Peer Review Process

  1. SoCul: International Journal of Research in Social Culture Issues. Employs a double-blind review method, namely that both reviewers and author(s) identities will be concealed from each other.
  2. Initial Screening. All submitted manuscripts will be screened by the Editor-in-Chief to determine whether the manuscript abides by the focus and scope of SoCul. Manuscripts that do not meet the basic requirements will be rejected without further review.
  3. If the manuscript meets these two criteria, it is checked for plagiarism or duplicate publication with a Similarity Check. After confirming its result, it is dispatched to two investigators in the field with relevant knowledge
  4. Peer-review. All manuscripts that pass the initial screening stage, will be distributed to two experts in the relevant field to undergo a double-blind peer-review.
  5. First Decision. A decision on a peer-reviewed manuscript will be given once both reviewers have submitted their review reports. In the event that both reviewers have differing opinions about the manuscript, the final decision will be handed over to the Editor-in-Chief. At this stage, the author(s) will receive at least one of this decision: accepted; revision required; or rejected.
  6. Revision Stage. Manuscripts that have been recommended for revision will be returned to the submitting author. Author(s) will have up to 1 month to revise the manuscripts. The revision process will be limited to a maximum of two rounds.
  7. Final Decision. If the author(s) fail to meet the revision requirements after the second round, the manuscript will be rejected. All accepted manuscripts will go through the final editing and layout process.
  8. Withdrawal of Manuscripts. Author is not allowed to withdraw submitted manuscripts, because the withdrawal is waste of valuable resources. Editors and referees of SoCul had spent a great deal of time and efforts processing submitted manuscript. Thus, in case of manuscript withdrawal, SoCul applies the following rules.

    • If author still requests withdrawal of his/her manuscript when the manuscript is still in the peer-reviewing process, author will be fined by paying IDR 250.000 per manuscript, as withdrawal penalty to SoCul.
    • If author requests withdrawal of his/her manuscript after the manuscript is accepted for publication, author will be fined by paying IDR 250.0000 per manuscript and blacklisted from publication at SoCul for 2 years.
    • Withdrawal of manuscript is only allowed after withdrawal penalty has been fully paid to SoCul
    • If author doesn't agree to pay the penalty, the author and his/her affiliation will be blacklisted for publication in SoCul. Even, his/her previously published articles will be taken off our online system.

    Please note that it is very unethical to withdraw a submitted manuscript from one journal if accepted by another journal. As SoCul continuously attempts to promote scientific publishing with integrity in Indonesia, we hope that you will carefully consider the consequences before conducting unethical publishing practice.