The Healthcare Quality Professionals Journal follows a structured peer review policy to ensure the academic quality, professional relevance, ethical integrity, originality, methodological soundness, and practical value of submitted manuscripts.
The peer review process helps the journal publish reliable and useful scholarship in healthcare quality improvement, patient safety, hospital administration, clinical governance, public health, healthcare management, digital health, and allied health sciences.
Purpose of Peer Review
Peer review is an important part of scholarly publication. It helps the editorial team evaluate whether a manuscript is suitable for publication and provides authors with constructive comments for improving the quality, clarity, evidence base, structure, and healthcare relevance of their work.
- To assess whether the manuscript fits the aims and scope of the journal.
- To evaluate originality, healthcare relevance, research quality, and professional contribution.
- To review the clarity of objectives, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion.
- To examine the practical value of the manuscript for healthcare quality and patient safety.
- To identify possible plagiarism, duplicate submission, unsupported claims, or ethical concerns.
- To support responsible, evidence-based, and high-quality healthcare scholarship.
Peer Review Process
Manuscripts submitted to the journal pass through editorial screening and review before a final decision is made. The review process may vary depending on manuscript quality, subject area, reviewer availability, revision requirements, and editorial workload.
1. Submission Check
The manuscript is checked for completeness, author details, formatting, references, declarations, and basic submission requirements.
2. Scope Screening
The editorial team checks whether the manuscript is relevant to healthcare quality, patient safety, clinical governance, or allied health fields.
3. Originality Check
The manuscript may be checked for plagiarism, copied material, duplicate publication, improper citation, and similarity concerns.
4. Expert Review
Suitable manuscripts may be sent to reviewers or subject experts for academic, methodological, ethical, and professional evaluation.
5. Revision Stage
Authors may be asked to revise the manuscript according to reviewer comments, editorial observations, or formatting requirements.
6. Final Decision
The editorial team makes the final decision based on review comments, revision quality, originality, ethics, and journal standards.
Review Criteria
Manuscripts are generally evaluated according to academic, ethical, methodological, and healthcare practice-related criteria.
- Relevance to healthcare quality, patient safety, hospital administration, public health, or allied health sciences.
- Originality of the research problem, quality improvement approach, clinical issue, or professional discussion.
- Clarity of title, abstract, keywords, objectives, methodology, findings, and conclusion.
- Soundness of research design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, and evidence-based discussion.
- Practical contribution to healthcare quality improvement, patient-centred care, safety systems, or health service delivery.
- Accuracy of references, ethical declarations, data presentation, tables, figures, and professional terminology.
- Quality of language, formatting, structure, citation, and overall scholarly presentation.
- Compliance with publication ethics, patient confidentiality, research integrity, and professional responsibility.
Academic Review Focus
- Clear research objective and problem statement
- Relevant literature and scholarly background
- Appropriate methodology and analysis
- Logical results and discussion
- Accurate references and citations
- Meaningful conclusion and recommendations
Healthcare Review Focus
- Patient safety and quality relevance
- Clinical or institutional usefulness
- Ethical handling of healthcare information
- Practical improvement value
- Evidence-based healthcare contribution
- Professional applicability and clarity
Possible Editorial Decisions
| Accepted | The manuscript meets the journal’s academic, professional, originality, ethical, and publication requirements and is accepted for publication. |
| Minor Revision | The manuscript requires small improvements in language, formatting, citation, references, clarity, structure, or presentation. |
| Major Revision | The manuscript requires substantial improvement in methodology, analysis, healthcare relevance, evidence, discussion, references, or academic quality. |
| Rejected | The manuscript does not meet the journal’s scope, originality, ethical requirements, healthcare relevance, or scholarly publication standards. |
Responsibilities of Reviewers
Reviewers are expected to provide fair, objective, respectful, and useful comments that help improve the academic quality and professional value of submitted manuscripts.
- Reviewers should evaluate manuscripts according to subject relevance, research quality, ethical standards, and professional contribution.
- Reviewer comments should be clear, constructive, respectful, and relevant to the submitted manuscript.
- Reviewers should maintain confidentiality of submitted manuscripts and review communication.
- Reviewers should identify possible plagiarism, duplicate publication, weak methodology, unsupported claims, citation errors, or ethical concerns where noticed.
- Reviewers should not use unpublished manuscript content for personal, academic, professional, or commercial benefit.
- Reviewers should decline the review if they have a conflict of interest or lack suitable expertise.
Responsibilities of Authors During Review
Authors should cooperate with the review process and respond to editorial or reviewer comments carefully, honestly, and professionally.
- Authors must submit original and unpublished academic or professional healthcare work.
- The manuscript should not be under consideration by another journal at the same time.
- Authors should revise the manuscript according to valid editorial or reviewer suggestions.
- Authors should provide clear explanations if they do not agree with any suggested change.
- Authors must ensure that data, references, healthcare claims, tables, figures, and ethical declarations are accurate.
- Authors should correct any error identified during review or after publication.
Confidentiality
All submitted manuscripts are treated as confidential documents. Editors, reviewers, and editorial staff should not share manuscript files, review comments, author information, unpublished healthcare data, patient-related information, research findings, or editorial communication with unauthorized persons.
Conflict of Interest
Editors and reviewers should not handle manuscripts where there is any personal, academic, institutional, professional, financial, or commercial conflict of interest. Authors should also disclose conflicts of interest, funding sources, institutional support, or acknowledgments where applicable.
Review Timeline
The review timeline may vary depending on manuscript quality, subject area, reviewer availability, revision requirements, and editorial workload. Authors are advised to submit complete, clear, original, ethical, well-structured, and properly formatted manuscripts to support smooth editorial and review processing.
Final Editorial Decision
The final decision regarding acceptance, revision, or rejection rests with the editorial team of the Healthcare Quality Professionals Journal. The decision is based on manuscript quality, originality, ethical compliance, healthcare relevance, reviewer comments, author revisions, and journal publication standards.
Important Note
Submission of a manuscript to the Healthcare Quality Professionals Journal indicates that the authors agree to follow the journal’s peer review process, editorial requirements, originality standards, ethical responsibilities, revision policy, confidentiality rules, and final editorial decision.