Manuscript submitted: The journal has received the submission and is conducting an initial editorial assessment and screening for technical requirements.

Editor invited: The journal office identifies potential editors to handle the submission.

With editor: The manuscript has been placed with a member of the editorial board for handling.

Under review: The handling editor has invited peer reviewers to evaluate the submission.

Required reviews complete: Some or all assigned reviewers have submitted comments.

Decision in process: The handling editor has drafted a decision, but it still needs to be finalized or sent to the authors.

The journal staff and in-house editorial team perform an initial quality check to identify potential issues such as:

• Competing interests
• Compliance with editorial policies and ethical standards
• Financial disclosures
• Data availability

Submissions may be returned to authors for changes or clarifications at this stage.

Editorial Review

After completing internal checks, each new submission is assigned to an Academic Editor with relevant expertise. The editor reviews the manuscript against our publication criteria and determines whether reviews from additional experts are needed to evaluate the manuscript. The handling Academic Editor is usually a member of the BRJ Editorial Board, but occasionally a Guest Editor is invited to serve instead.

During submission, you’ll be asked to indicate any specific editors or reviewers who should not review your manuscript. We will respect your request so long as it does not interfere with the objective and thorough assessment of the submission.
The handling editor selects reviewers based on expertise, publication history, and past reviews and invites them to provide feedback on the manuscript. After agreeing to review, external peer reviewers typically have ten days to submit their review. The journal office will follow up with late reviewers and inform you of any delays.
BRJ uses single-blind peer review. Reviewers remain anonymous unless they identify themselves by signing their name to their review in our submission system.

The handling Academic Editor or staff editor makes the final decision on each manuscript. The time to render a first decision averages about 43 days, but times vary depending on how long it takes for the editor to receive and assess reviews.

The editor considers reviewer feedback and their own evaluation of the manuscript in order to reach a decision. The following decision types are available:

• Reject
• Major revision
• Minor revision
• Accept

Decisions are communicated to the corresponding author in a formal letter, along with reviewer feedback and any other requirements from the journal office.

If the editor feels that your manuscript has the potential to be published but requires changes, you’ll be invited to revise it. You’ll have 45 days to resubmit the revised manuscript for both a major and a minor revision.
In most cases, the revised manuscript is re-assigned to the original Academic Editor. The editor may make a new decision based on their own assessment of the revised manuscript and your response to reviewers or request additional input from external peer reviewers.

BRJ uses two levels of accepting the decision. When the handling editor is satisfied with the scientific aspects of the manuscript, they’ll issue an editorial acceptance decision. This is a provisional acceptance, pending final checks for formatting and technical requirements. Once the final requirements are fulfilled, the journal office will send a formal acceptance decision, and your manuscript will move on to production.

BRJ now offers accepted authors the opportunity to publish the peer-review history of their manuscript alongside the final article. The peer review history package includes each revision’s complete editorial decision letter, with reviews, and your responses to reviewer comments, including attachments. If the peer reviewers have chosen to sign their reviews, their names will also appear.
If your submission is accepted for publication, you’ll be invited to opt-in to publish the peer-review history of your manuscript using a form in our submission system.
Sharing peer review history enriches the scientific record, increases transparency and accountability, and helps to reinforce the validity of your research by displaying the thoroughness of the peer review process it has undergone.
The journal reserves the right not to publish peer review history in special cases, for example, due to ethical considerations, such as the inclusion of information about a vulnerable population.

Authors can request that submissions (with reviewer reports, if relevant) rejected from one BRJ journal be transferred to another BRJ journal for further consideration there. Manuscripts will never be transferred between the journals without an author’s consent.
We trust that reviewers for any BRJ journal are willing to have their reviews considered by the editors of another BRJ journal.

Authors may submit a formal appeal for rejected submissions. Authors must provide detailed reasons for the charm and point-by-point responses to the reviewers’ or Academic Editor’s comments. Appeal requests must be made in writing to bostonresearch.org with the word “appeal” in the subject line.
Decisions on appeals are final without exception. Priority is given to new submissions, so the appeal process may take longer than the initial submission process.