Reviewer Guidelines

Peer reviewers are responsible for critically evaluating manuscripts within their areas of expertise and providing authors with respectful, constructive, impartial, and honest feedback. Reviewers should identify the manuscript’s strengths and weaknesses, recommend ways to improve its academic quality, and assess its originality, relevance, methodological soundness, and contribution to English language, linguistics, literature, translation, or language education.

Before Accepting a Review

Before agreeing to review a manuscript, please consider the following:

Does the manuscript fall within your area of academic expertise?
Can you complete the review thoroughly within the specified deadline?
Do you have any personal, professional, financial, institutional, or academic conflict of interest that could affect your impartiality?

If the manuscript lies outside your expertise, you cannot meet the deadline, or a potential conflict of interest exists, please notify the Editorial Office promptly and decline the invitation.

The Review Process

When evaluating a manuscript, reviewers should consider its originality, academic relevance, clarity, methodological or analytical rigor, ethical compliance, and contribution to its field. Attention should also be given to the manuscript’s organization, linguistic quality, compliance with the journal’s author guidelines, use of relevant scholarship, accuracy of quotations and citations, and any indications of research misconduct.

Title: Is the title clear, concise, informative, and representative of the manuscript’s linguistic, literary, translational, or pedagogical focus?
Abstract: Does the abstract accurately summarize the study’s background, objectives, methods or analytical approach, principal findings, and conclusions?
Introduction: Does the introduction clearly identify the research problem, context, significance, objectives, questions, or hypotheses? Does it adequately explain the scholarly gap addressed by the study?
Literature Review and Theoretical Framework: Does the manuscript critically engage with relevant and current scholarship? Are the principal concepts clearly defined? Is the linguistic, literary, translational, cultural, or pedagogical framework appropriate and consistently applied?
Methods or Analytical Approach: For empirical research, is the design appropriate, and are the participants, texts, corpus, sampling procedures, instruments, data-collection methods, and analytical techniques adequately described? Are validity, reliability, ethical approval, and informed consent addressed where applicable? For literary or theoretical studies, are the selection of primary texts, interpretive approach, theoretical framework, and contextual considerations clearly explained and justified?
Results or Analysis: Are the findings, linguistic examples, textual interpretations, corpus results, or translations presented clearly and systematically? Are the claims adequately supported by evidence? Where statistical methods are used, are they appropriate and accurately reported?
Discussion: Are the findings or interpretations supported by the evidence presented? Does the discussion relate them meaningfully to the theoretical framework and previous scholarship? Are alternative interpretations, limitations, and scholarly or pedagogical implications adequately considered?
Conclusion: Does the conclusion accurately reflect the findings or interpretations and explain the manuscript’s contribution to the relevant field? Are recommendations supported by the study?
Quotations and Translations: Are quotations reproduced accurately and appropriately cited? Are translations reliable, clearly identified, and suitable for the argument? Have extended quotations or copyrighted materials been used with the necessary permission?
Tables, Figures, and Linguistic Examples: Are tables, diagrams, corpus extracts, phonetic transcriptions, glosses, textual examples, and other illustrations relevant, clearly presented, consistently formatted, and easy to interpret?
References: Are the references relevant, sufficient, current, and accurately cited? Have important publications been omitted? Reviewers must not request unnecessary citations to their own work, the journal, or particular authors.
Language and Presentation: Is the manuscript written in clear, grammatically accurate, and academically appropriate English? Is its terminology consistent with the field? Reviewers should identify important language or presentation problems but are not expected to provide comprehensive copyediting.

Ethical Issues

Plagiarism and Textual Overlap: If you suspect plagiarism, unattributed borrowing, inappropriate paraphrasing, or substantial overlap with another work, please notify the Editor confidentially and provide the relevant source or evidence in as much detail as possible.
Translation Plagiarism: Presenting translated material from another source without proper acknowledgment also constitutes plagiarism and should be reported to the Editor.
Duplicate or Redundant Publication: Reviewers should inform the Editor if they identify substantial similarity between the manuscript and another published or submitted work.
Fabrication or Falsification: Any suspicion that participants, interviews, corpus data, linguistic examples, translations, textual evidence, or findings have been invented, altered, omitted, or manipulated should be reported confidentially to the Editor.
Human Participants and Privacy: For studies involving students, teachers, interviewees, or other participants, reviewers should assess whether appropriate ethical approval, informed consent, confidentiality, and privacy protections have been addressed.
Copyright and Permissions: Reviewers should identify any apparent unauthorized use of literary texts, translations, teaching materials, images, tables, or other copyrighted content.
Other Ethical Concerns: Any suspected violation of accepted research or publication ethics should be reported privately to the Editor and should not be included as an accusation in comments addressed directly to the authors.

Preparing the Review Report

The review report should be clear, specific, evidence-based, and constructive. Reviewers are encouraged to distinguish between essential revisions and optional suggestions. Personal criticism, hostile language, unsupported accusations, and discriminatory or defamatory comments are unacceptable.

Please complete and submit the Reviewer’s Comments form by the assigned deadline. The review should normally include:

A brief overall assessment of the manuscript.
Comments on its strengths and scholarly contribution.
Major issues requiring attention.
Minor comments and suggested improvements.
Confidential comments to the Editor, where necessary.
A clear recommendation in accordance with the options provided by the journal.

Confidentiality and Appropriate Conduct

The manuscript and all associated materials must be treated as confidential documents.
Reviewers must not share, quote, reproduce, upload, or discuss the manuscript with another person without prior permission from the Editor.
Reviewers must not upload the manuscript or any part of it to publicly accessible artificial-intelligence tools, online platforms, or external services that could compromise confidentiality.
Unpublished information, arguments, interpretations, translations, data, or ideas obtained through peer review must not be used for personal or professional advantage.
Reviewers must not contact the authors directly.
If consultation with a colleague is necessary, prior approval must be obtained from the Editor, and the colleague’s identity and contribution must be disclosed.

Important Note: Reviewers’ recommendations are advisory and will be considered by the editors when making the final decision. The final decision regarding acceptance, revision, or rejection rests with the Editorial Board of ATJEL.