Qubahan Political Journal (QPJ) is committed to maintaining a rigorous, independent, confidential, fair, and transparent peer-review process. All research manuscripts submitted to QPJ undergo an initial editorial assessment and, where appropriate, external peer review before a final publication decision is made.

Peer-Review Model

QPJ uses a double-anonymous peer-review process. The identities of the authors are concealed from the reviewers, and the identities of the reviewers are concealed from the authors throughout the peer-review process.

Manuscripts that successfully pass initial editorial screening are normally evaluated by at least two independent external reviewers with appropriate expertise in the subject area.

Additional reviewers may be invited where necessary because of conflicting reviewer reports, specialized methodological or disciplinary requirements, or at the discretion of the handling editor.

Peer reviewers provide recommendations and expert assessments. The final editorial decision rests with the Editor-in-Chief or an authorized independent handling editor, who considers the manuscript, reviewer reports, authors' responses, ethical requirements, and the journal's editorial standards.

Initial Editorial Screening

Before external peer review, each manuscript is evaluated by the editorial office or handling editor to determine whether it meets the journal's basic requirements.

The initial assessment considers:

• relevance to the aims and scope of QPJ;

• originality and scholarly contribution;

• methodological, theoretical, or analytical quality;

• research and publication ethics;

• completeness and quality of reporting;

• textual similarity and potential plagiarism;

• language, structure, and overall presentation; and

• compliance with the journal's author guidelines.

Manuscripts that are clearly outside the journal's scope, lack sufficient scholarly quality or originality, contain serious methodological or ethical deficiencies, or fail to meet essential editorial requirements may be rejected without external peer review.

Selection of Reviewers

Reviewers are selected according to their subject expertise, academic experience, independence, and ability to provide a fair, rigorous, and constructive assessment.

Reviewers should decline an invitation when they:

• do not have sufficient expertise to evaluate the manuscript;

• have a financial, professional, personal, institutional, academic, or competitive conflict of interest;

• have recently collaborated closely with one or more of the authors;

• believe that their independence could reasonably be questioned; or

• cannot complete the review within the required period.

QPJ may verify reviewer identities, affiliations, institutional email addresses, ORCID records, publication histories, or other relevant professional information when necessary to protect the integrity of peer review.

Review Timeline

Invited reviewers are normally requested to accept or decline the review invitation within 5–7 days.

Once an invitation has been accepted, reviewers are normally expected to submit their review reports within 2–4 weeks.

Additional time may be granted where justified by the complexity of the manuscript or other reasonable circumstances.

The overall peer-review period may vary depending on reviewer availability, manuscript complexity, revision requirements, and whether additional expert assessment is necessary.

Reviewer Responsibilities

Reviewers are expected to evaluate manuscripts objectively, constructively, professionally, and confidentially.

Reviewers should focus on the scholarly quality, originality, methodological or analytical rigor, significance, clarity, ethical compliance, and relevance of the manuscript.

1. Originality and Scholarly Contribution

Reviewers should assess whether the manuscript presents a meaningful and original contribution to knowledge.

The work should provide new evidence, analysis, theoretical development, conceptual insight, methodological contribution, interpretation, synthesis, or other scholarly value appropriate to the journal's scope.

Reviewers should inform the handling editor if they identify substantial overlap with previously published work or have concerns regarding plagiarism, duplicate publication, redundant publication, inappropriate text reuse, or other forms of publication misconduct.

2. Research Design, Methods, and Analysis

The research design, theoretical or conceptual framework, data sources, sampling strategy, analytical methods, and research procedures should be appropriate to the research questions and clearly described.

QPJ welcomes quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods, comparative, theoretical, conceptual, historical, interdisciplinary, and action research. Reviewers should evaluate manuscripts according to accepted scholarly standards appropriate to the methodology and discipline concerned.

The evidence and analysis should adequately support the findings, interpretations, and conclusions presented.

3. Results, Findings, and Interpretation

Results and findings should be presented clearly, accurately, and objectively.

The interpretation of results should be supported by the evidence presented.

Authors should distinguish clearly between evidence, interpretation, inference, and speculation.

Limitations of the study should be appropriately acknowledged where relevant.

4. Literature and References

The manuscript should demonstrate appropriate engagement with relevant scholarly literature.

References should be relevant, sufficiently current where appropriate, and accurately represented.

Reviewers may identify important omitted literature when it is directly relevant to the manuscript.

Reviewers must not request citations primarily for the purpose of increasing citations to themselves, their colleagues, the journal, particular institutions, or selected publications without genuine scholarly justification.

5. Structure, Clarity, and Presentation

The manuscript should be logically organized, coherent, and sufficiently clear for the intended scholarly audience.

Reviewers may identify language, structure, presentation, or clarity problems where these interfere with understanding of the research.

Reviewers should focus primarily on scholarly quality rather than acting solely as copy editors.

6. Research and Publication Ethics

Reviewers should consider whether the manuscript complies with applicable ethical standards.

Where relevant, this includes:

• ethical approval for research involving human participants;

• informed consent;

• protection of vulnerable participants;

• confidentiality and privacy;

• appropriate treatment of research data;

• authorship and contributorship;

• conflicts of interest;

• funding disclosure;

• appropriate attribution and citation;

• image, figure, and data integrity; and

• responsible use of artificial intelligence and computational tools.

Suspected ethical or research-integrity concerns should be reported confidentially to the handling editor.

Reviewers should not independently investigate allegations or contact authors, institutions, or third parties regarding a confidential manuscript without authorization from the journal.

Confidentiality

All manuscripts, supplementary materials, reviewer reports, editorial correspondence, and unpublished information received during peer review are confidential.

Reviewers must not:

• share or discuss manuscripts with unauthorized individuals;

• distribute manuscript files or unpublished data;

• use unpublished information, ideas, methods, results, or interpretations for personal, academic, professional, financial, or competitive advantage;

• contact authors directly regarding the manuscript without permission from the journal; or

• retain or circulate manuscript materials beyond what is necessary to complete the review.

If a reviewer wishes to involve a colleague, trainee, or co-reviewer, prior permission must be obtained from the handling editor.

Any approved contributor must be identified to the journal and must comply with the same confidentiality, independence, and conflict-of-interest requirements.

Generative Artificial Intelligence and Peer Review

Submitted manuscripts and associated materials are confidential.

Reviewers must not upload manuscripts, figures, tables, supplementary materials, unpublished data, personal information, or identifiable portions of submitted work to publicly accessible generative artificial intelligence systems or other external services where confidentiality, data security, or retention cannot be guaranteed.

Reviewers remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, confidentiality, integrity, and professional quality of their review reports.

Any permitted use of artificial intelligence-assisted tools must comply with QPJ's GenAI Policy, confidentiality requirements, data-protection obligations, and applicable ethical standards.

Conflicts of Interest

Reviewers must disclose any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest before accepting a review or as soon as such a conflict becomes apparent.

Conflicts may include:

• financial interests;

• personal relationships;

• institutional relationships;

• recent collaborations;

• academic competition;

• supervisory relationships;

• intellectual disputes; or

• any other circumstance that could reasonably affect impartial judgment.

The handling editor will determine whether the reviewer should continue with or withdraw from the review process.

Objectivity and Professional Conduct

Reviewer reports should be constructive, evidence-based, respectful, and focused on the scholarly work.

Personal criticism of authors, discriminatory remarks, hostile or inappropriate language, defamatory statements, or comments unrelated to the academic quality of the manuscript are unacceptable.

Reviewers should explain the reasoning behind their recommendations and provide sufficiently detailed comments to assist both the editor and the authors.

Reviewer Recommendations

After completing the assessment, reviewers may recommend one of the following:

• Accept

• Minor Revision

• Major Revision

• Reject

Reviewer recommendations are advisory and do not independently determine the editorial decision.

The handling editor evaluates the quality and reasoning of the reviewer reports and may seek clarification, invite an additional reviewer, request revision, or make an editorial recommendation to the Editor-in-Chief.

Revised Manuscripts

Authors invited to revise their manuscripts should normally submit:

1. a revised manuscript; and

2. a detailed point-by-point response explaining how each reviewer and editor comment has been addressed.

Where authors do not follow a particular recommendation, they should provide a clear scholarly explanation.

Minor revisions may be assessed by the handling editor.

Major revisions may be returned to the original reviewers or sent to additional reviewers when appropriate.

Submission of a revised manuscript does not guarantee acceptance.

Conflicting Reviewer Reports

Where reviewer reports substantially disagree, the handling editor evaluates the reasoning, evidence, methodological concerns, and scholarly arguments contained in each report.

The editor may:

• request clarification from the reviewers;

• invite an additional independent reviewer;

• request further revision from the authors; or

• reach an editorial recommendation based on the available evidence.

Editorial decisions are not determined solely by counting reviewer recommendations.

Editorial Independence and Conflicted Submissions

Manuscripts submitted by the Editor-in-Chief, editors, editorial-board members, journal staff, publisher representatives, owners, or individuals with a close professional or personal relationship to the journal are subject to the same scholarly, ethical, and peer-review standards as all other submissions.

Such manuscripts are assigned to an independent handling editor who has no relevant conflict of interest.

They are evaluated by at least two independent external reviewers.

The submitting or conflicted individual will not participate in:

• reviewer selection;

• access to confidential reviewer identities;

• editorial correspondence concerning the decision;

• editorial deliberations; or

• the final publication decision.

The journal will take appropriate measures to ensure that editorial or ownership relationships do not influence the peer-review process.

Misconduct and Ethical Concerns Identified During Review

If a reviewer identifies possible plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, duplicate publication, inappropriate image manipulation, authorship concerns, citation manipulation, undeclared conflicts of interest, ethical approval concerns, or other possible misconduct, the reviewer should notify the handling editor confidentially and provide relevant evidence where possible.

The reviewer should not contact the authors or their institutions directly.

The editorial team will evaluate the concern in accordance with the journal's publication-ethics procedures and internationally recognized publication-ethics principles.

Final Editorial Decision

The final editorial decision is based on:

• originality and scholarly contribution;

• methodological, theoretical, or analytical quality;

• relevance to QPJ's aims and scope;

• clarity and quality of reporting;

• reviewers' assessments;

• authors' responses and revisions;

• compliance with ethical and publication-integrity requirements; and

• the independent editorial judgment of the responsible editor.

Possible decisions include:

• Accept

• Minor Revision

• Major Revision

• Reject

The final decision rests with the Editor-in-Chief or an authorized independent editor.

QPJ reserves the right to reject manuscripts that do not meet the journal's scholarly, methodological, ethical, or editorial standards.

Ethical Guidance for Peer Reviewers

QPJ expects reviewers to follow internationally recognized principles of ethical peer review, including:

• confidentiality;

• independence and impartiality;

• disclosure of competing interests;

• timely completion of reviews;

• objective and constructive assessment;

• appropriate use of confidential information;

• responsible citation practices; and

• reporting of suspected ethical concerns through the journal's editorial process.

Reviewers are encouraged to consult the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers when additional guidance is required.