Review Guidelines
1. Double-blind Review
The journal employs the double-blind peer review process, where both reviewers and authors remain anonymous throughout the review process.
2. Criteria for Publication
For a manuscript to be published in the International Journal of Multimedia, Art Design and Education, it must meet four criteria:
(a) Originality
(b) Soundness of methodology
(c) Importance to design researchers
(d) Relevance to design practice
3. Recommendation
Several types of recommendation are possible:
(a) Accept Submission
(b) Revisions Required (Major/Minor)
(c) Resubmit for Review
(d) Resubmit Elsewhere
(e) Decline Submission
4. Timely Review
Publication of manuscripts in a timely fashion benefit both the authors and the design community at large, where few journals are available to serve as common platforms for sharing research results. Reviewers are therefore kindly asked to complete their reviews within one month. If more time is needed, reviewers should contact the editor promptly.
5. Honest and Polite
After each round of the review, review reports are sent to the author(s) and all reviewers of the manuscript under consideration. It is important for a reviewer to be honest but not offensive when providing comments. Review reports with opinions expressed in a kind and constructive way will more effectively persuade the authors on the merit of the review.
6. Writing the Review
The purpose of the review is to provide the editors with an expert’s opinions on the quality of the manuscript under consideration. A good review report should identify both the strengths and weaknesses of the paper and should also provide constructive and specific comments on how to improve the paper. If the reviewer believes that the paper is not suitable for publication in the International Journal of Multimedia, Art Design and Education, the review report should provide brief but sufficient information that enables the author(s) to understand the reasons for the decision.
7. Suggested Format
The following format is suggested for preparing the report:
(a) Summary and Recommendation
What is the purpose of the paper? Is the paper appropriate for publication in the International Journal of Multimedia, Art Design and Education? What are the main contributions of the paper? Are the contributions sufficiently significant? Are the methods or findings sufficiently novel? Are the results relevant to design practice? What are the major weaknesses of the paper? What is your recommendation for this paper and why? If the paper is unacceptable in its present form, does it show sufficient potential to ask the author(s) for re-submission?
(b) Detailed Comments on Methodology and Conclusions
Is the method of approach valid? Is the execution correct? Does the paper provide adequate acknowledgement of prior research? Do the data support the conclusions? If not, what other data are needed? Does the paper offer enough details so that the research could be reproduced? Should the authors be asked to provide supplementary methods or data online? It would be very helpful to provide page numbers to the parts of the paper to which the comments apply.
(c) Detailed Comments on Readability
Is the title appropriate? Is the abstract an accurate and useful summary of the paper? Is the paper clearly written? If not, how can it be improved? Can the paper be shortened? Are the tables and figures easy to understand? Does the paper contain typographical or grammatical errors? Again, it will be helpful to provide page numbers to the parts of the paper to which the comments apply.
8. Confidentiality
Reviewers should treat the contents of the manuscript under review as strictly confidential, not to be disclosed to others prior to publication. A reviewer should not use or share with others material from a manuscript he/she has reviewed. Nor should a reviewer distribute copies of a manuscript under review, unless it has been made public.
9. Conflicts of Interest
Reviewers are requested to inform the editor of any conflicts of interest in reviewing a manuscript. Such conflicts of interest can occur if the reviewer is asked to referee a paper written by a colleague of the same organization, former or current student, former advisor, or closely-related person. Another type of conflict occurs, for example, when the reviewer is a direct competitor of the author of the paper for a grant. If the conflict is severe, the reviewer should recuse himself/herself.
