Journal of

Tourism Resilience

Information for Reviewers

Peer review continues to remain one of the most important factors in any research. The entire scientific community benefits when the peer-review process is timely, thorough, and balanced. The editors of The Journal of Tourism Resilience are very appreciative of the incredible contribution that reviewers make to our journals and the articles they publish. We thank you for your time and your efforts in bolstering the scientific and academic communities. We hope that the guidelines described below will help facilitate peer review as a conversation between authors and reviewers, and as an essential element of the publication process.

The content of the review

The purpose of a review is to objectively assess the technical accuracy and the uniqueness of the article or research. A review may include an outline of the conceptual advance over previously published work, a specific recommendation and the reasons for that recommendation as well as a summary of the specific strengths and weaknesses of the paper. In this regard, we encourage referees to comment on the quality and presentation of the figures as well as the validity of the statistical methods used to interpret them.

It may also be useful to provide commentary on alternative hypotheses that are consistent with the available data, the paper's potential audience (i.e., the relevant fields within the readership of the journal) as well as a balanced referencing of the pre-existing literature. In particular, when previously published work has undercut the novelty of the present findings, it is extremely helpful to include in the body of the review, detailed citation of the relevant articles and data.

Cover comments to the editors

If for any reason, the review deems comments he/she wishes to make inappropriate for the authors, you can send these comments to the editors. However, reviews are still encouraged to provide the authors with their general concerns and recommendations. These concerns may include but are not limited to concerns about the level of conceptual advance or significance. In general, the tone of the comments to the authors should be consistent with the tone of the comments to the editors. From the authors' point of view, the final editorial decision should be a direct reflection of the reviewer comments that they receive.

A more general context in which comments to the editor can aid the editorial process is as an executive summary of the comments to the authors. In addition, this is an appropriate place to discuss any suspicions of ethical violations—either in the research itself or in the manner in which it is presented. Such issues might include suspected data manipulation or fraud, plagiarism, duplicate publications, or unethical treatment of animals or research subjects.

Reviews can and should be critical, but we ask reviewers to keep in mind that dismissive language and personalized criticisms may be viewed as reflecting bias or ulterior motives on the part of the referee.

Review Time

The editorial board recognizes that producing reviews and commentary within reasonable time is indeed a very important component within the scientific research community. Therefore, JTR considers fourteen days to be sufficient time to review a manuscript. However, we do appreciate that reviewers do have a number obligations in their personal lives. Of course, if a reviewer wishes to review the paper but would require more than ten days to do so, we ask that he/she contact the editorial office. It is important to inform the editor when a review is likely to be late; a revised estimate of the time until submission of the review and an explanation for the unexpected delay are invariably helpful.

Declining to review

If you are unable to review a paper with the Journal of Tourism Resilience, we very much appreciate suggestions for alternate reviewers that would be equally qualified to evaluate the paper.

Please see reviewer responsiblities before requesting to review an article

Reviewer Responsibility

  1. It is very important that reviewers, at all times, remain objective and impartial when making their comments, recommendations, etc. As such, reviewers are encouraged to remain cognizant of their probable causes for conflicts of interest, both real and perceived. If any potential impediment to objectivity may exist, reviewers should either decline to review the paper or, in cases when they are uncertain, contact the editor for advice. This advice should be considered if the manuscript be written by an author who has recently had close and personal interactions, be it on positive or negative terms, with the reviewer. The reviewer should also determine whether or not the manuscript of the author bears some amount of similarity to an ungoing or previously done research by the reviewer. Additionally, the reviewer should also take into consideration if they have any financial interest in a topic an author has written on.
  2. Reviewers should, at all times, maintain the confidentiality work yet to be published. Manuscripts, abstracts, among others, that are received by our editorial offices for peer review are confidential documents and will remain so until they are officially published. Should the reviewer require any additional information to confer with colleagues about the information within a paper, the reviewer must contact the editorial offices to within a reasonable amount of time to ensure confidentiality at no time, is breached. Reviewers can collaborate with trainees (graduate students and post-docs) in the evaluation of manuscripts, and we appreciate that such collaboration functions as an important training exercise. However, we ask that reviewers keep the number of collaborators to a minimum
  3. Unless at the expressed request of the reviewer, JTR will not disclose any reviewer's identity to external parties. The editorial offices will not confirm or deny any author queries related to reviewer identity; reviewers are encouraged to adopt a similar policy and to refrain from discussing with the authors any manuscript under active consideration. If an author contacts a reviewer, that reviewer should feel free to notify the editor.