Peer Academics publishes peer-reviewed scholarship that is useful beyond the setting it was produced in. The journal exists to give carefully argued, evidence-based work a route to publication that is free to read and free to publish in, and to review that work honestly, within the timescales stated in the Author Guidelines, by people qualified to judge it.
The journal is multidisciplinary by design. It does not restrict itself to a single field, but it does apply the standards of the field a manuscript belongs to: a legal analysis is judged as legal scholarship, an experiment as an experiment.
Peer Academics is open for submissions and has not yet published an issue or an article. This page describes what the journal will consider and how each article type is reviewed; the journal's current status, including the absence of an ISSN, a DOI prefix, and any indexing, is set out in About the Journal.
Disciplines covered
- Social sciences — sociology, political science, anthropology, psychology, communication and media studies, human geography, and related empirical fields.
- Humanities — history, philosophy, literary and cultural studies, linguistics, ethics, and area studies.
- Education — pedagogy, curriculum and assessment, higher education policy and practice, educational technology, and comparative education.
- Law — public and private law, European Union law, international law, comparative law, regulation, and legal theory.
- Economics — theoretical and applied economics, econometrics, public finance, labor and development economics, and management and organizational studies.
- Applied sciences — engineering, computing and information systems, environmental and sustainability science, data science, and applied research at the interface between these fields and the disciplines above.
Interdisciplinary submissions are welcome. If your manuscript sits between fields, say so in your cover letter and name the audiences you are writing for; this helps the editor choose reviewers who can assess both sides of the work.
Peer Academics publishes in English. Sources and primary material in other languages may of course be used and quoted; supply a translation of quoted material where the argument depends on it.
What is out of scope
A manuscript will be declined without external review if it falls into any of the following categories. The editor decides scope, and that decision is communicated to you in writing.
- Work outside the disciplines listed above.
- Manuscripts that report no method, no evidence, and no analysis — opinion without argument, or advocacy without examination of counter-arguments.
- Promotional material for a product, service, institution, or political organization, whatever form it takes.
- Work already published elsewhere, or under consideration at another journal. Posting on a preprint server does not count as prior publication; see the Publishing Model.
- Reports of interventional clinical trials in human participants, and any submission whose assessment would require clinical or medical-safety expertise. Health-related research in education, policy, economics, or the social sciences remains in scope.
- Manuscripts describing research on people, animals, or sensitive personal data without a statement of the ethical approval obtained, or, where no approval was required, an explanation of why not.
- Student coursework submitted unchanged. A dissertation or thesis chapter may be submitted if it has been rewritten as a standalone scholarly article.
Article types and how each is reviewed
You choose an article type at submission. If the editor judges that your manuscript belongs to a different type, you will be told before review begins and asked either to agree to the reassignment or to withdraw. Review is double-anonymous for all externally reviewed types: you must anonymize the manuscript file as described in the Author Guidelines, and a manuscript that is not anonymized is returned to you before it reaches a reviewer.
Original Research
A full report of research you conducted yourself, presenting results that have not been published before. It states a question, describes a method in enough detail for another researcher to repeat or interrogate it, reports results, and discusses what they do and do not support. This applies equally to quantitative, qualitative, archival, doctrinal, and computational work. Review: double-anonymous external peer review by at least two independent reviewers.
Review Article
A critical synthesis of the existing literature on a defined topic that arrives at a position of its own rather than merely summarizing. You must state which literature you covered and how you found and selected it, so that a reader can judge how complete the picture is. Review: double-anonymous external peer review by at least two independent reviewers.
Systematic Review
A review conducted to a protocol specified in advance, with explicit search terms, databases and date ranges, stated inclusion and exclusion criteria, a documented screening and extraction procedure, and an assessment of the quality of the included studies. Report the review against a recognized reporting guideline such as PRISMA and include the completed checklist and a flow diagram as supplementary files. Review: double-anonymous external peer review by at least two independent reviewers; the editor will normally ask one of them to concentrate on the search strategy and screening methods.
Short Communication
A concise report of a complete but limited piece of research: a single finding, a focused replication, a negative or null result, or a first result whose timeliness justifies early publication. It is shorter than an Original Research article but held to the same evidential standard. Review: double-anonymous external peer review by at least two independent reviewers.
Methods
A paper whose contribution is a method, instrument, protocol, dataset, corpus, or software tool rather than a substantive finding. It must describe the method in full, show it working on a real problem, compare it with existing approaches, and state its limitations and the conditions under which it fails. Code, data, or instruments should be deposited where the license permits. Review: double-anonymous external peer review by at least two independent reviewers, chosen for their ability to judge whether the method is reproducible from the description given.
Case Study
A detailed examination of a single case — an organization, a jurisdiction, a program, a community, a legal proceeding, an engineering deployment — that draws out conclusions of wider relevance. Explain why this case was selected, what it is a case of, and what can and cannot be generalized from it. Where the case involves identifiable people or organizations, confirm in the manuscript that consent was obtained or that the material is a matter of public record. Review: double-anonymous external peer review by at least two independent reviewers.
Perspective
A scholarly argument about the direction, framing, or implications of a field: a reinterpretation, a research agenda, or a reasoned challenge to a prevailing assumption. It is not primary research, but it must be grounded in the literature and must engage seriously with positions it opposes. Review: external peer review by at least one independent reviewer, double-anonymous, alongside the editor's own assessment.
Commentary
A short, signed response to an article published in Peer Academics, or a brief intervention in a current scholarly debate. Commentary on a specific article should address the work and not its authors; where it is critical, the authors of the original article are normally invited to reply, and both pieces are published together. Review: editorial review only — Commentary is not sent for external peer review, and is labeled as editorially reviewed when published.
Editorial
A statement written or commissioned by the journal's editors about the journal itself, its policies, a themed collection, or a matter of scholarly publishing practice. Review: editorial review only — Editorials are not externally peer reviewed, and are labeled as editorially reviewed when published. An Editorial written by an editor is approved by another editor who is not an author of it.
Summary
| Article type | Review treatment | Minimum external reviewers |
|---|---|---|
| Original Research | Double-anonymous external peer review | 2 |
| Review Article | Double-anonymous external peer review | 2 |
| Systematic Review | Double-anonymous external peer review | 2 |
| Short Communication | Double-anonymous external peer review | 2 |
| Methods | Double-anonymous external peer review | 2 |
| Case Study | Double-anonymous external peer review | 2 |
| Perspective | Double-anonymous external peer review plus editorial assessment | 1 |
| Commentary | Editorial review only | None |
| Editorial | Editorial review only | None |
If an editor cannot secure the minimum number of reviewers for a manuscript, the manuscript is not published on fewer reports: the editor either continues the search or returns the manuscript to you with an explanation.