Peer Review Process

Publication decisions are based on the scholarly quality of the manuscript, the adequacy of review reports, the authors' responses, and its relevance to ITJ. Payment, personal relationships, or institutional affiliations must not determine acceptance.

This diagram illustrates the usual sequence for manuscripts that reach publication. A submission may be rejected during preliminary screening or at any subsequent editorial assessment stage.

1. Focus and Scope: The study must address tourism-related research problems consistent with the journal's interdisciplinary scope, including destination development, tourism governance, sustainability, hospitality, culture, or technology.
2. Originality and Contribution: The manuscript should identify an appropriate research gap and present original findings, a meaningful theoretical contribution, or a rigorous synthesis of prior evidence.
3. Methodological Rigor: Research design, data sources, sampling or case selection, analytical procedures, and interpretations must be coherent and adequately explained.
4. Research and Publication Ethics: The manuscript should comply with authorship, originality, citation, confidentiality, ethical approval, and conflict-of-interest requirements where relevant.
5. Technical Preparation: Language, article structure, citations, reference list, figures, tables, and other elements must follow the journal's submission and author guidelines.

After preliminary assessment, the academic editor may proceed with external peer review, request amendments before review, or reject a manuscript that does not meet the journal's scientific or editorial standards.

Authors must prepare anonymized review files, and reviewers must not attempt to identify authors. The manuscript and review reports are confidential and must not be shared or used for private benefit without authorization.

1. Originality and Research Gap: Clear justification of the research problem and its contribution to existing tourism scholarship.
2. Relevance to Tourism Studies: Substantive relationship to tourism policy, management, destination development, visitor experience, tourism businesses, culture, or sustainability.
3. Methodological Soundness: Appropriateness of research design, data quality, analytic techniques, ethical procedures, and transparency.
4. Findings and Interpretation: Reliability of the evidence, strength of interpretation, consistency between results and conclusions, and acknowledgment of limitations.
5. Literature and Theoretical Engagement: Critical use of pertinent and sufficiently current scholarship and appropriate theoretical or conceptual perspectives.
6. Scientific and Practical Contribution: Value of the results for tourism knowledge, destination governance, professional practice, stakeholder decision-making, or future research.

The estimated timelines do not imply guaranteed acceptance, completion, or publication by a particular date. Editorial evaluation may require additional reviewers, clarification of ethical issues, or further revisions.

1. Revised Manuscript: Authors should submit a complete revised manuscript that clearly addresses the issues communicated in the editorial decision.
2. Response to Reviewer Comments: A point-by-point explanation of revisions is recommended so that editors and reviewers can identify how each substantive concern has been addressed.
3. Reasoned Disagreement: Authors may respectfully explain why a particular recommendation has not been adopted, using scholarly evidence or a transparent methodological justification.
4. Further Assessment: Revised manuscripts may be returned to the original reviewers, especially after major revisions or where a reviewer requests reassessment.

The current ITJ policy normally anticipates a maximum of two rounds of substantial revision. Further rounds may be considered when the academic editor judges that additional scientific evaluation is necessary.

Acceptance is determined by the Editor-in-Chief or an appropriately authorized academic editor. Editorial and administrative staff coordinate the process but do not independently approve manuscripts. Where acceptance is considered despite a recommendation for rejection, an additional independent editorial opinion may be requested.

1. Reviewer Independence: Invited reviewers must declare any relationship or interest that could compromise impartial evaluation and decline the assignment when appropriate.
2. Editorial Recusal: An editor must not manage or decide on a manuscript when a relevant competing interest exists.
3. Editorial Board Manuscripts: A submission by an Editor-in-Chief or another Editorial Board member must be handled by a different, unconflicted academic editor, without the submitting editor taking part in the decision.
4. Special Issue Guest Editors: A Guest Editor may not process or decide on their own manuscript; another qualified, independent editor should assume responsibility.
5. Confidentiality and Data Protection: Information about submissions, reviewer identities, reports, unpublished data, and decisions must be accessible only to authorized participants in the editorial workflow.

Reviewer recommendations inform—but do not replace—editorial judgment. Acceptance decisions should be justified by research quality, journal relevance, and ethical integrity rather than administrative or commercial considerations.

If a manuscript requires substantial external language editing or other optional services, any separate arrangement should be communicated transparently and agreed to by the authors before it is undertaken.

1. COPE Guidance: Guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics can inform the handling of ethical complaints, potential misconduct, editorial conflicts, and corrections to the published record.
2. PRISMA: A reporting framework appropriate to systematic reviews and meta-analyses, when applicable.
3. CONSORT: Reporting guidance for randomized controlled trials, where the research design requires it.
4. ARRIVE: Reporting guidance for research involving animals, where applicable.
5. FAIR Principles: Principles supporting the findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability of research data, subject to ethical and legal restrictions.
6. TOP Guidelines: A framework promoting openness and transparency in research reporting and the availability of supporting information.
7. Similarity Screening: Plagiarism and manuscript similarity may be examined using Turnitin during preliminary assessment and, where warranted, at later editorial stages.

Credible concerns involving plagiarism, duplicate publication, data fabrication or falsification, ethical approval, confidentiality, or authorship may be examined by the editorial team. Appropriate editorial action is determined according to the nature and evidence of the concern.