Development of the Peer Review Process of Asia Social Issues, College of Graduate Studies, Walailak University

Abstract

          The quality assessment of Thai academic journals, based on the criteria of the Thai-Journal Citation Index Center (TCI), requires that journals undergo a peer review process by qualified experts before publication approval. One of the main issues affecting the article evaluation system is the shortage of qualified reviewers, which leads to delays in the evaluation process and prevents authors from utilizing their work within the designated timeframe.

          To address these challenges, the Asia Social Issues journal has enhanced its article evaluation process by: (i) expanding its database of expert reviewers and (ii) Increasing the pool of available evaluators. These improvements have significantly reduced the average evaluation time per review cycle, from 164.10 days in 2019 to 59.10 days in 2020, and further to 31.43 days in 2021. Additionally, to mitigate delays, experts from the TCI or Scopus databases—recommended either by the author or the editor—may also be selected to participate in the evaluation process.