Peer-Review Policy

Sukkur IBA Journal of Management and Business – SIJMB aims at publishing impactful research and adopts standard double-blind peer-review process.

Manuscripts submitted for Sukkur IBA Journal of Management and Business - SIJMB are processed through the standard double-blind peer-review process. Considering the large number of submissions, review process may take month(s) to complete and corresponding authors will be intimated the review progress and decision through the journal’s online manuscript management system.

Currently, submissions are managed by Sukkur IBA Journal of Management and Business - SIJMB as illustrated in the following steps:

- Technical Pre-Screening: is carried out by Sukkur IBA University Publications Cell prior to forwarding to editor to check that the manuscript is complete (i.e. title, affiliations, keywords, abstract length (single paragraph min: 150 – max: 250 words) main text (min: 4,000 – max: 8,000 words), and a reference list), English is sufficient for peer-review process, figures are complete and clear enough to read and manuscript. Submitted papers not meeting these requirements will be returned to the authors who may re-submit their paper after dealing with the issues raised.

- Similarity/Plagiarism Screening Policy: Every submitted article is checked for the Similarity report by the editorial team, before initiating the review process. Turnitin software is used by the SIJMB as prescribed by Higher Education Commission (HEC) Pakistan, to check the similarity of paper.

- As per HEC policy, in case a manuscript has a similarity index of more than 19% overall and more than 5% in case of single source, it will be immediately either returned back to the author for correction and resubmission or will be rejected and archived. This decision is made by the editorial team, based on the similarity ratio. (Please Note that the parameters for similarity check involve, Add to No Repository, Exclude Bibliography, Exclude Quoted Text).

– The Editor-in-Chief pre-screens: submissions to check that they comply with journal scope & thematic areas, match with the article classifications used by the journal, are of potential interest to readers and have high relevance. The submission will be returned to the Author for revision if it needs to be shortened to match with the length expectations for the article classification type. Subsequent to pre-screening, the Editor-in-Chief assigns papers for the technical review process.

–The Editor-in-Chief with the support of Associate & Managing Editors initiate the double-blind peer-review process by selecting highly qualified reviewers (having the minimum qualification of Ph.D. in relevant field with intensive research work background) to evaluate the manuscript. Associate & Managing Editors can recommend to Editor-in-Chief to reject submissions that they believe are out of the Journal scope & thematic areas or of low enough quality to not merit review.

– Next, external reviewers (one national and one from an academically/technically advanced country) provide detailed comments and make their recommendation: accept, accept with minor revision, accept major revision, reject or reject with recommended re-submission.

– Reviewers’ comments are forwarded to the Editor-in-Chief who make a decision and, through the Publications Cell, Sukkur IBA University, notify authors of the outcome of their papers, and send them copies of all reviewer comments.

– Revised manuscripts submitted via the journal manuscript management system are returned to Editorial Team who, perhaps after further revision or re-review, make a final recommendation to the Editor-in-Chief.

– Final Decision of Acceptance, Revision, Re-submission or Rejection is made by Editor-in-Chief and informed to authors through Publications Cell, Sukkur IBA University.

Since, the review is an honorary job done by reviewers on their interest and availability of time, the duration of the entire peer-review process ideally ranges between 15 and 20 weeks, depending on reviewers’ responsiveness and degree of revisions required. To increase the likelihood of acceptance of submissions, authors should consider three critical matters before submission: (a) target article type (b) scope of Sukkur IBA Journal of Management and Business (c) assessment of relevance and quality.

After Final Acceptance, the Corresponding author will be notified and paper will be forwarded to technical editors for copy-editing and proof-reading.

To get more insights on Peer-Review process, please read the content What is Peer-Review?