Reviewer Guidelines

The Journal of Planner and Development (JPD) applies a double-blind peer review process. The identities of authors and reviewers are kept confidential during the review process. Reviewers are expected to evaluate manuscripts objectively, confidentially, and constructively, based on academic merit, methodological soundness, originality, ethical compliance, and relevance to the journal’s aims and scope.

All review steps are managed electronically through the journal’s online submission and review system. Reviewers are asked to submit clear, evidence-based comments that help the editorial team make an informed decision and help authors improve the quality of their manuscripts.

Before accepting a review invitation, reviewers should ensure that they have the appropriate expertise, sufficient time, and no conflict of interest that may affect their impartiality. Reviewers must disclose any financial, institutional, personal, academic, or professional relationship that may influence, or appear to influence, their review.

Reviewers should consult the journal’s Peer Review Policy, Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement, Plagiarism and Similarity Policy, and Author Guidelines before completing their review.

Reviewer Guidance and Evaluation Criteria

Reviewer Responsibilities

  • Treat the manuscript and all review materials as confidential documents.
  • Do not share, discuss, reproduce, or use unpublished manuscript content for personal, academic, or professional advantage.
  • Do not attempt to identify the authors or contact them directly.
  • Provide an objective, constructive, and academically justified review.
  • Avoid personal criticism of the authors.
  • Notify the editor if there is suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, data fabrication, image or map manipulation, citation manipulation, unethical research practice, or substantial overlap with published work.
  • Do not upload confidential manuscripts or review materials to public or unsecured artificial intelligence tools or third-party platforms.

Review Criteria

Reviewers are requested to consider the following criteria when evaluating a manuscript:

  1. Does the manuscript fall within the aims and scope of the Journal of Planner and Development (JPD)?
  2. Does the manuscript correspond to one of the journal’s accepted manuscript types: Original Research Article or Review Article?
  3. Does the manuscript present an original and clear scholarly contribution?
  4. Is the research problem clearly defined and relevant to urban and regional planning, urban design, sustainable development, environmental planning, spatial analysis, geoinformatics, urban systems, or socio-spatial development?
  5. Is the title accurate, concise, and representative of the manuscript content?
  6. Does the abstract clearly reflect the research problem, objectives, methodology, main findings, and contribution?
  7. Is the literature review adequate, recent, critical, and directly connected to the research problem?
  8. Is the methodology or review method clearly explained, appropriate, and sufficiently detailed?
  9. Are the data, sources, tools, sampling methods, spatial analysis procedures, statistical techniques, or review procedures clearly described and justified?
  10. Are the results clearly presented and supported by evidence?
  11. Are the interpretations, discussion, and conclusions logically derived from the results?
  12. Does the manuscript explain its implications for planning theory, policy, methodology, spatial analysis, governance, sustainability, design, or development practice?
  13. Are the tables, figures, maps, diagrams, and illustrations clear, necessary, well-labelled, and properly cited in the text?
  14. Are the references accurate, relevant, recent, and formatted according to the journal’s citation style?
  15. Does the manuscript comply with the journal’s formatting requirements and official manuscript template?
  16. Are the required ethical, funding, conflict of interest, data availability, and AI-use declarations included where applicable?
  17. Should any part of the manuscript be revised, shortened, expanded, reorganized, clarified, or removed?

Reviewer Comments

Reviewers will be asked to provide comments for the author and, where necessary, confidential comments for the editor only. Comments to authors should be clear, specific, constructive, and directly related to the manuscript. Confidential comments to the editor may include concerns about originality, ethical issues, methodological weaknesses, suitability for the journal, or the reviewer’s recommendation.

Reviewer Recommendations

Reviewers may recommend one of the following editorial 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 assigned editor based on the reviewers’ reports, editorial assessment, journal policy, ethical compliance, and the overall quality and relevance of the manuscript.