Editorial Procedures

The Evaluation of Submissions

To ensure its integrity, the refereeing process for all Unsolicited Contributions to the AJP is double-blind: the names and institutional affiliations of authors are revealed neither to referees nor Associate Editors; likewise, referees and Associate Editors remain anonymous both to each other and to the author in each particular case. Without the prior permission of the Editor, referees and Associate Editors will not show to other people material supplied to them for evaluation. All published submissions have been anonymously reviewed by at least two referees.

The evaluation process has up to five stages, as follows:

• preliminary vetting by the Editor
• refereeing, 1
• refereeing, 2
• scrutiny of submission and referees' reports by an Associate Editor
• final decision by the Editor

Successful completion of each stage will lead to the next, except that the penultimate stage may be omitted. Final decision about acceptance will be taken by the Editor.

In recent years the Journal has been accepting less than 10% of submissions.

Conflicts of Interest

The Editor (Stewart Candlish) will not submit Articles or be commissioned to write Critical Notices during his term of office. (He may submit replies to Articles or Discussion Notes which involve his work. In this case, he will not participate in the process of assessment, and an Associate Editor will serve as Proxy Editor throughout the process.) The Editorial Team (Candlish, Damnjanovic, Albahari, Horton) may be commissioned to do a maximum of two Reviews and/or Book Notes each per annum.

If an Associate Editor submits an Article, a Discussion Note, or is commissioned to write a Critical Notice, then s/he will not be involved, in any way, in the assessment process. The Editor will not participate in the evaluation of material submitted by a close colleague, joint grant holder, former student, etc.