The following describes the first-stage review process for all manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Basic Education Research  (JBER).

When a manuscript is submitted to the Journal of Basic Education Research  (JBER).,

Step 1. The manuscript first goes through a quality check (QC) by the editorial office. [time schedule: 1 day]

This will ensure that all necessary information is included in the submission and prevent plagiarism (including unintentional plagiarism and self-plagiarism) by Turnitin from all published materials before being sent to the scientific editor for evaluation. Manuscripts with a similarity index of more than 15% (without references) will not be accepted even though the similarity index may come from the author's previous work (self-plagiarism).

Step 2. The editor-in-chief assigns each paper to a section editor, taking into account expertise and load balancing issues. [time schedule: 1 day]

Manuscripts that pass QC will be sent to the editor-in-chief for scientific suitability or appropriateness. Manuscripts may be rejected for low quality, out of scope, returned for major revision, or assigned to the appropriate section editor for further evaluation.

Step 3. The handling editor makes recommendations and selects at least two reviewers for the paper. [timeline: 3-4 days]

The Section Editor selects reviewers based on their expertise, publication history, and previous reviews, and invites them to provide feedback on the manuscript.

Step 4. There is a 2-week deadline to review the paper. This is expected to be a tight deadline. [timeline: 3 days]

After the external reviewers submit their review reports, the section editor will make a recommendation based on the reviewers' and his/her own assessments to the editor-in-chief; the editor-in-chief will then make a decision. The section editor makes 1 of 5 recommendations for the paper: (a) Acceptance. (b) Acceptance for publication as is, with encouragement to make minor revisions within 14 days. (c) Major revisions within 1 month. (d) Rejection with encouragement to revise and resubmit within 6 months. (e) Rejection without possibility.

Step 5. After that, the editor-in-chief will make a final decision and the editorial office will send a decision letter to the corresponding author and all co-authors.

This completes the first round of review.

Step 6. Final decision

Manuscripts with "Major revisions" will be re-reviewed by the original reviewers after the revised version, along with a detailed rebuttal letter, is submitted. In this case, the second round of review again has a deadline of 2 weeks. Failure to respond to comments and suggestions thoroughly may result in outright rejection, but multiple rounds of review may be conducted if the revised manuscript introduces new ambiguities and controversies, depending on the editor's judgment.

Manuscripts with "Minor revisions" can be reviewed by the section editor without the requirement to submit it for additional review. The final decision on each manuscript is made by the editor-in-chief of the respective journal.

Manuscripts with "Rejection with encouragement to revise and resubmit" may or may not be reviewed by the same reviewers or section editor.

Manuscripts with "Accepted", will proceed to the preparation for publication stage, the first step of which is manuscript editing and figure editing (if necessary) followed by typesetting. Proofs will be sent to the corresponding author via email containing a URL linking to the electronic manuscript reviewer site.

The review process for papers in the special issue follows the same protocol as for regular papers.

Unfortunately, we cannot guarantee that the timeframe guidelines given in the item above will be met for every submission.