Reviewer Guide

 

Peer Review Standards

Reviewer Guide

Sharia Economic Law Innovation (SELI)

Welcome to the Reviewer Guide of Sharia Economic Law Innovation (SELI). Reviewers play a central role in maintaining the quality, originality, academic rigor, and ethical integrity of manuscripts submitted to the journal. This guide is designed to support reviewers in delivering fair, constructive, confidential, and professionally responsible peer-review reports in accordance with international scholarly publishing standards, including principles aligned with COPE, responsible editorial practice, and reputable journal workflows.

1. Ethical Commitment and Reviewer Responsibilities

Reviewers are expected to uphold the highest standards of academic integrity, objectivity, confidentiality, and professionalism throughout the review process.

  • Impartiality and Objectivity: Reviewers must evaluate manuscripts based on scholarly merit, originality, methodology, relevance, and contribution, without bias related to nationality, institutional affiliation, gender, religion, personal relationship, or academic background.
  • Confidentiality: Manuscripts, data, review materials, and editorial communications must be treated as confidential documents and must not be shared, discussed, or used outside the review process.
  • Conflict of Interest Disclosure: Reviewers must inform the editor if they have potential conflicts of interest, including personal, institutional, financial, collaborative, or competitive relationships with the authors or the research topic.
  • Academic Integrity: Reviewers should report suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, data fabrication, citation manipulation, unethical research practice, or inappropriate use of sources to the editorial team.
  • Professional Conduct: Reviewer comments must be respectful, constructive, specific, and focused on improving the manuscript. Personal criticism of authors is not acceptable.

2. Review Process and Expectations

SELI applies a double-blind peer review system. The identities of authors and reviewers are concealed to support fairness, impartiality, and academic independence.

  • Scope Assessment: Evaluate whether the manuscript fits SELI’s focus on sharia economic law, Islamic finance, Islamic economics, halal industry, governance, legal innovation, or related interdisciplinary areas.
  • Thorough Evaluation: Assess theoretical foundation, research design, methodology, data quality, analysis, discussion, references, and contribution to the field.
  • Balanced Critique: Identify both strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript in a fair and evidence-based manner.
  • Constructive Suggestions: Provide clear, actionable, and specific recommendations that can help authors improve the manuscript.
  • Timeliness: Reviewers are expected to submit reports within the assigned deadline to support an efficient editorial workflow.

3. Core Evaluation Criteria

Originality and Innovation

Does the manuscript provide new insights, arguments, data, or approaches in sharia economic law or related fields?

Relevance and Scope

Is the topic relevant to SELI’s focus and beneficial for academics, practitioners, policymakers, or society?

Theoretical Foundation

Are theories, concepts, and previous studies properly used to support the argument?

Methodological Rigor

Are research methods, data sources, instruments, sampling, and analysis techniques appropriate and transparent?

Results and Discussion

Are findings clearly presented and critically discussed in relation to theory, previous research, and context?

References and Citation

Are references relevant, recent, traceable, and formatted according to APA 7th style?

4. Plagiarism and Originality Standards

SELI requires all manuscripts to meet originality standards. Manuscripts should have a similarity index of ≤ 12%, excluding references and common phrases. Reviewers should remain attentive to possible plagiarism, inappropriate paraphrasing, duplicate publication, self-plagiarism, citation manipulation, fabricated sources, and unsupported claims.

Reviewer Note: If a reviewer suspects plagiarism, fabricated data, manipulated citations, or ethical misconduct, the concern should be communicated confidentially to the editor with clear supporting reasons.

5. Confidentiality and Professionalism

Reviewers must maintain strict confidentiality during and after the review process. Manuscripts must not be used for personal research, teaching materials, publication advantage, competitive advantage, or any other purpose outside the official peer-review process.

  • Do not disclose manuscript content to others.
  • Do not contact authors directly during the review process.
  • Do not use unpublished data, ideas, or arguments for personal benefit.
  • Use professional, respectful, and academically appropriate language.

6. Feedback to Authors

Reviewer comments should help authors improve the manuscript. A high-quality review report is clear, constructive, specific, and evidence-based.

  • Begin with a brief summary of the manuscript and its contribution.
  • Identify strengths and weaknesses clearly.
  • Provide major comments on theory, method, analysis, discussion, and contribution.
  • Provide minor comments on structure, grammar, citation, tables, figures, and formatting.
  • Avoid vague comments such as “improve discussion” without specific direction.
  • Use a respectful tone and avoid personal or harsh statements.

7. Generative AI and Reviewer Ethics

Reviewers must treat manuscripts as confidential scholarly documents. Reviewers should not upload manuscripts, unpublished data, figures, tables, or confidential review materials into public generative AI tools or third-party platforms that may store or reuse the content. This is important to protect confidentiality, intellectual property, and the integrity of the peer-review process.

Important AI Ethics Statement: AI tools may only be used for limited language support in reviewer comments, and not for making editorial judgments, evaluating scientific validity, replacing expert assessment, or processing confidential manuscript content. The reviewer remains fully responsible for the accuracy, fairness, and integrity of the review report.

8. International Standards and Review Model

SELI follows a rigorous double-blind peer review model aligned with international best practices in scholarly publishing. The journal promotes ethical review conduct, reviewer confidentiality, editorial independence, author fairness, and transparent decision-making. Reviewers are expected to support the journal’s commitment to academic excellence, responsible publishing, and continuous quality improvement.

9. Review Recommendation Categories

Accept The manuscript is suitable for publication with no substantial revision required.
Minor Revision The manuscript is publishable after limited improvements in clarity, formatting, references, or minor content details.
Major Revision The manuscript has potential but requires substantial improvement in theory, method, analysis, discussion, or structure.
Reject The manuscript is not suitable for publication due to serious weaknesses in scope, originality, methodology, ethics, or scholarly contribution.

Reviewer Contribution Statement: SELI sincerely appreciates the contribution of reviewers in strengthening academic quality, ethical publishing, and the development of scholarship in sharia economic law. Constructive peer review is essential to improving manuscripts and supporting the credibility of scholarly communication.

Sharia Economic Law Innovation (SELI)
Published by PT. Inovasi Analisis Data
Email: seli@analysisdata.co.id