Peer Review Process

The Scholarly Journal of Business and Management Studies  is firmly committed to its Double-Blind Peer Review Process.

To ensure the integrity of SJBMS 's double-blind peer-review process, every effort must be made to prevent the identities of the authors and reviewers from being known to each other.

Authors must ensure manuscripts are prepared in a manner that does not give away their identity. This requires them to submit three separate documents (either .DOC or .DOCX format): A Title Page (containing author details); an Anonymised Highlights Page; and an Anonymised Manuscript Document (with NO details that would identify the authors e.g. names, body referencing etc). Authors must also ensure the following steps are followed and information included on each of the two submitted documents:
MUST be included in the Title Page:

• Corresponding Author Details:
• First Name & Surname;
• Affiliation (name, state, country);
• Email;
• CRediT Statement; (Note: CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) Statements, based on CREdiT’s standardized author contribution descriptions are to ensure visibility and transparency around individual author contributions to the manuscript);
• ORCID (all Authors much have a unique identified,ORCID, as this is a publishing practice requirement i.e. Web of Science. Registering for an ORCID is fast and simple, via this link).
• Details of all other Authors: 
• First Name & Surname;
• Affiliation (name, state, country);
• Email;
• CRediT Statement; (Note: CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) Statements, based on CREdiT’s standardized author contribution descriptions are to ensure visibility and transparency around individual author contributions to the manuscript);
• ORCID (where one exists). 
• Any Acknowledgements to denote contributions to the work that does not meet the criterial for authorship, such as: supporting the study; general mentoring; collecting data; acting as study coordinator; and other related activities;
• Disclosure any use of artificial intelligence assisted technologies, such as: generative chatbots; Large Language Models (LLMs); AI media technologies.
• A submission declaration from ALL authors that declares that: the work is original; not previously published in any form or language; is not concurrently submitted to other journals for review; clear reuse of any material. Manuscripts must be authorized by all listed authors and any involved responsible authorities;
• Any known / potential author-related conflicts of interest must be declared.

 MUST be included in the Anonymised Highlights Page:

• Paper Highlights: 5 brief dot points which capture the essence of the paper, and which may also be used on social media to promote the paper (max. 100 words);
• This is document forms part of our double blind review process, therefore this document must be anonymised. 

 MUST be included in the Anonymized Manuscript Document:

• Manuscript Title.
• Keywords – authors must provide 4 – 6 keywords which can be used for indexing purposes.
• Abstract - 150 – 250 words and should not contain any undefined abbreviations or unspecified references. Abstracts should be entirely self-sufficient and comprehensible independently, devoid of any necessity for external sources or the main manuscript body. Abstracts accentuate essential thematic domains, the research’s intent, its pertinence or significance, as well as the primary results.
• Introduction
• Related work – (maintaining anonymity).
• 2-4 Main Sections
• Figures/Images - must be numbered and captioned, positioned below the figure/image (font size 9 points). Authors are responsible for the quality of any included figures/images. SJBMS requires a minimum quality of 800 DPI, requests avoiding the use of shading, pronounced contrast, and reasonable text size and width of lines, to ensure readability.
• Tables must be numbered and captioned, positioned above the table (font size 9 points) with no space after.
  Note: Ensure all figures and table citations in the text match the files provided.
• Formulas - formulas within the text must be positioned in a separate line and centered. Displayed expressions must be numbered in the caption, set in the same line as the formula, enclosed in parentheses, and right margined.
• Disclosure any use of artificial intelligence assisted technologies, such as: generative chatbots; Large Language Models (LLMs); AI media technologies.

 Some important notes when developing the Anonymized Manuscript Document:

• Utilize the third person to denote prior work conducted and/or papers published by authors. Example:  [Anonymous, 2007];
• Ensure figures are free of any markers related to affiliations;
• Retain indispensable self-references and other citations, but confine self-references solely to papers pertinent to the evaluators of the submitted manuscript;
• For anonymity in the reference list, omit specifics. Example [Anonymous, 2007];
• Remove references to funding sources;
• Do not include acknowledgments.

It is critical that authors, editors, and reviewers (who upload documents as part of their review) ensure the following steps are taken to ensure the removal of any identifiable particulars, including author names, from file names, and guarantee the document properties are likewise depersonalized:

Instructions for users of Microsoft Word for Windows:

• Go to File
• Select Info
• Click on Check for Issues
• Click on Inspect Document
• In the Document Inspector dialog box, select the check boxes to choose the type of hidden content that you want inspected.
• Click Remove All
• Click Close
• Save the document

Instructions for users of Microsoft Word for MacOS:

• Go to Tools
• Click Protect Document
• Select Remove personal information for this file on save
• Click OK and save the file