Overall, the editors can make one of four basic decisions listed below.

Accept Submission. The paper fits SERJ aims and policies, has good quality, and should be published. Very small corrections or fixes of a technical nature may be needed.

Revisions Required: Provisionally accepting the paper after relatively minor revisions. The manuscript is strong and interesting. However, modest yet important changes in content are needed before the paper can be fully accepted for publication. Further external refereeing is usually not needed after revision—the revised paper will be assessed only by the editor and associate editor. The editor will indicate in the decision letter whether a paper will be subject to another review round. 

Revisions Required: Rejecting the manuscript but encouraging a rewrite and resubmission. The paper has some significant flaws in its current content, methodology, analysis, presentation of results, or scholarly writing, as detailed in the referees’ reports and summarized in the editorial letter. Yet, the theme and information provided are of potential interest to SERJ readers, and the problems detected may be fixable. Hence, authors are encouraged to rewrite and resubmit. The editor will indicate in the decision letter whether a paper will be subject to another review round. After authors resubmit their revised paper, the revision will be reviewed again by external referees to assess the extent to which the suggested changes were implemented and whether the new draft is of acceptable quality. It should be emphasized that no promises are made that after a rewrite, the resubmitted paper will be found suitable for publication. Some such papers are eventually rejected. 

Decline Submission. The paper is not adequate for SERJ. Reasons for rejection may include, for example: the author is not acquainted with previous relevant research on the topic in ways that deeply affected the design or interpretation of the findings or the contribution of the paper, the data used are of poor quality or there is an inadequate research design, data analysis is inappropriate, there are unwarranted conclusions that go well beyond the information available to the authors, and so forth. In cases for which the paper is better suited for a different journal, the editor might encourage the authors to resubmit the manuscript elsewhere. In other cases, the paper is rejected because even with a rewrite, it is unlikely that the problems detected can be fixed so as to make the paper of sufficient quality for publication.

THE REFEREEING CRITERIA AND REFEREE REPORT
In addition to the recommendation about acceptance (referring to the basic decisions above), the referee is asked to provide a detailed report that will be sent to the authors. The referee report should include a detailed analysis of the paper that (a) enables authors to understand the basis for the referee’s recommendations, and (b) provides constructive suggestions that can help the authors to improve the paper. The report contains multiple parts: recommendation, overall comments about the paper, detailed analysis, and (optionally) comments on smaller issues/details. The length and content of each part of the report will vary, depending on the specific nature of the paper being refereed, and the type of commentary the referee wishes to include.

Recommendation. As explained above, one of the following decisions: accept, provisionally accept after minor revisions, reject but encourage rewrite and resubmit, reject but encourage to resubmit elsewhere, or decline (reject).

Overall comments. A brief overview of the reasons for the recommendation given, i.e., key positive and negative points regarding, e.g., the overall importance of the topic, quality of research, quality of scholarly writing and analysis, main strong and weak points, the overall (potential) contribution of the paper to current conceptual and theoretical knowledge and to educational practice, and the appropriateness and importance of the purpose/goal of the study judged against the aims of SERJ.

Detailed analysis. This part addresses in detail areas or aspects that seem to the referee to be well done, to be problematic, or to require further attention. The referee can also provide specific constructive suggestions for how to facilitate improvements.

The following list describes the content relevant to a report about empirical research, whether quantitative or qualitative. Most points will also be relevant when evaluating conceptually-oriented papers and critical literature reviews.

1. Soundness of the theoretical framework or the scholarly rationale for the work, and the quality of the review and of the critical synthesis of previous research or bibliography.
2. Relevance and soundness of research design/approach/methods, and the data collection process, given the research goals or hypotheses.
3. Relevance and soundness of data analysis, including choice of analytic tools and procedures, and/or interpretative scheme; effectiveness of data presentation in tables and graphical displays or in the main text.
4. Depth, breadth, and quality of the discussion and conclusions, particularly the explanation of the meaning of the key results, the analysis of how the paper’s findings relate to the existing literature or add to the current knowledge base, and the adequacy of the discussion of the limitations of the work. In addition, given the aims of SERJ, the referee will evaluate whether there is sufficient and explicit discussion of the contribution and implications both to research/scientific knowledge and to applied educational aspects, such as to teaching practices, curriculum planning, assessment, teacher preparation, and so forth.
5. Smaller issues. The report could close with a list of comments about minor issues that should be corrected, such as typographical errors, syntactical and formatting problems in specific paragraphs, confusing tables or graphical displays, inaccuracies in references, and lack of consistency in APA7 Style and Grammar Guideline. Here the referee could also make other suggestions for tightening the text or for omitting tables or displays if that can help focus the paper’s message and reduce its length without loss of key content.

Confidentiality. It is SERJ policy that papers sent to referees should NOT be shared or circulated (via printed or electronic means) with any other people or organizations. Referees are expected to maintain the confidentiality of papers they review and of the refereeing process. They are not permitted to make any use of papers they receive for refereeing, and are not allowed to cite such papers before they are published by SERJ.