Jurnal Desain applies a rigorous, independent, and transparent editorial and peer-review process to ensure the scholarly quality, integrity, relevance, and publication readiness of all manuscripts.
All manuscripts are evaluated on the basis of their scholarly merit, methodological appropriateness, originality, analytical contribution, ethical compliance, and relevance to the journal's Focus and Scope. Editorial and peer-review decisions are made independently of commercial considerations, including Article Processing Charges (APCs) and Fast-Track Review fees.
Jurnal Desain applies a double-blind peer-review system, in which the identities of authors and reviewers are concealed from one another.
1. Submission of Manuscript
Authors must submit manuscripts through the Jurnal Desain Open Journal Systems (OJS) and comply with the journal's Author Guidelines, Article Template, Submission Preparation Checklist, and applicable publication policies.
Submission of a manuscript does not automatically guarantee progression to external peer review.
All submitted manuscripts are first subjected to administrative and editorial assessment.
2. Preliminary Administrative Completeness Check
Before scholarly evaluation, the editorial office conducts a preliminary administrative check to determine whether the submission meets the journal's basic submission requirements.
The check may include:
- completeness of the manuscript file;
- use of the official Article Template;
- completeness of OJS metadata;
- submission of the Author Integrity Declaration;
- manuscript length;
- required language components;
- required declarations;
- figure and table requirements;
- reference requirements;
- similarity screening;
- ethical documentation where applicable; and
- other administrative or technical requirements specified by the journal.
Manuscripts with incomplete or substantially non-compliant submission requirements may be returned to the authors for correction before further editorial assessment.
An administrative return does not constitute a scholarly peer-review decision or rejection based on the academic merit of the manuscript.
3. Initial Editorial Assessment
Manuscripts that pass the preliminary administrative check undergo an Initial Editorial Assessment conducted by the Editor-in-Chief and/or a designated Editor.
The assessment determines whether the manuscript is sufficiently suitable and developed to proceed to external peer review.
The Initial Editorial Assessment considers, among other matters:
- relevance to the Focus and Scope of Jurnal Desain;
- suitability of the manuscript type;
- clarity and significance of the research problem;
- adequacy of the state of the art and research gap;
- originality and potential scholarly contribution;
- appropriateness and transparency of the research method;
- adequacy of research data or evidence;
- analytical depth;
- quality and relevance of visual evidence where applicable;
- quality and currency of references;
- research and publication ethics;
- similarity and potential research-integrity concerns; and
- overall scholarly readiness for external peer review.
Possible outcomes of the Initial Editorial Assessment are:
- Proceed to Peer Review
- Revision
- Reject Submission
Where revision is requested at the Initial Editorial Assessment stage, authors are normally given 7 days to submit the revised manuscript and address the editorial requirements identified in the assessment. If no revision is received within this period, the editorial office may issue a reminder and provide a final additional 7 days. If the author neither submits the required revision nor contacts the editorial office within the additional period, the submission may be declined from further editorial processing due to non-response. Authors who require additional time should contact the editorial office before the applicable deadline.
A manuscript declined at the Initial Editorial Assessment stage may be submitted again as a new submission if the authors have substantially revised and developed the manuscript in response to the identified editorial concerns. Any resubmission will be treated as a new submission and will undergo a new administrative check and Initial Editorial Assessment.
Manuscripts may therefore be declined without external review when they are outside the journal's scope, lack sufficient scholarly contribution, contain fundamental methodological deficiencies, do not satisfy minimum research-integrity requirements, or are otherwise unsuitable for further consideration.
The Initial Editorial Assessment is normally completed within approximately 14 days after administrative completeness has been confirmed.
4. Assignment of Section Editor
A manuscript approved for external peer review may be assigned to a Section Editor with relevant subject expertise.
The Section Editor assists in coordinating the peer-review process, identifying appropriate reviewers, evaluating reviewer reports, examining author revisions and responses, and providing an editorial recommendation to the Editor-in-Chief.
The final editorial decision remains the responsibility of the Editor-in-Chief.
5. Reviewer Selection and Qualifications
Each manuscript proceeding to external peer review is normally evaluated by two independent qualified reviewers.
Reviewers are selected based on criteria including:
- subject expertise relevant to the manuscript;
- methodological or theoretical competence;
- an identifiable and verifiable scholarly publication record;
- relevant scholarly activity, particularly within the previous three years;
- independence from the authors and their research;
- absence of relevant conflicts of interest;
- ability to provide substantive scholarly evaluation; and
- willingness to comply with the journal's confidentiality, publication-ethics, and Artificial Intelligence policies.
The journal seeks appropriate institutional and international diversity within its reviewer pool.
Qualified members of the Editorial Advisory Board may be invited to serve as peer reviewers where their expertise is relevant, provided that they satisfy the same reviewer qualification, independence, confidentiality, and conflict-of-interest requirements applied to other reviewers.
External peer reviewers are independent scholarly evaluators and do not make the final editorial decision on manuscripts they review.
Reviewer selection is based on scholarly suitability rather than personal, institutional, commercial, or other non-academic considerations.
6. Reviewer Invitation and Response
Selected reviewers receive an invitation containing the manuscript title, abstract, relevant review information, and instructions for accepting or declining the assignment.
Reviewers are normally requested to accept or decline the invitation within 7 days. For the regular review pathway, the overall reviewer assignment window is normally 28 days from the initial review invitation, including the invitation-response period.
If an invited reviewer declines, does not respond within the expected period, identifies a conflict of interest, or is otherwise unable to undertake the review, another qualified reviewer may be invited.
Once the reviewer accepts the assignment, the remaining review period is used to complete the scholarly evaluation within the applicable reviewer assignment window.
The time required to secure two suitable reviewers may vary depending on reviewer availability.
7. Double-Blind Peer Review
Jurnal Desain applies a double-blind peer-review process.
Under this system:
- reviewers do not receive the authors' identities during review;
- authors are not informed of reviewer identities; and
- reviewer reports are communicated to authors without disclosing reviewer identities.
Authors are responsible for preparing manuscripts in a manner that supports blind review and should avoid unnecessary information that directly reveals their identities.
The editorial office takes reasonable measures to preserve author and reviewer anonymity throughout the review process.
8. Review Period
For manuscripts processed through the regular review pathway, the reviewer assignment is normally scheduled within an overall period of approximately 28 days from the initial review invitation. Reviewers are normally requested to respond to the invitation within 7 days, leaving approximately 21 days after acceptance to complete the scholarly evaluation.
The 28-day period represents the overall reviewer assignment window, including the invitation-response period and the subsequent manuscript evaluation period.
It does not represent the total time from initial submission to editorial decision or online publication.
Where additional review rounds are required, a new reviewer evaluation period may apply.
The journal may replace reviewers when a review cannot reasonably be completed within the expected period.
9. Review Criteria and Reviewer Responsibilities
Peer review at Jurnal Desain is intended to provide a substantive scholarly assessment, rather than merely proofreading, language correction, or technical formatting review.
Depending on the nature of the manuscript, reviewers are expected to evaluate relevant aspects including:
- relevance to the journal's Focus and Scope;
- importance and clarity of the research problem;
- adequacy of the state of the art;
- research gap and originality;
- scholarly contribution;
- appropriateness and transparency of the methodology;
- adequacy of research objects, participants, corpus, data, or evidence;
- analytical depth;
- application of theories or concepts;
- interpretation of findings;
- relationship between findings and previous research;
- quality and analytical function of visual evidence;
- validity and relevance of conclusions;
- research integrity and ethical considerations;
- quality and appropriateness of references; and
- overall scholarly and publication readiness.
Reviewer comments should be specific, constructive, evidence-based, and sufficiently clear to assist authors in improving the manuscript.
Personal criticism, discriminatory language, unsupported allegations, or comments unrelated to scholarly evaluation are inappropriate.
10. Artificial Intelligence in Peer Review
Peer reviewers must conduct their evaluations personally, independently, and without the use of generative Artificial Intelligence or AI-assisted systems.
Reviewers are not permitted to use AI systems to:
- read or analyse the manuscript;
- evaluate its scholarly quality;
- summarise manuscript content;
- translate confidential manuscript material for review purposes;
- generate or substantially formulate reviewer comments;
- rewrite or refine reviewer reports;
- complete review forms;
- formulate reviewer recommendations;
- determine editorial recommendations; or
- upload the manuscript, figures, tables, data, supplementary materials, or any portion of confidential submission material to an AI system.
The manuscript and its supporting materials are confidential documents.
Reviewers must comply with the journal's Artificial Intelligence (AI) Policy throughout the review process.
11. Confidentiality and Conflict of Interest
All manuscripts under review must be treated as confidential.
Reviewers must not:
- disclose manuscript contents to unauthorized parties;
- distribute or reproduce manuscript materials;
- use unpublished information, data, ideas, visual materials, or findings for personal or professional advantage; or
- contact authors directly regarding the manuscript.
Reviewers must disclose any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest before accepting or continuing a review.
Potential conflicts may include relevant personal, professional, financial, institutional, collaborative, competitive, or other relationships that could reasonably affect impartial judgment.
Where a significant conflict exists, the reviewer should decline or withdraw from the assignment.
12. Evaluation of Review Reports
Reviewer recommendations serve as expert advice to the editorial team and do not automatically determine the editorial decision.
The Section Editor evaluates:
- the substance and quality of each review;
- the evidentiary basis of reviewer criticisms;
- the significance of identified weaknesses;
- the feasibility of revision;
- the manuscript's overall scholarly contribution; and
- compliance with journal standards.
Editorial decisions are therefore not determined by a mechanical majority vote among reviewers.
Where two reviewer reports differ substantially, the Section Editor may:
- evaluate the scholarly basis of both reports;
- consult the Editor-in-Chief;
- seek appropriate editorial advice; and/or
- recommend the appointment of an additional independent reviewer where further expert assessment is necessary.
13. Editorial Decision
After evaluating the manuscript and reviewer reports, the Section Editor provides an editorial recommendation to the Editor-in-Chief.
Possible recommendations and subsequent editorial decisions include:
Accept Submission
The manuscript has satisfactorily met the journal's scholarly and editorial requirements and may proceed toward final acceptance and production.
Revisions Required
The manuscript requires revisions that can normally be evaluated editorially without necessarily initiating a complete new external review round.
For the regular review pathway, authors are normally given approximately 14 days to submit the required revision.
Resubmit for Review
Substantial revisions are required and the revised manuscript requires further scholarly evaluation before a final decision can be made.
Authors are normally given approximately 28 days to prepare and submit the revised manuscript.
The revised manuscript may be returned to the original reviewers and/or evaluated by other qualified reviewers as appropriate.
Decline Submission
The manuscript is not considered suitable for publication in its current scholarly condition or contains substantive deficiencies that cannot reasonably be resolved through the normal revision process.
The final editorial decision is issued by the Editor-in-Chief and is based on scholarly and ethical considerations rather than on publication fees or other commercial interests.
14. Revision and Author Response
When revision is requested, authors are expected to address all substantive editorial and reviewer comments carefully.
Authors should normally submit:
- a revised manuscript; and
- a detailed Response to Reviewers explaining how each substantive comment has been addressed.
Responses should identify the relevant changes in the revised manuscript.
Where authors disagree with a reviewer recommendation, they may provide a reasoned scholarly explanation rather than making a requested change automatically.
Failure to address substantive comments adequately may result in further revision, additional peer review, or rejection.
Authors who require additional time should contact the editorial office before the revision deadline.
15. Further Review and Post-Review Editorial Verification
A revised manuscript may undergo:
- editorial verification by the Section Editor;
- return to one or both original reviewers;
- evaluation by an additional reviewer; or
- another full peer-review round,
depending on the nature and extent of the revisions.
Minor or clearly verifiable changes do not necessarily require another external review round.
Substantial methodological, analytical, theoretical, evidentiary, or interpretive changes may require renewed peer review.
The Section Editor evaluates the revised manuscript, the authors' Response to Reviewers, and the extent to which reviewer and editorial concerns have been addressed.
Based on this evaluation, the Section Editor provides an editorial recommendation to the Editor-in-Chief.
The purpose of post-review editorial verification is to determine whether the authors have adequately addressed substantive concerns and whether the manuscript has reached an appropriate level of scholarly and publication readiness.
16. Final Editorial Decision and Acceptance
After all required reviews, revisions, and post-review editorial verification have been completed, the manuscript undergoes final editorial evaluation.
The final editorial decision is made by the Editor-in-Chief, taking into consideration:
- the manuscript's final scholarly quality;
- adequacy of the revisions;
- reviewer assessments and recommendations;
- the authors' responses to reviewer comments;
- the Section Editor's recommendation;
- ethical compliance;
- research integrity; and
- overall publication readiness.
A manuscript is considered Accepted only after a formal Accepted decision has been recorded in the editorial system.
A Letter of Acceptance (LoA) may be issued only after the manuscript has formally reached Accepted status.
An LoA is not issued while:
- peer review remains incomplete;
- substantive revisions remain unresolved;
- additional review is required;
- research-integrity or ethical concerns remain unresolved; or
- the manuscript has not formally received an Accepted decision.
Formal acceptance and issuance of an LoA do not constitute final publication.
After acceptance, the manuscript must still complete the journal's post-acceptance production process.
17. Post-Acceptance Production and Online Publication
Accepted manuscripts proceed through the following production stages before publication.
Copyediting
The manuscript is checked and edited for matters such as:
- consistency of language and terminology;
- journal style;
- citations and references;
- captions;
- figures and tables;
- required declarations;
- author and affiliation information; and
- other editorial or technical elements.
Copyediting should not materially alter the scholarly conclusions of the accepted manuscript without appropriate editorial and author involvement.
Layout and Typesetting
The copyedited manuscript is prepared in the journal's final publication format.
Publication elements are checked and incorporated, including where applicable:
- journal bibliographic information;
- volume and issue;
- article or page information;
- DOI;
- article history;
- copyright information;
- license information;
- required declarations;
- figures and tables; and
- other publication metadata.
Author Proofreading
The corresponding author may be requested to examine the galley proof before publication.
Proofreading is intended primarily to identify:
- typographical errors;
- formatting errors;
- metadata errors;
- production errors; and
- other minor inaccuracies introduced during production.
Proofreading is not an opportunity to substantially rewrite, expand, or restructure an accepted manuscript, except where changes are specifically approved by the Editor.
Authors are normally expected to return proofreading corrections within 7 days.
Final Publication Check
Before publication, the editorial team performs a final check of the article galley and relevant OJS metadata to ensure accuracy, completeness, and consistency.
Online Publication
After the required production stages have been completed, the article is published online in the appropriate journal issue.
Jurnal Desain may use an Issue in Progress publication model, under which publication-ready articles are released progressively within an officially scheduled issue.
An article is considered published only when its final publication version has been officially made available through the journal platform.
18. Estimated Submission-to-Publication Timeline
For manuscripts processed through the regular review pathway, the overall process from initial submission to online publication typically takes approximately 3–5 months.
This estimate covers the complete editorial and publication process, including:
submission → administrative checking → Initial Editorial Assessment → reviewer selection and invitation → peer review → author revision → post-review editorial verification and/or further review → final acceptance → copyediting → layout and typesetting → author proofreading → final publication check → online publication.
For each regular review round, the reviewer assignment window is normally approximately 28 days from the initial review invitation, including up to 7 days for the reviewer to accept or decline the invitation.
The reviewer evaluation period therefore represents only one component of the overall submission-to-publication timeline and should not be interpreted as a guarantee that an editorial decision or publication will occur within 28 days.
The actual publication timeline may vary depending on:
- reviewer availability;
- manuscript complexity;
- the number of review and revision rounds;
- the extent of required revisions;
- author response time;
- additional ethical or research-integrity checks;
- editorial requirements; and
- completion of the post-acceptance production process.
In some cases, particularly where additional review or substantial revision is required, the overall process may take up to six months.
The 3–5 month period is an indicative normal processing range and does not constitute a guarantee of acceptance or publication within a fixed period.
19. Fast-Track Review
Jurnal Desain provides an optional Fast-Track Review pathway for eligible manuscripts requiring expedited editorial and peer-review processing.
Fast-Track Review applies the same scholarly standards, double-blind peer-review procedure, two-reviewer requirement, reviewer qualifications, ethical requirements, confidentiality standards, AI restrictions, and editorial decision criteria as the regular review pathway.
For manuscripts formally approved for Fast-Track Review:
- For manuscripts formally approved for Fast-Track Review, reviewers are normally requested to accept or decline the review invitation within 3 days and to complete the scholarly evaluation within approximately 7 days after accepting the assignment. The overall Fast-Track reviewer assignment window is therefore normally approximately 10 days from the initial review invitation;
- authors may be required to complete revisions within shorter periods than those used in the regular pathway, as specified by the Editor and the Fast-Track Review Policy; and
- editorial and production stages are handled on an expedited basis, subject to reviewer availability, the extent of required revisions, author responsiveness, and production readiness.
Fast-Track Review is intended to provide expedited processing, but the timeline is a target rather than a guarantee.
Fast-Track Review does not guarantee:
- progression to external peer review;
- a favorable reviewer recommendation;
- acceptance;
- publication;
- publication in a particular issue;
- publication within a fixed number of days or months; or
- issuance of a Letter of Acceptance before the manuscript has formally received an Accepted editorial decision.
Following acceptance, Fast-Track manuscripts remain subject to the same required post-acceptance production procedures as regular manuscripts.
The Fast-Track Review fee is a fee for expedited processing and does not influence editorial assessment, reviewer recommendations, or final editorial decisions.
Authors should consult the separate Fast-Track Review Policy for complete eligibility requirements, procedures, fees, payment conditions, revision timelines, and other applicable terms.
