DAOL Reviewer's Guide
Send any queries to the DAOL
Team
Summary
This section introduces the key aspects of the DAOL review process
that you need to know. If you have any comments on the clarity of
the reviewer's guide please do not hesitate to contact the DAOL Team.
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Review philosophy at DAOL
One of the central aims of DAOL is to explore a conversational/debating
model of peer review. The interactive internet based medium supports
an open, responsive and dynamic process of peer review. In this forum,
the construction of knowledge claims by discourse analysts can be
made more explict than is the case in conventional publishing media
and formats. Our philosophy is that reviewers should be acknowledged
for their contribution to the final shape of a published article.
Reviewers should also be accountable for the review statements they
make and authors should have the right of reply. We believe that the
wider research community has valuable contribution to make to the
review process by opening up new issues for debate.
Peer review within this framework will clearly depend on professionalism
and netiquette. We are confident that this synergy of new interactive
media and scholars committed to advancing the quality of discourse
in their field, can bear fruit.
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DAOL review process and criteria
This section provides a guide to the process of reviewing a DAOL
article. You will find details of the headings under which review
comments should be formulated and organised, followed by a section
on how to submit your review to DAOL.
Review criteria
- Read the submission, and explore any supplementary multimedia
materials or links to websites that the author has provided.
- The location of the paper on the DAOL website will be given
to you
- Please see the 'How To' section of
the DAOL site for advice on using the DAOL interface and any
multimedia components.
- Review comments need to be formulated and organised into two broad
areas:
- DAOL acceptance criteria, which are:
- Adherence to the aims and scope of the journal as set out
in the submission guidelines and editorial policy documents
- Contribution to knowledge and/or practice
- Appropriateness of methods
- Organisation
- Presentation
- Quality and clarity of writing
- Section-specific comments
- Place section-specific comments under the relevant number
("2.1", "5.3", etc.)
- Comments on typos, formatting and unclear writing shouldn't be
posted on the website, since these will become redundant if or when
a revision goes up, and they are of little interest to other reviewers
or readers. Please email such comments to the editor overseeing
the paper, and these will be appended to the editorial report sent
to the authors.
- Make a recomendation to the editor regarding the acceptability
of the paper, pending whatever changes you have specified. If the
editor determines that the paper is broadly acceptable, then it
will be published for further open peer review and commentary for
at least one month, and announced to relevant communities to invite
their contributions, building on the author-reviewer discussions.
- If the paper requires essential surface-level revisions before
it is publishable (e.g. clarity of writing), then it will be
revised accordingly before going for open review.
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How to submit your review
- Please enter your comments directly into the website:
- Connect to the web version of the paper (at this stage a
private, unannounced URL)
- Using the 'Comment' icons (comment bubbles) embedded in the
article, go to the relevant section of the review debate (e.g.
"Contribution to knowledge" or "Section 2.1")
- Click the "Add Comment" button to bring up the
form
- Complete the form: give your comment a succinct title, paste
your prepared comments into the comment field, indicate if you
are agreeing or disagreeing, and provide your name (you can
remain anonymous if you wish, but we would encourage you to
identify yourself since this is likely to foster a better spirit
of open discussion with the author, other reviewers, and the
wider research community who participate).
- If, after submitting a comment, you decide you wish to modify,
or even, delete it contact the editor who is able to edit the debate.
- All postings to the web site will be copied by email automatically
to the authors and other reviewers (and in the open peer review
phase, to anyone else who has subscribed).
If for compelling reasons you cannot use the web to submit your
review, then please send an email version, structured under the
relevant headings, to the editor for the submission. However, we
strongly encourage reviewers to go through the web interface, since
this relieves the editors burden, and involves reviewers more closely
in the debate.
- You may find review comments from other reviewers or statements
from authors that you wish to respond to. We encourage reviewers
to debate amongst themselves, and with the author(s) who may wish
to respond to your comments at this stage of the review process.
This will generate a useful resource both for authors and others
joining the debate.
At this point your obligations as a reviewer are complete. However,
we hope that you will be interested enough in the paper, and in
this experimental use of new technology, to join in the open peer
review phase that will follow, if the submission is judged to be
acceptable for publication.
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