawal procedure. The journal does not offer guaranteed acceptance, guaranteed publication, or editorial outcomes tied to payment.

The journal maintains confidential records of:

Reviewer performance may be evaluated on expertise, thoroughness, constructiveness, professionalism, ethical conduct, and timeliness. Reviewers who provide superficial, biased, coercive, inappropriate, or repeatedly late reports may no longer be invited.

LTSM may revise this policy in response to developments in scholarly publishing, publication ethics, research integrity, privacy, data protection, and artificial intelligence. Material changes will be documented on the journal website.

Independent, Fair, and Evidence-Based Evaluation

All editorial decisions must be based on scholarly quality, originality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, evidentiary strength, and alignment with the journal’s aims and scope. Commercial interests, author identity, institutional prestige, personal relationships, and payment considerations must not interfere with peer review or editorial judgment.