What is the Peer Review process in preparing academic journal articles? Why is it most unique?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

It is the peer review process that makes preparation of an academic journal article most unique. Similar to a grant review, the journal’s editor sends submitted articles to two or three experts (peers), who are asked whether the paper should be accepted more or less as is, revised and then resubmitted, or rejected. Reviewers also provide comments—which are sometimes quite lengthy—to explain their decision and to guide any required revisions. The process is an anonymous one at most journals; reviewers are not told the author’s name, and the author is not told the reviewers’ names. Although the journal editor has the final say, editors’ decisions are normally based on the reviewers’ comments.
Peer review -- A process in which a journal editor sends a submitted article to two or three experts who judge whether the paper should be accepted, revised and resubmitted, or rejected; the experts also provide comments to explain their decision and guide any revisions.
This peer review process must be anticipated in designing the final report. Peer reviewers are not pulled out of a hat. They are experts in the field or fields represented in the paper and usually have published articles themselves in that field. It is critical that the author be familiar with the research literature and be able to present the research findings as a unique contribution to that literature. In most cases, this hurdle is much harder to jump with journal articles than with student papers or applied research reports. In fact, most leading journals have a rejection rate of over 90%, so that hurdle is quite high indeed. Of course, there is also a certain luck of the draw involved in peer review. One set of two or three reviewers may be inclined to reject an article that another set of reviewers would accept. But in general, the anonymous peer review process results in higher-quality research reports because articles are revised prior to publication in response to the suggestions and criticisms of the experts.
Criminological and criminal justice research is published in a myriad of journals within several disciplines, including criminology, law, sociology, psychology, and economics. As a result, there is no one formatting style by which all criminological literature abides. If, for example, you are submitting your paper to a psychology-related journal, you must abide by the formatting style dictated by the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (American Psychological Association, 2009). The easiest way to determine how to format a paper for a particular journal is to examine recent volumes of the journal and format your paper accordingly. Numerous articles are available on the student study site (the website is listed at the end of each chapter in this book).
Despite the slight variations in style across journals, there are typically seven standard sections within a journal article in addition to the title page.