Peer Review Process

All submissions are subject to a rigourous desk review, followed by a double-anonymous review process (meaning that authors and reviewers are kept anonymous from each other). Following the review process, a decision is made based on the following criteria:

1) The manuscripts are orginal in research content or offer comprehensive reviews and evaluations of key literature in a given field;

2) The manuscript is relevant to the journal's scope and aim;

3) The manuscript meets all applicable standards of ethics;

4) The manuscript conforms to the grammatical and stylistic conventions of the journal.

 

The editors take the reviewers' recommendations into consideration in determining revisions and publications. 

Authors with a manuscript already under review should not submit another article until a decision (accept or reject) has been made on the original submission. 

 

Book Reviews

Following the launch of a book reviews section in 2021, we invite scholars to contact the Book Review Editor about books they would like to review in the Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies. We are interested in reviews of books on any facet of Indian Ocean World Studies, although, due to a conflict of interest, we will not publish any reviews of books written by the JIOWS’ Editor in Chief, the Associate Editor(s), or the Managing Editors.

 

State of the Field Essays

In 2021, we launched the ‘State of the Field’ series. This is a semi-regular series of commissioned essays that discuss past, current, and future trends in Indian Ocean World Studies from different disciplinary standpoints. As with research articles, state of the field essays are subject to a rigourous peer review process. However, given the research specialisations of the journals’ editors, authors should expect that one of the reviewers mightbe from the JIOWS’ editorial team. Thus, one of the two reviews may not necessarily be ‘blind’ – although their reviews will be anonymized before being sent back to the author.