Peer Review
Peer review is a critical procedure to ensure the academic quality and validity of published manuscripts. Reviewers are experts who volunteer their time to improve manuscripts; their contributions are sincerely acknowledged and respected.
GENERAL POLICY
This journal adheres to the core principles of publication ethics as defined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The peer review process may operate in single-blind, double-blind, open, or transparent modes, with double-blind review being primary for this journal.
We invite worldwide experts in the relevant field to make a double-blind peer review of manuscripts submitted by authors. Review comments are fully considered to ensure the academic value of the journal. The primary task of reviewers is to evaluate the validity of the approach, the significance and originality of the finding, its interest and timeliness to the scientific community, and the clarity of the writing. A qualified peer reviewer should send his/her feedback (even decline to review due to some reasons) as per the time frame of the journal. All peer reviewers must maintain a strict and perpetual confidentiality for the content of all manuscripts under their review and for any related correspondences with the journal editorial team. Reviewers must not share any part of the manuscript with a third party or discuss its content with the authors of the manuscript or any other person. Reviewers must not plagiarize or cite any of the contents of a manuscript before the manuscript has been formally published. Reviewers will decline participation in the peer review process for any manuscript if a conflict of interest exists, including interests related to the manuscript’s authors, personal interests, or academic or economic interests. If a conflict of interest becomes apparent during the peer review process, the reviewer must inform the Editorial Office immediately. The following reasons are adequate, alone or in combination, for rejection of a manuscript for publication:
(1) The scientific content does not correspond to the journal’s aims and scope;
(2) The research is not reasonably designed and the data are inadequate to support proper explanations or conclusions;
(3) Related work has been previously published and only a few new points have been added;
(4) The article contains accumulated information that has been previously published, with only few technical improvements;
(5) The article is expected to attract only a very small portion of the journal’s readership audience;
(6) The article has been rejected previously and resubmitted without adding any new valuable content.
How the Editorial Team deals with your submission—please read carefully as this contains important information for you
To ensure that the Editorial Team is able to dedicate sufficient time to making sure that each manuscript under consideration receives the attention it deserves, the Journal has adopted a two-stage selection process.
In stage one, the Editor-in-Chief will make the initial assessment of the potential and relevance of the manuscript. This will be based on the Journal objectives as stated in the Aims and Scope section with the primary questions being:
1.Does this article contribute to either theoretical advancement and/or to potentially informing policy and practice in vocational education/technology study/higher education?
2.Is the article appropriately grounded in vocational education/technology study/higher education literature?
3.Will this article be of interest to our international and diverse audience?
4.Is the article within the journal’s word limit and does it meet other technical requirements?
Manuscripts that do not clearly meet these minimum expectations will be desk rejected.
The abstract: To facilitate the initial assessment of your manuscript, please ensure that the abstract clearly communicates the contributions, approach, and significance of the study. While the initial review will consider the full manuscript, an unclear abstract may be a reason for desk rejection if it hinders the ability of editors and reviewers to understand the nature of the study.
If your manuscript proceeds to stage two, it will be sent on to one of the Associate Editors for closer scrutiny. They will undertake a more detailed look at the manuscript, assessing its theoretical foundations, implications for policy and practice, methodological soundness, and conclusions, including the broader significance of the study. If they feel that your contribution addresses these aspects in sufficient depth, with clarity and rigour, they will then select appropriate peer reviewers and send the manuscript out for full expert review. If their assessment is negative, the manuscript will be rejected at this point in stage two.
Reviewer selection is a carefully constructed process to ensure that, if your paper gets to the review stage, it will receive at least two expert, anonymous, independent peer reviews. The final editorial decision is made by the Editor-in-Chief.
In the case of rejection, at either stage, we aim to let you know within four weeks of our decision so that you may seek an alternative publication outlet. We believe a quick process is in the interest of all concerned.
I. Responsibilities of Editors
Editors must:
1.Ensure confidentiality of manuscripts and reviewer identities throughout the review process.
2.Declare and avoid conflicts of interest (e.g., institutional, financial, or collaborative ties to authors) when handling submissions.
3.Make initial screening decisions based on academic merit, scope fit, and ethical compliance (e.g., plagiarism, data fabrication).
4.Select unbiased reviewers with relevant expertise, avoiding those from the same institution as authors or with recent co-authorship relationships.
5.Handle appeals or complaints according to COPE guidelines, ensuring due process.
II. Responsibilities of Reviewers
Reviewers must:
1.Confidentiality & Data Security
Maintain perpetual confidentiality of manuscript content and related correspondence.
Do not share, discuss, or upload manuscripts to non-secure platforms (including AI tools).
2.Conflict of Interest
Decline review if conflicts exist (e.g., competitive research, financial ties, personal/professional relationships with authors).
Immediately notify the Editorial Office if conflicts emerge during review.
3.Timeliness & Integrity
Provide feedback within the journal’s timeframe or decline promptly.
Do not plagiarize or cite unpublished manuscript content.
Use AI tools only for language polishing (not for content analysis/decision-making), and disclose usage in comments to editors.
4.Ethical Vigilance
Identify potential ethical violations (e.g., unattributed text reuse, unethical data collection).
III. Authors' Obligations
Authors must:
Disclose AI-assisted writing tools (e.g., ChatGPT) in the cover letter and methods section. AI cannot be listed as an author or cited as a source.
Ensure originality of all content, including AI-generated text/images.
IV. Appeal
The authors have the right to appeal if they have a genuine cause to believe that the editorial board has wrongly rejected the paper. If the authors wish to appeal against the editorial decision, they should email the editorial office (Email: editorialoffice@wsrjournal.org) explaining in detail the reason for the appeal. The appeals will be acknowledged by the editorial office and will be investigated in an unbiased manner. The processing of appeals will be done within 6–8 weeks. While under appeal, the said manuscript should not be submitted to other journals. The final decision rests with the Editor-in-Chief of the journal. Second appeals are not considered.
REVIEWER SELECTION AND VERIFICATION
Researchers, clinicians and other professionals with the related interest may be invited to participate the peer review process. Before being involved in the peer review process, the journal editor will verify the identity of the reviewers by using ORCID search, PubMed search, Google Scopus search, etc., or sending mails to ask for detailed CV of the reviewers if the reviewers will. Generally, a reviewer will be evaluated after he/she completed several reviews for his/her qualification.
Authors may also suggest potential reviewers if they wish; however, it will be decided by editors whether or not to use these reviewers. Authors should not suggest those reviewers who are recent collaborators or colleagues, or have some potential conflicts of interest to participate. The journal requests authors who wish to suggest peer reviewers to state clearly in the cover letter about the detailed information of the reviewers including institutions, and institutional email addresses by which the journal editor will verify the identity of the reviewer.
Sometimes authors should exclude those people or groups from peer reviewers of their articles, i.e., who has potential conflicts, and the reasons of exclusion should be stressed in their cover letter on submission. But authors should not exclude too many as they wish, because this may also impact the normal peer review process. There is still the point to emphasize, editors will decide to choose the proper reviewers, even those authors excluded.
Last but not least, authors MUST suggest reviewers with correct information. As soon as intentionally falsifying information is found, rejections of the manuscript will be caused and further investigations may initiate for the authors publication history as per the publication ethics.
MAJOR POINTS TO BE ADDRESSED IN THE COMMENTS
Reviewers should evaluate:
1.Importance and significance of findings.
2.Novelty and innovation.
3.Quality of presentation and readability.
4.Ethics compliance (e.g., IRB approval for human/animal studies, informed consent).
5.Soundness of study design and supporting data.
6.Language quality (flag if professional polishing is needed).
SPECIFIC POINTS TO BE ADDRESSED IN THE COMMENTS
Title/Abstract: Accuracy and clarity of research scope and innovation.
Methods: Sufficient detail for reproducibility; appropriateness of statistics.
Results: Adequacy of evidence and data presentation.
Discussion: Logical organization and evidence-supported conclusions.
References: Relevance, appropriateness, and up-to-date sources (≥ 50% within 3 years recommended).
Tables/Figures: Conciseness and alignment with key findings.
Please contact us for more policy regarding peer review.
Publication Ethics
WSR is committed to meeting and upholding standards of ethical behavior at all stages of the publication process. We follow closely the industry associations, such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), that set standards and provide guidelines for best practices in order to meet these requirements.
Ethics approval documentation
Research involving human participants, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. A clear statement, including the name of the ethics committee and the reference number where appropriate, must appear in the method part of all manuscripts reporting such research. If authors declared that his study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, and this exemption should also be stated in the proper part of the manuscript. Editors may contact authors for further information and documentation to support this, it should be made available to the Editor on request. And editors have the right to reject manuscripts if they consider the research has not been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework. The editors may also contact the ethics committee for further information, if necessary.
Retrospective ethics approval
If a study has not been granted ethics committee approval prior to commencing, retrospective ethics approval usually cannot be obtained and it may not be possible to consider the manuscript for peer review. The decision on whether to proceed to peer review in such cases is at the Editor's discretion.
There are recognized exceptions where a study may not require ethics approval. These include:
1. When national policy exempt a particular type of study from requiring ethical approval.
2. When a study has been granted an exemption by an ethics or institution committee.
3. When there was no ethics or institutional committee in place at a researcher's institution at the time the study was conducted.
Consent to participate
For all research involving human participants, informed consent to participate in the study should be obtained from participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 16) and a statement to this effect should appear in the declaration part of the manuscript.
Research involving animals
Experimental research on vertebrates or any regulated invertebrates must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines, and where available should have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee (e.g., Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee). Evidence for approval must be supplied by the authors on demand. Animal experimental procedures should be as humane as possible and the details of anesthetics and analgesics used should be clearly stated. The ethical standards of experiments must be in accordance with the guidelines (Basel Declaration, etc). Any manuscript describing a study that used animal subjects must include a statement in the Materials and Methods section (or text describing the experimental procedures) that affirms all appropriate measures were taken to minimize pain or discomfort, and details of the animals’ care should be provided.
AI policy
Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, even those parts produced by GenAI. Authors who have used GenAI in their research and the writing of manuscripts should provide an open, transparent, and detailed description of the use of GenAI (including the name and version of the GenAI tool, when it was used, how it was used, and the process of using it, and, if necessary, annotations for AI-assisted contents dealing with facts and opinions), and review of GenAI, following the body of the text, before the references, or in the method section (e.g., the authors have reviewed and edited the GenAI-produced content, and take full responsibility for the authenticity and accuracy of the content of this paper). It is recommended that authors submit and archive the GenAI-assisted sections (text, figures, programs, etc.) as supplementary material so that reviewers and editors can judge the accuracy, integrity,and originality of the paper.
Since GenAI cannot assume responsibility for the submitted content or manage copyright and licensing agreements, GenAI-related products and developing teams cannot be listed as the author of a paper.
GenAI cannot be used to write an entire paper or a significant portion of a paper (e.g., method, result and analysis, etc.). All content that falls under the category of scientific contribution or intellectual labor should be finished by the author. If the main content of the paper is completed using GenAI, the editorial office will handle it as academic misconduct.
Using third-party material
You must obtain the necessary permission to reuse third-party material in your article. The use of short extracts of text and some other types of material is usually permitted, on a limited basis, for the purposes of criticism and review without securing formal permission. If you wish to include any material in your paper for which you do not hold copyright, and which is not covered by this informal agreement, you will need to obtain written permission from the copyright owner prior to submission.
A copy of the permission obtained must accompany the manuscript. Copies of any and all published articles or other manuscripts in preparation or submitted elsewhere that are related to the manuscript must also accompany the manuscript. The material should be sent to any of the two addresses given above.
Authorship
The journal request authors to fulfil the criteria below: Each author is expected to have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work; or have drafted the work or substantively revised it. All authors should approve the submission, agree their contributions stated in the manuscript, and admit others contributions as proper authors.
Author Contributions
Generally, the journal follows CRediT rule. Journals mandating CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) will enable authors to provide information on submission, allowing for detailed information about individual contributions to the work. The submitting author is responsible for ensuring that contributions of all authors are correct. It is expected that all authors will have reviewed, discussed and agreed to their individual contributions as shared by the submitting author. The authors’ contribution statement will be published with the final article and should accurately reflect contributions to the work.
An example of an Authors’ Contribution statement:
Author 1 name: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software. Author 2 name: Data curation, Writing- Original draft preparation. Author 3 name: Visualization, Investigation. Author 4 name: Supervision. Author 5 name: Software, Validation. Author 6 name: Writing- Reviewing and Editing.
For more information, please see the taxonomy website: https://credit.niso.org/
Acknowledgements
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an ‘Acknowledgements’ section.
Conflict of interests
All authors must disclose any conflict of interest. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding. Details must be included at the end of your manuscript and in a file that must be uploaded on submission. If there are no conflicts of interest then please state this: The author has no conflicts of interest to declare.
Data availability statements
Data availability statements are required for all articles published in WSR. During the peer review and editorial decision process, authors can be asked to share existing datasets or raw data that have been analyzed in the manuscript, and whether they will be made available to other researchers following publication. Authors will also be asked for the details of any existing datasets that have been analyzed in the manuscript.
Permanent archive
To ensure long-term digital preservation, all the published articles will be archived on Portico platform.
Clinical trial registration
The journal favors registration of clinical trials and is a signatory to the Statement on publishing clinical trials in biomedical journals. The journal would publish clinical trials that have been registered with a clinical trial registry that allows free online access to public. Registration in the following trial registers is acceptable:
http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/
http://www.trialregister.nl/trialreg/index.asp
This is applicable to clinical trials that have begun enrollment of subjects in or after June 2008. Clinical trials that have commenced enrollment of subjects prior to June 2008 would be considered for publication in the journal only if they have been registered retrospectively with clinical trial registry that allows unhindered online access to public without charging any fees.
OA License
Well-Being Sciences Review (WSR, ISSN 3006-497X) an open-access academic journal.
The journal is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, which means that all content is freely available to users and their institutions without charge. Users are permitted to share the material (including copying, redistributing it in any medium or format) and adapt it (including remixing, transforming, and building upon it) in accordance with the license terms. Specifically, users may read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, link to the full texts, or use the content for any other lawful non-commercial purpose, without the need to obtain prior permission from the publisher or the author.
Copyright on articles published in any open-access journal is retained by the author(s).
Authors grant the journal a “License to Publish” for the article and identify the journal as the original publisher.
Authors also grant any third party the right to use the article freely as long as its integrity is maintained and its original authors, citation details and publisher are identified.
Where an author is prevented from being the copyright holder, minor variations may be required and specific statement will be added to the copyright declaration of the article.
Some Exceptions
Although in all such cases, access to the OA articles is free from fees or any other access restrictions, there are some exceptions.
If you need information specifically regarding permissions and reprints, please contact us by the address on Contact page. We would be happy to explain and help.
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About Misconduct
WSR is a member of CrossCheck’s plagiarism detection initiative and takes seriously all cases of publication misconduct. Any suspected cases of covert duplicate manuscript submission will be handled as outlined in the COPE guidelines and the Editor may contact the authors’ institution. Detailed policy can be found at the WSR homepage: https://www.ists.asia/WSR/
Plagiarism
Authors must not use the words, figures, or ideas of others without attribution. All sources must be cited at the point they are used, and reuse of wording must be limited and be attributed or quoted in the text.
The journal uses Crossref Similarity Check (iThenticate) to detect submissions that overlap with published and submitted manuscripts.
Manuscripts that are found to have been plagiarized from a manuscript by other authors, whether published or unpublished, will be rejected and the authors may incur sanctions. Any published articles may need to be corrected or retracted.
Duplicate submission and redundant publication
The journal considers only original content, i.e. articles that have not been previously published. Articles based on content previously made public only on a preprint server, institutional repository, or in a thesis will be considered.
Manuscripts submitted to the journal must not be submitted elsewhere while under consideration and must be withdrawn before being submitted elsewhere. Authors whose articles are found to have been simultaneously submitted elsewhere may incur sanctions.
If authors have used their own previously published work, or work that is currently under review, as the basis for a submitted manuscript, they must cite the previous articles and indicate how their submitted manuscript differs from their previous work. Reuse of the authors’ own words outside the Methods should be attributed or quoted in the text. Reuse of the authors’ own figures or substantial amounts of wording may require permission from the copyright holder and the authors are responsible for obtaining this.
The journal will consider extended versions of articles published at conferences provided this is declared in the cover letter, the previous version is clearly cited and discussed, there is significant new content, and any necessary permissions are obtained.
Redundant publication, the inappropriate division of study outcomes into more than one article (also known as salami slicing), may result in rejection or a request to merge submitted manuscripts, and the correction of published articles. Duplicate publication of the same, or a very similar, article may result in the retraction of the later article and the authors may incur sanctions.
Citation manipulation
Authors whose submitted manuscripts are found to include citations whose primary purpose is to increase the number of citations to a given author’s work, or to articles published in a particular journal, may incur sanctions.
Editors and reviewers must not ask authors to include references merely to increase citations to their own or an associate’s work, to the journal, or to another journal they are associated with.
Fabrication and falsification
The authors of submitted manuscripts or published articles that are found to have fabricated or falsified the results, including the manipulation of images, may incur sanctions, and published articles may be retracted.
Corrections and retractions
In line with the journal’s policy, corrections to, or retractions of, published articles will be made by publishing a Correction or a Retraction note bidirectionally linked to the original article.
Changes to published articles that affect the interpretation and conclusion of the article, but do not fully invalidate the article, will, at the Editor(s)’ discretion, be corrected via publication of a Correction that is indexed and bidirectionally linked to the original article.
On rare occasions, when the interpretation or conclusion of an article is substantially undermined, it may be necessary for published articles to be retracted. The journal will follow the COPE guidelines in such cases. Retraction notices are indexed and bidirectionally linked to the original article. The original article is watermarked as retracted and the title is amended with the prefix “Retracted article:”
Copyright: © International Society for Translational Science, except Open Access articles
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