Submissions, Review, and Publication Processes

The steps involved in the submission and review process will depend on the type of work that you have submitted and may vary according to editorial needs. However, here is a basic guide to the procedure.

Step 1: Submission

All submissions to JOTA should be made by email. Please ensure that you read the guidelines on our website carefully before submitting your work.

Once you have submitted your manuscript, we will email you to confirm that we have received it. If we require any further information at that stage, we will let you know. Your manuscript will then be passed to our editors for initial consideration. 

Step 2: Initial Assessment

Articles and short notes: These will initially be assessed by the editors, who will consider whether the manuscript submitted has the potential to be suitable for publication in the journal. Should they decide that your article or short note merits further consideration, they will progress it to the peer review stage of the process. If, however, they do not think that your paper would be a good fit for the journal, we will not progress it to the peer review stage of the process and will contact you to inform you about the decision.

Commentaries and reviews: These will be assessed by the editors. Commentaries and reviews will not go through our formal peer review process, although the editors reserve the right to seek the opinions of other board members or external reviewers.

Step 3: Peer Review

Please note: this step only applies to articles and short notes. 

JOTA operates a double-blind peer review process. Therefore, your article or short note must be anonymised so that we can send it out to our reviewers.

When sending papers out for review, we always endeavour to find reviewers with expertise in the appropriate subject matter. In addition, as an open access journal, we do not offer payment to reviewers. Therefore, all of our reviewers generously give their time to us on a voluntary basis. This means that our review process may take longer than those of some other journals.

Step 4: Outcome Notification

Articles and short notes: We will let you know whether or not the editors have decided to send your paper out to peer reviewers as soon as possible. We aim to do this within four weeks of the receipt of your article or short note. 

If the editors decide to send your paper out to peer reviewers, we will let you know the outcome as soon as we can. Once the editors have received and considered the reviewers’ reports, we will let you know whether they have decided to accept your paper, reject your paper, or ask you to make revisions or provide them with further information before they can make their decision.

The peer review and decision-making stage of the process will usually take at least twelve weeks. Unfortunately, as some of the process is outside of our control, we cannot provide a definite timescale or guarantee that your paper will be reviewed by a specific date. 

Should we offer you the opportunity to revise and resubmit your article or short note, we will usually ask you to include detailed responses to the reviewers’ comments and suggestions along with your revised paper. The changes that you have made should be marked up on the revised manuscript but your amendments should be anonymised. Once we have received your revised paper, we will, in most cases, send it back to the reviewers for consideration. The editors will then consider the reviewers’ responses and let you know the outcome. 

Commentaries and Reviews: Once the editors have reviewed your manuscript, we will let you know whether they have decided to accept it, reject it, or ask for revisions or further information in order to make their decision. We aim to do this within six weeks of the receipt of your commentary or review.

Step 5: Pre-Publication

Once we have accepted an article, short note, commentary, or review for publication in the journal, we will format it and copy-edit it according to our house style. We will forward the formatted and copy-edited version to you together with any queries that we may have. We will ask you to check the manuscript carefully and provide us with responses to our queries within a set timescale. We may also ask you to sign a declaration in respect of the authorship and originality of your paper, your research funding, the existence of any competing interests, and copyright details. 

Step 6: Publication

We aim to publish at least two issues of the journal each year. If we accept your paper, we will let you know which issue it is likely to be published in and an approximate date of publication as soon as we are able to. 

The Journal of Tax Administration is only available in digital format from our website. We will notify you when we have published the issue containing your paper. 

Step 7: Post-Publication

Once we have published an issue of the journal, we promote it on various platforms, including X (formerly Twitter), and via our newsletter. We encourage authors to promote their published papers via their own networks and social media accounts to maximise readership of their work.