RJJR: Reviews The Journal of Journal Reviews

Submissions

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Author Guidelines

While Journal Reviews will include varied information and rely on nuance to facilitate journal evaluations, they should each be based on the RJJR evaluation Rubric. The Rubric details a thorough set of considerations that guide thinking about a Journal’s practice, behavior, people, scholarship, relationships, background and history, and approach to equity and inclusion. While this set may not be comprehensive, it will direct authors’ and reviewers’ attention to the broad range of factual considerations that comprise the kind of evaluation the Editorial Board is seeking.

Authors should engage with our Rubric when preparing a Journal Review for submission. Editors will be looking for coverage of each main section in the Rubric.

Publication Timeline

Journal Reviews will be published on a rolling basis once they are ready for publication. Each volume aligns with the calendar year.

Submission Preparation Checklist

All submissions must meet the following requirements.

  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The content should be original, the author’s own words, and should not be submitted to another journal concurrently.
  • The author(s) have created the Review or Response in consultation with RJJR's Rubric.
  • The Review or Response is not more than 2,000 words.
  • The author(s) have acknowledged any potential conflicts of interest, including any affiliations.
  • Citations adhere to the most current version of the APA style guide.
  • For Responses, does not contain any personal or ad hominem attacks; focuses on policies and procedures of the journal; and provide reactions to substantive facts.
  • For Responses, includes a link to the original Journal Review.
  • The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF document file format.

Journal Reviews

Authors should engage with our Rubric when preparing a Journal Review for submission. Editors will be looking for coverage of each main section in the Rubric.

  • RJJRs guiding principle for submissions is transparency. If in doubt, write to tell us about any possible conflicts before submitting a Journal Review. We can have a conversation if it’s a problem. 
    • If you think there is any possibility that you might have any kind of a conflict of interest in reviewing a particular journal or publisher, tell us about it. We will frown on any potential conflict of interest that an author did not disclose and that later comes to light. The editorial board will discuss any such conflicts and recommend possible consequences, up to fully retracting the Journal Review.
      • Authors who do not disclose affiliation or experience with journals will have their work retracted for secondary review. 
      • RJJR recognizes that everyone has biases and personal experiences that shape their perspectives. 
      • Disclosures of affiliations or bias will be clearly documented in/alongside Journal Reviews. 
  • Authors should be deliberate/intentional/transparent when sharing personal analysis of the observable evidence. First-person writing is encouraged.
  • Co-authors should each disclose affiliations and experience clearly. 
  • Length: We want the Journal Reviews to provide enough context about a journal for authors to make well informed decisions, but we also understand that many authors demand something that can be quickly read and understood. With this in mind, we suggest most Journal Reviews should be in the range of 1000-2000 words. Responses may be shorter, but should not exceed 2000 words. However, if you feel a particular journal needs more space, please justify that in your submission.
  • Plagiarism 
    • Writing for this journal should be original, the author’s own words, and should not be submitted to another journal concurrently. We do encourage the re-use of journal evaluations conducted as part of your daily work as the base of reviews for this journal. Submission of a Journal Review shall not preclude distribution of such an evaluation to interested parties prior to publication. 
      • Transparency of reuse, including attribution, is required.
      • References sections should include DOIs for references wherever possible.
    • We will not use Turnitin or any other plagiarism detection software.
  • Intentional misrepresentation of journals or their practices will not be accepted. 
  • We follow the CRediT taxonomy for deciding authorship.
  • Although multiple reviews of a specific journal are discouraged within the same year, in the event that multiple reviews of the same journal are received before the first is published, all accepted reviews will be published.
  • Submissions should follow current APA style.
  • Please use inclusive language in Journal Reviews and Responses. Prospective authors are encouraged to use language that is inclusive and accessible to a broad readership, taking care to avoid language that might alienate or exclude readers based on their nationalities, experiences, or identities. (Adopted from EBLIP)
  • RJJR does not require perfect English grammar in submissions; the editorial process will effect necessary changes for sense or clarity.
  • Editors will not advise on journal selection beyond providing the list of journals for which people have requested reviews. Journal Reviews submitted for journals that do not have issues or volumes of articles published yet will not be accepted for publication. Editors suggest authors wait to submit a Journal Review until the journal has published articles either in volumes or issues.
  • Author fees: There are no fees to publish in this journal, and the RJJR Editorial Board commits that there will never be fees to publish in this journal.

Responses

Scholarship is a conversation, and we invite Responses to Journal Reviews, including from a publisher or journal that was reviewed. 

Responses should:

  • Not include personal or ad hominem attacks against the author of the Journal Review
  • Fully follow our guiding principle of transparency and include any information of any connection authors have to the reviewed journal, including the duration of the connection to the journal. Failure to provide full transparency will have their work retracted for a secondary review.
  • Responses will include a link to the Journal Review in question and a disclosure regarding the affiliations of the respondent.
  • Focus on policies and procedures at the journal.
  • Responses must react to substantive facts about the journal, not unqualified objections to the Journal Review. Responses may offer clarifications that should be well documented and factual. 
  • We encourage Responses that delineate any changes in policies or communication of policies a journal has made in response to a Journal Review.

We do not guarantee a Response will be published. If a Response is published, information about the Response author(s) will be included clearly at the top of the Response.

Copyright Notice

First publication rights to original work accepted for publication is granted to Reviews: The Journal of Journal Reviews. Work will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 license (CC-BY-NC). Authors may petition the Journal for another Creative Commons license by informing their editor.

Authors retain copyright in their work, with no further restrictions on their reuse. For example, an author may share their contribution in an institutional repository or reuse it in their future work, subject to the CC-BY-NC license. For pre-prints, we ask that the authors update any repository record with a link to the published version upon publication.

We anticipate most Journal Reviews will not include copyrighted material by third parties. For examples of/from a reviewed journal’s website, rather than screenshots we prefer links to archived copies of the website through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. When reuse of copyrighted material by third parties is included, we do allow for reuse based on fair use / fair dealing. We ask that authors make the editors aware in every case where an author uses third party copyrighted material.

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.