Peter Lang Publishing Group

Peer review procedure

For more than 40 years, the Peter Lang Publishing Group has been committed to academic excellence in the humanities and social sciences. The high quality of our publishing portfolio is very important to us. Hence, all our manuscripts undergo a critical and rigorous peer-review assessment process prior to publication.

These procedures may vary – open, blind, single blind, double blind – according to accepted practices in academic fields, regions and/or series.

For Open Access Publications the following procedure applies:

All book proposals and manuscripts are submitted directly to either the editors of a series or to the Peter Lang acquisitions editors. Once accepted for consideration and cross-checked by anti-plagiarism software to ensure their originality, the author’s proposal and/or manuscript are sent for external review by internationally well-established experts in the relevant academic field(s) to assess its overall quality and scholarly relevance.

A minimum of two independent peer reviews must be secured before a manuscript is accepted for Open-Access publication. Adhering to standardized procedures and following established codes of conduct (cf. for instance Peer review guidelines, all peer reviewers are required to submit a formal report. An anonymous summary of the reviewers’ feedback is sent to the authors.

Evaluation

The outcome of the review process is either

  • Accepted;
  • accepted with (recommended) revisions;
  • accepted, if revised as indicated in review reports;
  • rejected

As compensation for their feedback, the Peter Lang Publishing Group offers all peer reviewers a selection from our publishing portfolio.