Pakistan Journal of Professional Psychology: Research and Practice adheres to the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice↗ in Scholarly Publishing (joint statement by COPE↗, DOAJ↗, WAME↗, and OASPA↗) as well as the American Psychological Association's (APA Manual, 7th Edition) recommendations for the conduct, reporting, editing, and publication of scholarly work in our journal.

The peer-reviewing procedure makes sure that the journal will only publish articles of the highest caliber. To maintain the quality of the content, all new submissions will go through an initial screening procedure and then a peer-review process before publishing.

We strive to offer field specialists' peer reviews that are expert, fair, prompt, and confidential. The steps involved in the review are as follows:

Initial Screening

The Executive Managing Editor (EME) screens each paper when it is submitted and decides whether or not to send it for full peer review. This step is taken to ensure adherence to our regulations, including the unacceptable low standard English language, competing interests’ statements, and ethical standards for studies involving human participants or animals. For instance, the editor ensures:

• Does the paper meet the requirements of the journal and will readers find it interesting?
• Is the manuscript of a sufficient caliber?
• Is the writing strong enough to send it to review?
• Is the manuscript in accordance with the journal's author guidelines?

The author(s) may be asked for a revision if the editor requests any changes be made to the manuscript prior to full peer review.

The submission may be rejected without a thorough peer review if it does not adhere to our Editorial Guidelines.

Only the manuscripts that make it past the first round of assessment will be sent for peer review.

Double Blind Review Process

In this peer-review process, both the reviewers and the author(s) are anonymous.

Peer Review Process

PJPPRP has a double-blind peer reviewing policy. Initial screening for the suitability of the article for publication in PJPPRP is carried out by the editorial committee and subsequently the manuscript is sent for blind reviewing. Each article is reviewed by one local professional and one professional from academically advanced countries. Authors are informed about the comments or suggestions of the reviewers and are required to revise their paper in stipulated time period.

How Peer Review works

 

 

Decision

The manuscript can be accepted, modified, subjected to more external review, or rejected by the editors. The authors will be given specific time to resubmit their article whether the decision is Minor or Major Revision. After a resubmission, the academic editor can decide whether to assign the work to reviewers or make decision based on their own judgment of subject-matter expertise.

To expedite the process, reviewers of PJPPRP are encouraged to complete the manuscript review within 30 days and provide feedback to the Editor through email on the prescribed form. After that PJPPRP reserves the rights to send that article to another reviewer without any further reminder. Peer review feedback is sent to the authors through email and they are provided with a 4 weeks period to make suggested revisions and resubmit the manuscript to the Editor.  

Policy Document
Policy document as per HEC policy is available here