Wits University Press

Peer review procedure

Wits University Press (WUP) follows the ‘best practice’ model of international university presses. All our publications aimed at scholars, researchers and academics are peer-reviewed. This guarantees the quality of our publications and ensures that we meet the requirements for accreditation of research output specified by South Africa’s Department of Higher Education and Training.

The procedure is as follows:

A manuscript that qualifies for publication by WUP is sent to two independent, external peer reviewers who are specialists in the field. They are given a brief outlining the criteria for assessment.

The review reports are circulated amongst the publishing team, discussed and a decision is reached whether to accept, authors are to revise and resubmit, or to reject. If WUP receives two conflicting reviews, a third review will be commissioned and all the reviews are then considered in order for WUP to arrive at a decision about whether to publish or not.

As compensation for reviewing a manuscript, WUP offers the reviewer a compensation of R3000 (approx. $200) or a selection of books from WUP to that value.

The peer review procedure is coordinated by the commissioning editor under the supervision of the publisher.