Editorial and Peer Review Policy

Independent, double-anonymized, evidence-based review with documented editorial decisions

1. Submission and Administrative Check

1. The corresponding author submits through OJS and completes required metadata and declarations.
2. Editorial staff check file format, anonymization, required sections, authorship information, ethics statements, data availability, conflicts, permissions, references, and similarity-screening results.
3. Incomplete submissions may be returned for correction without a scientific decision. No fee determines whether a manuscript enters or passes peer review.

2. Preliminary Editorial Assessment

An unconflicted editor assesses alignment with the Focus and Scope, originality, scholarly contribution, methodological plausibility, presentation, legal and ethical risk, and compliance with the Author Guidelines. A manuscript may be declined without external review when it is clearly outside scope, insufficiently developed, duplicate, unreliable, unethical, or noncompliant. A desk decision includes a concise reason. Research articles are not accepted solely at this stage.

3. Review Model and Reviewer Selection

• JPM uses double-anonymized peer review: reviewer identities are not disclosed to authors, and the review file supplied to reviewers does not disclose author identities.
• A research manuscript is normally assessed by at least two independent reviewers with relevant subject or methodological expertise; an additional reviewer may be appointed when reports conflict materially or specialist advice is required.
• The handling editor checks expertise, publication record where relevant, availability, institutional and collaborative relationships, competing interests, and indications of peer-review manipulation.
• Authors may identify opposed reviewers with a reason, but the editor independently decides whether a nomination or exclusion is appropriate.
• Editors, board members, and publisher personnel receive no preferential treatment. Their submissions are assigned to an independent editor and reviewers without their participation in the decision.

4. Reviewer Assessment

Reviewers advise the editor on:

• fit with management scholarship, originality, research gap, and contribution;
• adequacy and transparency of theory, design, sampling, measurement, data, analysis, and reproducibility;
• accuracy and coherence of results, discussion, conclusions, limitations, and implications;
• ethical approval or exemption, consent, privacy, authorship, conflicts, funding, data availability, permissions, and AI disclosure; and
• clarity, organization, tables, figures, citations, and reference accuracy. Reviewers are not required to provide copyediting or language rewriting.

5. Confidentiality, Conflicts, and AI

Invitations, manuscripts, supplementary files, reviews, identities, and correspondence are confidential. Reviewers and editors must declare conflicts and recuse when necessary. They may not upload unpublished material to public generative-AI systems or use AI to replace human scholarly judgment. Suspected misconduct is reported privately to the handling editor and follows the Research Misconduct and Allegation Handling Policy.

6. Editorial Decisions

After considering the reports, manuscript, author responses, and applicable policies, the editor records one of the following decisions:

• Accept: the manuscript is suitable for production subject only to non-substantive editorial checks.
• Minor revision: limited corrections or clarifications are required.
• Major revision: substantial but potentially feasible changes are required and the manuscript may be returned to reviewers.
• Decline and resubmit: a fundamentally redesigned study may be considered only as a new submission with no presumption of acceptance.
• Decline: the manuscript has scope, originality, methodological, evidentiary, ethical, or presentation problems that cannot reasonably be resolved in the current submission.

Reviewers recommend; the handling editor makes the decision. The Editor-in-Chief provides oversight but must not override evidence, due process, conflict management, or editorial independence. A decision may be appealed for a material factual or procedural error under the Appeals and Complaints Policy.

7. Revision and Editorial Record

• Authors submit a clean revised manuscript, a marked version when requested, and a point-by-point response explaining every change or reasoned disagreement.
• The editor checks whether concerns were addressed and may seek further review. Revision is not a guarantee of acceptance.
• OJS retains invitations, declarations, reports, responses, decisions, dates, versions, and audit records subject to privacy and retention requirements.
• Reviewer acknowledgements or certificates may be issued without revealing confidential manuscripts or identities. JPM reviewers serve voluntarily and are not paid for favorable recommendations.

8. Timeliness and Communication

Each invitation and revision letter states a requested deadline. Actual duration may vary with subject complexity, reviewer availability, revisions, or integrity assessment. JPM does not sell or guarantee acceptance, a favorable report, or a fixed decision. Authors are informed of material delays through OJS. Reviewer applications may be sent to utamipublisher@gmail.com with expertise, affiliation, ORCID or scholarly profile, and a conflict declaration.