Migration Letters, thank you for your feedback

Migration Letters, the first international letter tye journal in population studies

Migration Letters - Guide for Reviewers/Referees

What is Migration Letters Journal and who reads it?
Migration Letters is an interdisciplinary journal. The journal
serves academics, policy makers, students and other persons
or institutions interested in migration theory, research, and
practices. ML provides an open forum for those investigating
migration practices.
Migration Letters publishes material directed to scholars,
researchers and professionals who work with migrants or on
migration related issues. These individuals include students and
researchers as well as policy makers and service workers.
Many of our reviewers elected to serve because of their
knowledge and expertise on migration.
About 20,000 individuals and institutions in more than 150
countries are potential subscribers to ML. Readers of ML in
institutions are usually researchers, students and professionals
in government agencies, publishers.

What does a reviewer/referee for Migration Letters do?
As a member of the Editorial Board or as an ad hoc reviewer,
you will be asked to anonymously review manuscripts
submitted to ML. Editorial Board members review two to three
manuscripts per month, and ad hoc reviewers are invited to
review as needed. Each year ML has about 60 manuscripts
submitted and reviewed, most of which are between 5 and 10
pages.
We encourage electronic review. The reviews can be e-mailed
to us in the body of the e-mail or attached to the e-mail.
We allow four to six weeks for you to read and respond to the
manuscript. Please note that your adhering to the return
deadline is very important in our review process. (If you are on
the Editorial Board, we would appreciate your letting us know
when you will be away for an extended period of time so that
we do not direct manuscripts to you during that interval. We
would appreciate your keeping us informed of your current
address.)

How can a reviewer make an optimum contribution to a
writer’s work?
There are several features of a manuscript that should be
addressed in an effective review. As editors and contributors to
journals, we appreciate a reviewer’s beginning a review with a
brief summary of the article. Following that, we would suggest
structuring the commentary to reflect the four categories used
in rating manuscript quality: content, rationale or reasoning,
style, and audience appropriateness. Several questions related
to each of these categories are provided below to help
reviewers develop their commentaries:

Freshness and Scope of Content
· Is the content fresh? Are readers likely to perceive the piece
as a contribution to their concerns about migration? Will
readers view the work as current?
· Does the paper articulate an innovative strategy, program, or
perspective? Or does the paper provide a fresh view or
synthesis of existing knowledge?

Rationale and/or Reasoning
· Is the purpose of the article manifest? Does the content of
the manuscript clearly align with the purpose? Does the paper
contain material not essential to its purpose?
· Has the author, as appropriate, provided a sufficient review of
the literature to provide a base for the work undertaken?
· Are stated conclusions, results, or findings well-documented
and sustainable with credible evidence?
· Do conclusions clearly rest on data presented and analyzed?
· Does the article contain any unresolved ambiguities or
conflicting information?
· Are conclusions generalizable to other contexts?

Style
· Is the manuscript’s organization effective?
· Is the writing lucid, coherent, and well focused?
· Where appropriate, are the procedures, data, method of
analysis, and findings clearly presented?
· Would a reader find the material accessible?
· Does a sense of the author’s standpoint and perspective
emerge?

Audience Appropriateness
· Would an audience of specialists respond with enthusiasm to
the content of the manuscript?
· Are readers likely to view information gained from the
manuscript as information that would add significantly to their
knowledge and effectiveness?

Answers to these or similar questions are likely to provide
authors with the detailed commentary they may need to revise
productively. They will also provide us with important informa
tion about your transactions with the text so that we can draft
supportive letters to our authors when we recommend revision
and resubmission.

Ranking Manuscripts
1. Reviewers are asked to indicate their judgment of a paper’s
content in terms of its being fresh and current.

2. We ask them to determine the degree to which major points
are evident, supported, and substantiated.

3. We ask that they evaluate the clarity of the author’s writing
and the degree to which it is unpretentious.

4. We ask that reviewers indicate how appropriate the content
of an article is for our readership, which consists primarily of
specialists, researchers, service providers and government pro
fessionals.

After you have read, reflected upon, and written about the
manuscript, we ask you to provide us with an overall
recommendation.

A) Accept, with minor editorial changes
B) Accept with revisions
C) Revise and resubmit
D) Reject, not publishable

Your detailed comments will be forwarded to the author of the
article and will be the only communication between a reviewer
and an author.

Thank you for serving as a reviewer for ML. Your contributions
of time and thoughtfulness are very much appreciated, as well
as your detailed comments. They will enable ML to make deci
sions about the work that our writers have contributed.

Letters should be original unpublished accounts less than 2,500

Migration Letters, Editor

Email: editor@migrationletters.com
Web: http://www.migrationletters.com

migration letters

the first letter-type international journal in migration studies

Migration Letters is an
Open Access Journal

DOAJ - Directory of Open
Access Journals

Contact
Migration Letters
Postal:
Dr. I. Sirkeci, European
Business School, Regent's
College, Inner Circle,
London, NW1 4NS
United Kingdom

Email:
editor@migrationletters.com

Tel. +44 207 487 7758
Fax. +44 207 487 7465

Call for papers
Migration Letters invites
quality papers.

M igration Letters Flyer
Download and distribute
the information flyer for the
journal.

You need Java to see this applet.