Peer Review Process

Submitted papers are evaluated by anonymous referees through a double-blind peer review process for contribution, originality, relevance, and presentation. The Editor shall inform you of the results of the review as soon as possible, ideally within 3 weeks. However, please note that due to the large number of submissions that PEARL has received in recent months, the duration of the review process may extend up to 3 months.

To ensure the integrity of the blind peer-review process for submissions to this journal, every effort should be made to prevent the identities of the authors and reviewers from being known to each other. This involves the authors, editors, and reviewers (who upload documents as part of their review) checking to ensure that the following steps have been taken regarding the text and file properties:

  • The authors of the document must delete their names from the text, using "Author" and year in references and footnotes instead of the author's name, article title, etc.

  • For Microsoft Office documents, author identification should also be removed from the file properties.

For Microsoft 2010 and previous versions, and Macintosh versions of Word:

  1. Under the File menu, select: Save As > Tools (or Options with a Mac) > Security > Remove personal information from file properties on save > Save.

For Macintosh Word 2013 (and future versions):

  1. Under the File menu, select "Properties."

  2. Under the Summary tab, remove all identifying information from all fields.

  3. Save the file.

For Microsoft 2018 (Windows):

  1. Click on the office button in the upper-left-hand corner of the office application.

  2. Select "Prepare" from the menu options.

  3. Select "Properties" for the "Prepare" menu options.

  4. Delete all the information in the document property fields under the main menu options.

  5. Save the document and close the document property field section.

For Microsoft 2019 (Windows):

  1. Under the File menu, select "Prepare for sharing."

  2. Click on the "Check for issues" icon.

  3. Click on the "Inspect Document" icon.

  4. Uncheck all the checkboxes except "Document Properties and Personal information."

  5. Run the document inspector, which will search for document properties and indicate if any fields contain information.

  6. If the document inspector finds document properties containing information, it will notify you and give you the option to "Remove all," which you should click to remove document properties and personal information from the document.

For PDF files:

With PDFs, authors' names should also be removed from Document Properties found under the File menu in Adobe Acrobat's main menu.