1Aim and Scope

These guidelines explain the basic principles to be followed in the peer review process for papers submitted to the 2nd International Congress on Social Sciences and Management Studies.

The review process aims to assess the scientific contribution, originality, methodological adequacy, ethical compliance, clarity of findings, strength of discussion, and academic writing quality of submissions.

The guidelines cover reviewer invitations, evaluation procedures, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, suspected ethical misconduct, report writing, decision recommendations, and processes conducted through the CMT system.

2General Principles of the Review Process

The congress review process is conducted in accordance with the principles of scientific competence, impartiality, confidentiality, ethical responsibility, transparency, and consistency.

During evaluation, only the scientific content, methodological structure, originality, and relevance of the submission to the congress scope should be considered.

Reviewers must act independently of personal, institutional, academic, commercial, political, or ideological influences.

Review reports should be written in a clear, reasoned, academic, and constructive manner that helps authors improve their work.

3Evaluation Through the CMT System

The peer review process is conducted through the CMT system. Reviewers access assigned submissions, evaluate them, and submit their reports through their CMT accounts.

Reviewers must complete the evaluation form in CMT fully and carefully, including scores, comments, and decision recommendations.

Submission files, author information, reviewer invitations, evaluation forms, decision recommendations, and editorial communications in CMT are considered confidential.

Reviewers should not submit evaluations outside the system, share manuscript files with third parties, or communicate directly with authors.

4Accepting or Declining a Reviewer Invitation

Before accepting a review invitation, reviewers should consider their expertise, availability, and any potential conflicts of interest.

A reviewer should accept an invitation only if they have sufficient academic knowledge of the subject and can complete the review on time.

A reviewer should decline the invitation if the topic falls outside their expertise, if they do not have sufficient time, or if a conflict of interest exists.

When declining an invitation, reviewers may suggest alternative qualified reviewers if possible. However, the decision to appoint any suggested reviewer rests with the congress management and scientific committee.

5Expertise and Suitability

Reviewers should evaluate only submissions related to their area of expertise. The topic of the submission is expected to be aligned with the reviewer’s academic background, research area, or professional experience.

If a reviewer can evaluate only a specific part of the manuscript but cannot provide a sufficient assessment of the entire work, this limitation should be stated in the review report or in the confidential note to the editor.

For topics requiring specific expertise in methodology, statistics, data analysis, social sciences, management studies, ethical compliance, or field terminology, reviewers should be aware of the limits of their competence and inform the editorial team when necessary.

6Conflict of Interest Policy

Reviewers must promptly inform the editorial team of any conflict of interest that may affect the review process.

Conflicts of interest may include:

• Close academic, personal, or institutional relationship with the authors
• Recent co-authorship, project partnership, consultancy, or collaboration with the authors
• Direct or indirect academic, commercial, or personal benefit from the outcome of the work
• Prior direct contribution to the study, dataset, project, or research group
• Competition, dispute, or personal closeness that may affect impartial evaluation

In cases of suspected conflict of interest, reviewers should not proceed with the evaluation and should wait for the decision of the editorial team.

7Confidentiality and Blind Review

Confidentiality is essential in the review process. Reviewers must not share the content, data, methods, findings, figures, or conclusions of submissions with third parties.

Information obtained during the review process must not be used for personal academic work, teaching materials, projects, publications, presentations, or any other purpose.

To protect the blind review process, reviewers should not attempt to identify the authors and should not contact authors directly.

Review reports must not include statements, signatures, personal information, or file traces that may reveal the reviewer’s identity.

8Core Responsibilities of Reviewers

Reviewers are expected to fulfill the following responsibilities:

• Evaluate submissions according to scientific criteria and the congress scope
• Prepare reports in a clear, reasoned, constructive, and academic manner
• Avoid personal, dismissive, discriminatory, or inappropriate language
• Clearly state strengths and areas requiring improvement
• Identify methodological, ethical, or referencing issues
• Provide decision recommendations consistent with the report
• Complete the review within the specified timeframe
• Act in accordance with confidentiality and conflict of interest principles

9Review Criteria

Reviewers should generally evaluate submissions according to the following criteria:

Reviewers should also evaluate the title, abstract, keywords, references, language, and academic writing quality.

10Review Report Writing Principles

The review report should be clear, specific, and reasoned in a way that helps authors improve their work.

The report should not consist only of general statements such as “suitable,” “insufficient,” or “needs improvement.” It should clearly indicate which section requires improvement, why the improvement is needed, and what kind of revision is expected.

Where possible, the review report should follow this structure:

• A brief and neutral summary of the study
• Strengths of the study
• Major scientific or methodological issues
• Points requiring attention regarding ethics, data, references, or similarity
• Concrete recommendations for revision
• A brief justification supporting the decision recommendation

Reviewers should enter comments intended for authors and confidential notes intended only for editors in the correct fields in CMT.

11Decision Recommendations

Reviewers submit decision recommendations through the CMT system. The final decision is made by the congress editorial team and scientific committee.

Decision recommendations may generally include the following categories:

• Accept: The submission is suitable for presentation/publication as it is or with very minor formal corrections.
• Minor Revision: The submission is scientifically acceptable but requires limited revisions.
• Major Revision: The submission requires significant scientific, methodological, or structural revisions.
• Reject: The submission is not acceptable in terms of scope, originality, method, ethical compliance, or scientific adequacy.

The decision recommendation must be consistent with the evaluation presented in the report.

12Revision Review

Revised submissions may be assigned to the same reviewers or to new reviewers when necessary.

In revision review, reviewers should examine the extent to which authors have responded to the comments and recommendations provided in the previous review.

Reviewers should avoid adding entirely new requests that were not raised in the initial review unless a new and necessary issue is identified.

Revision review should determine whether the manuscript has improved, whether major concerns have been addressed, and whether the work has reached sufficient scientific maturity for a final decision.

13Reviewer Responsibility in Cases of Suspected Ethical Misconduct

If reviewers encounter any situation suggesting ethical misconduct during evaluation, they should report it to the editorial team through CMT.

Possible cases of ethical misconduct may include:

• Plagiarism or self-plagiarism
• Data fabrication or data falsification
• Absence of ethics approval information in studies requiring approval
• Missing informed consent information
• Content violating the privacy of participants or personal data
• Misleading authorship or concerns regarding author contributions
• Incorrect, incomplete, or misleading use of references
• Undisclosed or unethical use of artificial intelligence

Reviewers should not communicate suspected ethical misconduct directly to authors; such issues should be reported to the editorial team.

14Plagiarism and Similarity Evaluation

Reviewers should be attentive to uncited text, data, methods, tables, figures, images, or ideas in the submissions they evaluate.

In cases of suspected similarity, reviewers should report the concern to the editorial team with justification rather than making a final judgment.

The similarity rate alone is not the sole criterion for a final decision. The nature, source, scope, and ethical implications of similarity are considered within editorial evaluation.

Reviewers should not unnecessarily recommend their own work or direct authors to cite the reviewer’s publications. Reference suggestions should be made only when they genuinely improve the scientific quality of the work.

15Reviewer Responsibility Regarding the Use of Artificial Intelligence

Reviewers acknowledge that the submissions they evaluate are confidential academic documents. Therefore, manuscript files, abstracts, tables, data, or review materials should not be uploaded to third-party AI tools that may create confidentiality risks.

AI-supported tools may be used in a limited manner for the reviewer’s own language editing or formal improvement of the review report. However, the scientific responsibility of the review decision belongs entirely to the reviewer.

Reviewers must not use AI-generated evaluations without verification and must not include scientifically unsupported statements in their reports.

The review report must reflect the reviewer’s own academic assessment. AI tools cannot make decisions on behalf of reviewers and cannot be listed as reviewers.

16Timely Review and Time Management

Reviewers are expected to complete their evaluations within the timeframe specified in the CMT system.

If a reviewer cannot complete the evaluation within the specified timeframe, they should inform the editorial team as soon as possible.

Delayed reviews may affect the congress program, acceptance notifications, and publication process; therefore, reviewers are expected to pay attention to time management.

17Editorial Process and Final Decision

Reviewers provide scientific opinions and decision recommendations; however, the final decision is made by the congress editorial team and scientific committee.

The editorial team may consider reviewer reports, decision recommendations, congress scope, ethical compliance, program capacity, and scientific quality together when making the final decision.

In cases of disagreement between reviewer reports, an additional reviewer opinion may be sought or the final decision may be made through editorial evaluation.

The editorial team reserves the right not to share or to edit reviewer comments that are inappropriate, personal, discriminatory, insulting, or unsupported by scientific reasoning.

18Reviewer Acknowledgement and Certificate of Contribution

Reviewers who contribute to the review process may receive a certificate of appreciation or reviewer contribution certificate from the congress management after completion of the review process.

Issuing such a certificate may depend on the reviewer completing the assigned review on time, fully, and in accordance with academic standards.

Reviewer names may, where appropriate and in accordance with confidentiality principles, be published on the congress website or in the proceedings as part of the reviewers/scientific committee list.

19Contact

Questions regarding reviewer invitations, the CMT system, evaluation forms, conflicts of interest, suspected ethical misconduct, or technical issues should be directed to the official communication channels specified on the congress website.

Reviewers are advised to include the paper ID, paper title, and invitation information received through CMT in their correspondence.