About the Journal
About PSUR’s Peer Review System
The Political Science Undergraduate Review, peer review system, was developed to…
- educate authors and reviewers alike on scholarly publication, many of whom are navigating the process for the first time.
- provide high-quality, constructive feedback to authors through an open dialogue that promotes best practices for writing in political science
- and, to ensure a degree of quality and consistency in both the compilation of the journal but also the scholarly conventions represented in the field of political science.
With this in mind, the PSUR has adopted the following peer-review process:
All submissions are reviewed by at least two reviewers educated in the discipline of political science:
- At least one undergraduate student provides an initial assessment of the content presented by the submission independently.
- The editorial team discusses the first round assessment of submission and discusses the accessibility, technical merit, and significance.
- Another undergraduate student(s) provides a second assessment of the content and technical merits of the submission, keeping in mind goals defined by the editorial team.
- The editorial team recommends papers for publication with the guidance of the managing editor.
Our peer-review process is double-blind: To encourage objectivity, submissions are anonymized so that the author is not identified to the reviewers, and the reviewers are not identified to the author. Once a submission is selected for publication, the blind between author and reviewers is removed to unveil editorial commentary to the author. This promotes the collaborative implementation of editorial feedback on the submission prior to publication, at the authors’ discretion.
All submissions will be made to the OJS portal where papers will be processed through initial and second reviewer assessments. Editorial commentary is made accessible via OJS. In this collaborative process, authors and reviewers will engage in a constructive dialogue to improve the submission to achieve final publication standards, if needed.
The Political Science Undergraduate Association would like to express our very great appreciation to librarian Sarah Severson at the University of Alberta. Without her guidance and expertise, this journal would not be made accessible to the readers it reaches today. Thank you, Sarah!
