Peer Review Policy

Initial Editorial Screening

All submitted manuscripts are first screened by the editorial office and/or the Editor-in-Chief to determine whether they meet the journal’s basic requirements. A manuscript may be returned to the author or rejected without external review if it falls outside the journal’s aims and scope, does not follow the official manuscript template, lacks a clear scholarly contribution, has serious methodological weaknesses, contains unacceptable similarity, or fails to meet ethical, formatting, language, or metadata requirements.

Assignment to Reviewers

Manuscripts that pass the initial editorial screening are normally assigned to at least two independent reviewers with expertise relevant to the manuscript’s topic, method, and field of study. Reviewers are selected according to their academic expertise, methodological knowledge, and ability to provide an objective and constructive assessment.

Review Criteria

Reviewers are asked to evaluate manuscripts according to the following criteria:

• Relevance to the journal’s aims and scope.
• Originality and scholarly contribution.
• Clarity of the research problem, objectives, or review questions.
• Adequacy and critical quality of the literature review.
• Soundness of the methodology or review method.
• Validity and clarity of results, findings, or review synthesis.
• Depth of discussion and interpretation.
• Relevance to urban and regional planning theory, policy, methodology, design, spatial analysis, sustainability, governance, or planning practice.
• Quality of tables, figures, maps, diagrams, and illustrations.
• Adequacy, relevance, and recency of references.
• Compliance with ethical requirements and publication standards.
• Overall readability, structure, and academic presentation.

Reviewer Recommendations

Reviewers may recommend one of the following decisions:

• Accept
• Minor Revisions
• Major Revisions
• Resubmit for Review
• Reject

Reviewer recommendations are advisory. The final editorial decision is made by the Editor-in-Chief or the assigned editor based on reviewers’ reports, editorial assessment, journal policy, ethical compliance, and the manuscript’s overall quality and contribution to the field.

Confidentiality and Ethical Responsibilities

All manuscripts under review are confidential documents. Reviewers, editors, and editorial staff must not share, discuss, reproduce, or use unpublished manuscript content for personal, academic, or professional advantage. Reviewers and editors must not upload confidential manuscripts or review materials to public or unsecured artificial intelligence tools or third-party platforms.

Reviewers must disclose any financial, institutional, personal, academic, or professional conflict of interest before accepting a review invitation. A reviewer should decline the invitation if any relationship or circumstance may affect, or appear to affect, their impartiality.

Revision Process

When revisions are requested, authors must submit a revised manuscript and a response letter explaining how each reviewer comment has been addressed. A marked version showing changes may also be requested. Revised manuscripts may be assessed by the assigned editor or returned to the original reviewers depending on the extent of the required revisions.

Conflicting Reviews

If reviewer reports are substantially conflicting, the assigned editor may evaluate the reports and make an editorial judgment, request clarification from reviewers, invite an additional reviewer, or return the manuscript to the author for revision based on the most critical and justified comments.

Editorial Independence

Editorial decisions are based solely on academic merit, relevance to the journal’s scope, methodological quality, ethical compliance, and contribution to the field. Editorial decisions are not influenced by the author’s nationality, gender, institutional affiliation, political views, religion, personal relationships, or payment of publication fees.

Submissions by Editors, Editorial Board Members, and Journal Staff

The Journal of Planner and Development (JPD) allows submissions from the Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor, Associate Editors, Editorial Board members, reviewers, and journal staff, provided that such submissions are handled under strict conflict-of-interest safeguards and full editorial independence, in accordance with the COPE Core Practices on editorial independence and the COPE guidance “Editor as author.”

When a manuscript is submitted by the Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor, an Editorial Board member, a reviewer, or any person involved in the journal’s editorial or administrative process, the submitting person must be completely excluded from all stages of editorial handling, reviewer selection, peer review management, editorial discussion, and final decision-making for that manuscript.

Such manuscripts shall be assigned to an independent handling editor who has no conflict of interest with the author(s), including recent co-authorship within the last five years, institutional dependency, supervisory relationship, financial interest, close personal relationship, or direct academic competition. If the Editor-in-Chief is an author, the manuscript shall be handled by the Managing Editor, an Associate Editor, an independent Editorial Board member, or, where necessary, an external guest editor from another institution.

To protect the integrity of the double-blind process, the submitting editor or Editorial Board member shall have no access, through the journal’s online editorial system (OJS) or by any other means, to the identities of the assigned reviewers, the reviewer reports, the editorial correspondence, or the decision file relating to their own manuscript at any stage prior to publication. The manuscript is processed entirely outside the authoring editor’s editorial account.

Manuscripts submitted by editors or Editorial Board members are subject to the same editorial screening, similarity checking, ethical requirements, peer review standards, revision procedures, and acceptance criteria applied to all other submissions. No preferential treatment, accelerated review, reduced scholarly requirements, or automatic acceptance is permitted.

At least two independent external reviewers shall evaluate such manuscripts. For submissions authored by the Editor-in-Chief or Managing Editor, the journal shall invite an additional independent reviewer or appoint an external handling editor from another institution to strengthen the impartiality and transparency of the process.

To preserve editorial balance and in line with international indexing standards, including the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the proportion of published research papers in any single issue in which at least one author is an editor, an Editorial Board member, or a reviewer of the journal shall not exceed 25%. The editorial office monitors and records this proportion for every published issue.

The submitting editor, Editorial Board member, reviewer, or journal staff member must disclose their role in the journal in the manuscript’s conflict-of-interest statement. Every published article authored or co-authored by an editor, Editorial Board member, reviewer, or journal staff member must include an explicit Editorial Independence Statement confirming the author’s role in the journal and stating that the author was not involved in the editorial handling, reviewer selection, peer review process, or final decision-making for the manuscript.

The final editorial decision shall be made only by an independent handling editor or an authorized editor with no conflict of interest. Any breach of this policy may lead to suspension of the review process, reassignment of the manuscript, rejection, correction of the publication record, retraction, or further action under the journal’s publication ethics procedures.

Related Policies

This policy should be read together with the journal’s Reviewer Guidelines, Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement, Plagiarism and Similarity Policy, and Author Guidelines.