Peer Review Process

Peer review follows a number of stages, beginning with submitting your article to our journal. At this first stage, the NEFI editor will decide if it’s suitable for the journal, asking questions such as:

  • Has the author followed the NEFI journal guidelines?
  • Is NEFI the right journal for this article?
  • Will NEFI’s readers find it interesting and useful?

The editor might reject the article immediately, but otherwise it will move to the next stage, and into peer review.

The NEFI editor will find and contact two or three other researchers or academics who are experts in police use of force and/or police practices and procedures. They will be asked to read your article, and advise the NEFI editor whether to publish your paper in the NEFI journal.

The peer reviewer will be assessing:

  1. Your work is original or new;
  2. Your study design and methodology are appropriate and described so that others could replicate what you have done;
  3. You have presented your results clearly and appropriately
  4. Your conclusions are reliable and significant;
  5. The work is of a high enough standard to be published within the NEFI journal.

Note: You will be given feedback about your article, informing you if any changes are needed before it can be published.

The final editorial decision on a paper and the choice of who to invite to review is always at the NEFI’s discretion.

You can then amend your article based on the reviewers’ comments, resubmitting it with any or all changes made.

Note: If you decide you don’t want to accept all the reviewer’s comments, you can include a brief explanation of why you don’t believe they are applicable with your resubmitted article. The NEFI editor can then make an assessment, and include your explanation when the amended article is sent back to the reviewers.

And that’s it, you have made it through the NEFI peer review. Next step is production.