Cardiff University Press

Peer review procedure

  1. Submissions of books or other monographs are initially reviewed by our Monograph Commissioning Panel and (in some cases) selected members of our Editorial Board. We may also request further details or clarification from the submitting author or editor.

  2. If the Panel’s initial review of the monograph is favourable, and the monograph meets the Panel’s criteria, it is sent out for formal peer review. Three review reports are sought per monograph, and the submitting author or editor may suggest reviewers to approach, although the Panel reserves the right to approach any potential reviewers that it may choose.

  3. All our monograph publications are peer reviewed by academic staff with appropriate disciplinary specialisms, who have been chosen by the Panel. If previous peer reviews exist for a submitted monograph, we would be interested to see them, but our decision on whether or not to publish the monograph would be made on the basis of our own peer reviewers’ recommendations, not those of previous reviewers.

  4. For each monograph, the Panel may. seek one reviewer from the same higher education institution as the submitting author or editor if it chooses to do so, provided that no conflicts of interest are apparent and that the other reviewers are from different institutions.

  5. The identity of the reviewers chosen is never disclosed to the submitting author or editor, but the reviewers are made aware of the identity of the submitting author or editor (single blind peer review).

  6. The peer review process can take several months to complete, and exact publication timescales are impossible to predict until the end of the peer review process is reached.

  7. When all review reports have been received by the Panel, they are carefully read by Panel members, who discuss the reviewers’ comments between themselves and add their own comments where appropriate. Depending on the reviewers’ recommendations and the Monograph Summary Form submitted with the manuscript, the Panel may then agree on its own recommendation regarding whether or not to publish the monograph. Alternatively, the Panel may ask the submitting author or editor to address the reviewers’ suggestions for revisions first, and to provide the Panel with a list of responses to these, before the Panel’s recommendation is made.

  8. If one of the three reviewers fails to submit a review report, the Panel may make a recommendation based on the remaining two reports.

  9. An agreement is reached when a majority of Panel members have expressed the same recommendation.

  10. Once a recommendation has been made by the Panel, this is approved by the Editorial Board before the monograph is formally declined or accepted for publication and the submitting author or editor is informed. Following acceptance of the monograph, the submitting author or editor must complete any revisions to the manuscript that have been agreed before it proceeds to copyediting.