Step 3: Referees Read Your Paper

Hooray! Your paper made it through our editorial selection process and I have been asked to send it to referees. At Planning Theory and Practice we operate a system known as DOUBLE-BLIND REVIEWING. This is the highest academic standard for refereeing. It means that referees comment on your paper without knowing that you wrote it – and that you receive those comments without knowing who provided them. Itis designed to ensure that personal feelings do not interfere with academic judgment. Hopefully you can now see why we ask for all papers to be anonymized on upload during step 1.

The senior editors suggest 6 expert referees, all of whom will be working in your subject area. I then send your paper out to each individual, with a note explaining what we require from them. We explicitly ask for constructive and helpful criticism that will help you to improve the piece of work.

To ensure breadth, and to give authors as much help as possible, we collect 3 different comments before we proceed to the next stage.

Each referee is given around 6 weeks to complete their report.