All papers submitted to Jurnal Teologi (JUTEOLOG) undergo a double-blind peer-review process to ensure that they not only fit into the journal’s scope but are of sufficient academic quality and novelty to appeal to our readers. As a reviewer, you will be required to uphold this standard.        

These guidelines will help you understand your responsibilities as a reviewer, as well as your ethical obligations to both the journal and the authors. You will also be introduced to what you should be looking for in a manuscript so that your review will be consistent with others requested by the journal. This is particularly important as all articles submitted to Jurnal Teologi (JUTEOLOG) should be evaluated on the same playing field.

Your responsibilities as a reviewer

As a reviewer, you will be responsible for reading the manuscript and evaluating its suitability for publication in Jurnal Teologi (JUTEOLOG) along with its scientific quality. You will be expected to provide constructive, impartial, unambiguous, and honest feedback to the authors, to encourage them to improve their manuscript.

By its commitment to the development of young scientists, Jurnal Teologi (JUTEOLOG) aims to see all authors who submit to the journal—regardless of whether they are accepted—improve both as academic writers and researchers. As such, the reviewer comments that in any way denigrate or discourage an author from re-submitting to this or another journal will not be tolerated. Reviews should be critical but not detrimental to accurate scientific communication.

Things to consider before agreeing to review a manuscript

Before you agree to review a manuscript, you should be certain that you have the necessary expertise and time to provide a critical evaluation of the article. You should ensure that:

The article matches your expertise. Log into your Jurnal Teologi (JUTEOLOG) account and read the manuscript’s abstract to determine whether your field of expertise matches that of the manuscript.

You can both complete the review on time and dedicate the appropriate time to conducting a thorough review. A review should be completed within three weeks. If you do not think you can complete the review within this timeframe, please let the editor know. If possible, please also suggest an alternate reviewer. If you agree to review a manuscript, but later on find yourself unable to complete it on time, please contact the editor as soon as possible.

You have no conflict of interest. Determine whether there is any conflict of interest that may affect your impartiality in evaluating the manuscript. If there is, you should contact the editor and immediately recuse yourself. If you were unable to detect any conflict before agreeing to the review request, but find one during the review, simply contact the editor and explain why you cannot continue.

Reviewer ethics

Jurnal Teologi (JUTEOLOG) relies on the impartiality and discretion of reviewers, and as a reviewer, you have entrusted with confidential material meant solely for critical evaluation. As such, we expect you to treat all documents and correspondence related to the review with the appropriate level of care. Do not use any of the information therein for the advancement of your research or to discredit another party. Do not discuss any aspect of the manuscript with a third party. Ensure that the information therein and details of the review process remain confidential before, during, and after publication. Maintain the integrity of the double-blind review process. Do not under any circumstances contact any of the authors to discuss their manuscript. Be fair, honest, and objective in your evaluation of the manuscript. Declare a conflict of interest, and recuse yourself immediately if you believe your impartiality has been compromised.

Ethical considerations

In addition to the above criteria, also pay attention to whether the manuscript contains instances of plagiarism, improper referencing, re-publication, or fraud. Things to look for:

Plagiarism. Observe whether a portion of the manuscript has been copied from another work without giving appropriate credit. For example, the text has been copied verbatim without a clear indication that it is a quote, the text has been copied but not cited (suggesting that these are the authors' own words/ideas), or some portion of the text has been copied without the permission of the original author. If you find that a significant part of the manuscript has been plagiarized, please contact the editor as soon as possible so we can take the appropriate actions.

Missing, incorrect, or incomplete references. All text, figures, tables, data, ideas, or concepts that have been published previously should be cited. It is considered plagiarism for an author to present something as their own even though it is not, regardless of their intent.

Re-publication. It is against Jurnal Teologi's policy to publish work that has already been published elsewhere. Please notify the editor if you find an instance of a manuscript having been published previously (partially or fully).

Fraud. Any part of the manuscript that is found to be untrue should be highlighted as such. Any form of data manipulation or tampering should be brought to the editor's attention.

Publication ethics is not limited to these four items. If you believe the authors have attempted to mislead readers, infringed upon copyright or patent, or might jeopardize the integrity of the journal in any other way, please contact the handling editor.

The Jurnal Teologi (JUTEOLOG) review form

Once you have gathered enough information to make a decision on the manuscript, log into your Jurnal Teologi (JUTEOLOG) account to complete the review. At a minimum, you will be required to grade the manuscript based on the aforementioned criteria, as well as to summarize your major findings and give your overall impression of the article. Although it is only optional, we highly encourage you to also take the opportunity to comment on the manuscript in more detail, and provide specific suggestions that might improve any aspect of it.

If you have made specific comments in the manuscript file, remember to anonymize them to prevent the authors from being able to identify you.

Making good comments

It's important to ensure that all comments are constructive and intended to better the quality of the manuscript or otherwise help the authors understand where they went wrong. Please reconsider making comments that fall out of this purview. Do not comment on the acceptability of the manuscript, and avoid suggesting revisions as conditions for acceptance. Provide detailed, unambiguous comments. Be respectful and positive. Your goal should be to help the authors improve their article, by providing constructive criticism and helpful suggestions. (Consider how you would like your own manuscript to be reviewed.) Highlight areas that need clarification or should be elaborated further by the authors. Make suggestions on how the authors can improve problematic passages. How might they improve the clarity of a given section? You are not required to edit the authors’ style or grammar, but any improvement to the clarity of the manuscript is greatly appreciated, especially in regards to technical terms. Highlight consistent instances of outdated or misspelt technical terminology. Avoid making dogmatic statements. You should be able to back up your comments with proof or precedence in previous literature. Take care not to dismiss the manuscript, whether in its novelty, methodology, or findings.

Recommendations

Major and Minor Issues

To make the script more processed, the reviewer needs to pay attention to major issues and minor issues. Regarding major issues, the reviewer's focus is on what is important for the current study, not the next step in research. Put this on the list and be as specific as possible.

Then the reviewer also needs to pay attention to additional things to develop the text. This is classified into minor issues and does not affect the final conclusions of the manuscript.

Additional Points

In addition, reviewers can add comments for editors and this is kept secret from the author. Comments can contain any concerns about the text that needs to be considered further by the editor, such as about the ethics of writing. Reviewers only express concern about the text but do not make this secret comment as the conclusion of all criticism. In addition, let the editor know if you are still willing to view the revised edition of the article.