Screen and Peer-Review Process

The publication of JULS articles takes place in two steps. First, submissions are screened and assessed by the Senior Editors and their editing teams to determine quality and appropriateness for publication in the JULS. After this initial screening process, submissions will either be accepted or rejected for the peer-review process and the decision is reviewed by the Editors-in-Chief. Rejected articles will receive feedback upon request and may be re-submitted following significant revisions.

All JULS Primary Research and Review articles undergo at least one round of double-blind peer-review. Peer-reviewers consist of faculty members affiliated with relevant university departments. A concerted effort is made to match reviewers with appropriate knowledge and expertise with submissions. In the case that there is significant deviation between a submission and its qualified reviewers, the corresponding and submitting authors will be made aware via email from the editorial team. If there happens to be a conflict of interest between the author and the reviewer, then another reviewer will be sought out. Each submission receives at least one Faculty Review Board reviewer, but additional reviewers may be considered if requested. To make this request, please send an email to the editorial staff at juls@studentorg.utoronto.ca outlining your concern and rationale for additional review. 

Peer-reviewers assess submissions for scientific accuracy, rigour and overall stylistic consistency. In very rare cases, peer-reviewers may request additional experiments or data analysis, which will prompt an additional round of review. Very few articles are rejected during the peer-review process; JULS is committed to ensuring quality articles that pass the initial screen be published once they are modified to an appropriate standard. Examples of rejection at the review stage include obsolescence of a core dataset or controversial developments in foundational models.

The target time between submission and a review decision by the JULS Editorial and Faculty Review Boards is approximately 6-8 weeks but may be longer.

Publication Process

Once articles pass through peer-review and are accepted for publication, manuscripts proceed to be typeset and published online on JULS Online and JPS. After acceptance, submissions may be cited as “in press” at JULS. Full citation information will be available upon online publication. Individual manuscripts throughout the term are collated into the annual print issue.