Submission to first decision (average)	Submission to final decision (average)	Acceptance to publication online  of the version of record (average)
23 days	48 days	14 days

Acceptance rate

During the period 1st August 2024 to 31st July 2025, the acceptance rate was 37.4%.

Other Resources

You may also be interested in reading other relevant pages:

• Instructions to Authors
• Editorial Policies
• Open Access Policy

Our Quality Standards – What constitutes a high-quality science paper?

The table below summarises some key elements of high-quality papers which are more likely to get accepted.

Quality Criteria

1. Passing our research integrity checks

2. Submitting all relevant metadata during submission e.g. data availability statements, conflicts of interest, funding information, ethical approval, etc

3. Protocol publication apriori with protocol referenced and protocol number stated

4. Clear research questions with justification

5. Materials and methods appropriate to answer the stated research questions

6. Materials and methods described in sufficient detail to allow reproducibility

7. Conclusions that are justified by the data and the methods

8. Good quality writing

9. Use of the relevant reporting guideline for the study type as stated by the Equator Network and our instructions to authors

10. Rigorous statistical analyses (preferably with the input of a professional Statistician)

11. References that are sufficient in number, recency and relevance

12. Clear, high-resolution photographs, figures and charts as appropriate, that complement the text

The peer-review process – selecting high quality science

What is peer review?

Peer reviewed science journals use a process whereby scientific experts from the field evaluate a manuscript and provide an assessment of its quality and suitability for a particular journal and offer a recommendation to the relevant Editor. Such experts are external to our Editorial staff. All manuscript which undergo peer-review and are accepted to the journal, will be badged as peer-reviewed when published.

What is the peer review process?

Peer review model: single anonymised; the names of reviewers are hidden from the author.

Once submitted, all articles are immediately assessed by a suite of integrity checks and reviewed by eTelligence, our AI peer-review assistant. The editorial office staff will then screen papers, which involves:

• reviewing the cover letter
• reviewing the paper itself for basic quality checks and to assess if its in scope
• assess the results of integrity checks
• review the eTelligence report

If the paper passes screening, we will invite an initial sample of reviewers, with the aim of getting three completed reviews

EDITOR OVERSIGHT/REVIEW

Our peer-review process has been refined over 20+ years of scholarly publishing experience. We aim to provide a high-quality, constructive process that is also swift, efficient and appreciated by authors. The Eworkflow manuscript submission system utilises artificial intelligence to assess a manuscript, determine its nature and match relevant reviewers with content expertise.

A manuscript will be reviewed for possible publication with the understanding that it is being submitted to Premier Science alone at that point in time and has not been published anywhere, simultaneously submitted, or already accepted for publication elsewhere. The journal expects that authors would authorize one of them to correspond with the Journal for all matters related to the manuscript. All manuscripts received are duly acknowledged. Following an initial check from our Editorial Office to ensure all required components have been submitted, two to three independent external expert peer reviewers will be invited for comment through a single blind process. Some letters, editorials and commentaries may fall outside this review process if they were invited by the Editor. Authors submitting manuscripts to the Journal may propose suitable reviewers or oppose reviewers who may have competing interests.

Manuscripts received from the Premier Science Editors and Editorial Board members are sent to external peer reviewers. The Editors and Editorial Board members who are authors of these manuscripts are excluded from related review and publication decisions.

Authors do not know who the reviewers are (single blind). If authors declare themselves in their manuscript, we do not mask their identity. We do not however, force authors to do so.

Following peer review, every manuscript is assigned to an Editor (an Editor-in-Chief or an Associate Editor) who will make a decision based on the comments from the reviewers, integrity check reports and their own assessment. The comments and suggestions (acceptance/ rejection/ amendments in manuscript) received from reviewers are conveyed to the corresponding author. If required, the author is requested to provide a point-by-point response to reviewers’ comments and submit a revised version of the manuscript. This process is repeated until reviewers and editors are satisfied with the manuscript.

Authors of manuscripts accepted for publication will be sent information regarding payment of their APCs; once these fees are paid, then the production process begins. All accepted manuscripts are copy edited for grammar, punctuation, print style, and format. Page proofs are sent to the corresponding author. The corresponding author is expected to return the corrected proofs within three days. It may not be possible to incorporate corrections received after that period. The whole process of submission of the manuscript to the final decision and sending and receiving proofs is completed online. To achieve faster and greater dissemination of knowledge and information, the journal publishes articles online into a volume before that volume may have formally closed.​

Special issues

For special issues, we follow COPE’s best practices for guest edited collections guidance.

• A central principle is that the Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the content published in the journal.
• The Editor-in-Chief maintains responsibility for the organisation and oversight of special issues.
• All special issues must fall within the scope of the journal.
• Guest editors’ credentials will need to be checked and approved.
• Special issue articles have the same editorial oversight as regular papers.
• Special issue articles will undergo external peer-review.

Our commitment to research integrity

All papers submitted to Premier Science go through the following series of checks as standard.

What Questions do we ask peer reviewers to answer?

All reviewers are asked the following questions and required to give a score out of 10. They can also provide free-text comments and upload attachments, such as a marked-up copy of the paper.

1. How innovative and impactful is the research presented in the manuscript?
2. How well-designed and executed are the methods employed in the research?
3. How clear and logically organized is the presentation of ideas and results?
4. To what extent does the manuscript contribute new knowledge or insights to the relevant field of study?
5. How relevant is the manuscript to current issues or challenges in the field?
6. Are the references to the literature suitably comprehensive up to date?
7. Are there any spelling, grammar, punctuation or syntax errors?
8. Quantify the extent to which this manuscript needs additional work

Types of articles we peer-review

All research and review articles are externally peer-reviewed.

Types of articles we do not peer-review

We do not typically send letters for peer review. These would be judged by the Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editor or other Editorial Board member.

How do we select peer-reviewers?

We find reviewers from the following sources:

• Using artificial intelligence (AI) via our eNeural Engine technology, which matches the semantic analysis of the paper’s content with highly cited reviewers who have published in that field.
• Using our own internal database of those who have reviewed in the past on similar topics.
• Using author recommendations.
• Editor’s choice based on past experience

All reviewers will be asked to answer the same questions and must declare any conflicts of interest. Further information on reviewing is available here.

How do I respond to peer-reviewer comments?

If you get a decision to revise your manuscript, you may need to respond to peer-reviewer comments, Here are some tips.

1. Don’t take it personally.
2. Don’t rush your response.
3. Read it once and then read it again with a calmer mind. You may need to leave it a few days.
4. Set aside dedicated time for your response and revision.
5. Respond point-by-point. So take each point of feedback and place a response underneath it. Make it clear what your response is, you may need to highlight it in yellow for example. You will also need to submit a tracked version of your revision and a clean version with changes accepted.
6. Acknowledge good feedback, thank the reviewer and Editor.
7. Proof read your response for spelling, gramma, syntax issues.
8. Make sure your co-authors approve your response, they may have more to add.

What if my paper is rejected?

If you get rejected, here are some important tips.

1. This is not the end of the world.
2. Take time to understand the decision. Your paper may not be in scope for that journal and you need to submit elsewhere. There may be quality issues that need addressing, poor presentation/style/language issues,  poor theoretical framework, ethical issues, a lack of contribution to new knowledge, too long, too short, disregard for the journal’s conventions, etc.
3. Read the feedback. Work on improving your paper if you can.
4. Submit elsewhere. Choose your journal with care. Look at what they have already published. If you are unsure, write a pre-submission enquiry to the Editor.

Editorial Independence

It is a general principle of scholarly communication that the editor of a learned journal is solely and independently responsible for deciding which articles submitted to the journal shall be published. In making this decision the editor is guided by policies of the journal’s editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.  An outcome of this principle is the importance of the scholarly archive as a permanent, historic record of the transactions of scholarship. Articles that have been published shall remain extant, exact and unaltered as far as is possible. However, very occasionally circumstances may arise where an article is published that must later be retracted or even removed. Such actions must not be undertaken lightly and can only occur under exceptional circumstances.

The policies have been designed to address these concerns and to take into account current best practice in the scholarly and library communities.  As standards evolve and change, we will revisit this issue and welcome the input of scholarly and library communities.