Aksen Journal of Contemporary Family Law
Aksen Journal of Contemporary Family Law (AJCFL) is committed to maintaining high standards of scholarly quality, academic integrity, fairness, and transparency in the evaluation of manuscripts. All research manuscripts considered suitable after preliminary editorial screening are evaluated through a double-blind peer-review process.
Peer review is intended to assist the editors in assessing the originality, methodological and analytical quality, scholarly significance, and suitability of manuscripts for publication, while providing authors with constructive academic feedback that may improve the quality of their work.
Under the double-blind review model, the identities of the authors are concealed from reviewers, and the identities of the reviewers are concealed from authors. This process is intended to reduce potential bias and ensure that manuscripts are evaluated primarily on their scholarly quality, relevance, originality, methodology, analysis, and contribution.
Every manuscript submitted to AJCFL undergoes preliminary screening by the editorial team before being sent for external peer review. The screening is intended to determine whether the manuscript satisfies the journal's basic scholarly and editorial requirements.
Manuscripts that clearly fall outside the journal's scope, lack sufficient scholarly quality, fail substantially to comply with the Author Guidelines, or present serious ethical or integrity concerns may be declined without external peer review.
Manuscripts that pass preliminary screening are normally assigned to at least two reviewers with relevant expertise in the manuscript's subject matter, legal field, methodology, jurisdiction, or theoretical approach.
Reviewers are selected on the basis of their scholarly expertise, research experience, independence, and ability to provide a fair and constructive assessment. Editors seek to avoid assigning reviewers who have known conflicts of interest that could reasonably affect the impartiality of the review.
Reviewers are asked to evaluate manuscripts on their scholarly merits. Depending on the nature of the submission, the principal assessment criteria include:
After completing their evaluation, reviewers submit comments for the author and confidential comments for the editor where appropriate. Reviewers may recommend one of the following outcomes:
| Recommendation | Description |
|---|---|
| Accept Submission | The manuscript is suitable for publication with no substantive revision required. |
| Minor Revision | The manuscript is potentially publishable but requires limited clarification, correction, or improvement. |
| Major Revision | The manuscript has publication potential but requires substantial revision to its argument, methodology, analysis, structure, sources, or other significant elements. |
| Decline Submission | The manuscript contains fundamental problems or does not meet the journal's scholarly requirements for publication. |
Where revision is requested, authors should carefully consider all reviewer and editorial comments and revise the manuscript accordingly. Authors are normally expected to submit:
Revised manuscripts may be assessed by the editor or returned to the original reviewer(s) for further evaluation. A manuscript may therefore undergo more than one round of review and revision before a final decision is reached.
Reviewer recommendations provide expert scholarly advice to the editor but do not constitute the final publication decision. The final decision to accept, request further revision, or decline a manuscript rests with the Editor or Editorial Board of AJCFL.
In reaching a decision, the editor considers the reviewers' reports, the author's responses and revisions, the manuscript's scholarly contribution, compliance with publication ethics, relevance to the journal's scope, and overall suitability for publication.
When reviewers provide substantially different or conflicting recommendations, the editor evaluates the substance of the reports rather than relying on a numerical majority. The editor may seek clarification from the reviewers, conduct an additional editorial assessment, or appoint an additional independent reviewer where further expert evaluation is necessary.
Manuscripts submitted for review are treated as confidential scholarly documents. Reviewers must not share, reproduce, distribute, discuss, or use unpublished material from a manuscript for personal or professional advantage. Information obtained through the peer-review process must remain confidential.
Reviewers should decline a review when a financial, professional, institutional, collaborative, personal, or other relationship could reasonably compromise, or appear to compromise, their impartiality. Reviewers who become aware of a potential conflict after accepting a review should promptly inform the editor.
Reviewers are expected to conduct evaluations objectively, professionally, constructively, and respectfully. Criticism should address the scholarly content of the manuscript rather than the author. Reviewers should identify significant published work that has not been appropriately acknowledged and should alert the editor to suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabricated or unreliable material, citation manipulation, or other potential breaches of research and publication integrity.
Reviewers must protect the confidentiality of unpublished manuscripts. Manuscripts, substantial manuscript content, or confidential review materials should not be uploaded to publicly accessible generative AI systems or other external services where confidentiality, data retention, or reuse cannot be adequately assured. Reviewers remain personally responsible for the accuracy, independence, integrity, and scholarly judgment of their review reports.
A useful peer-review report should provide clear reasons for its assessment and specific, actionable recommendations for improvement. Reviewers are encouraged to distinguish between essential revisions affecting the validity or publishability of the manuscript and optional suggestions that may improve presentation or further strengthen the discussion.
Reviewers should not require authors to cite the reviewer's own work unless such citations are genuinely relevant and academically necessary. Requests intended primarily to increase citations to particular authors, journals, or publications are inconsistent with AJCFL's standards of research integrity.
Successful completion of peer review does not in itself guarantee publication. A manuscript may be declined at any stage if substantive concerns arise regarding its scholarly quality, originality, ethical compliance, citation integrity, authorship, reliability of data or sources, or suitability for AJCFL. The final responsibility for editorial decisions rests with the journal.
