Double-Blind Peer Review and Evaluation Policy

Editorial screening

Submissions are screened for scope, format, anonymisation, essential ethics statements, manifest insufficiency and technical issues that prevent review. Screening is not an academic acceptance decision. Out-of-scope or fundamentally non-compliant submissions may be returned/rejected without external review.

Reviewer assignment and independence

Eligible scholarly submissions are normally sent to at least two independent subject-matter reviewers. Expertise, conflicts of interest, institutional proximity and reasonable workload are considered in reviewer selection. Where two reports materially conflict, an additional review or committee assessment may be sought.

Confidentiality

Author identity is not disclosed to reviewers and reviewer identity is not disclosed to authors. Reviewers keep materials confidential, do not exploit them for personal advantage, do not share them with unauthorised third parties and do not upload confidential manuscripts to public generative-AI systems. Accidental identification that may affect impartiality must be reported to the editor.

Assessment criteria

• Clarity of research/creative problem and purpose
• Literature, theoretical/contextual framing and original contribution
• Fitness of method or design/analytic approach
• Relationship of findings/interpretations to evidence and scholarly coherence
• Compliance with ethics, copyright and source-use requirements
• Fit with terminology, visual evidence and disciplinary characteristics of art and design
• Clarity and improvability of presentation/publication form

Decision categories and editorial decision

Reviewers may recommend acceptance, acceptance/reconsideration after revision, major revision or rejection with reasons. Final decisions are made by the authorised editorial body—not by automated scoring or AI—taking reviewer reports and event/publication criteria into account.

Reviewer ethics

Reviewers accept assignments only where they have adequate expertise and can remain impartial, disclose conflicts, and provide timely, specific, evidence-based and respectful reports. Personal characteristics, affiliation or viewpoints of authors are not evaluation criteria. Reviewers must not demand unnecessary citations to their own work.