Double blind pairs

Like most scientific journals that aspire to high quality, Akofena, the scientific journal for Language, Literature, Languages & Communication, subscribes to the principle of double-blind peer review as decided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) DOI : https://doi.org/10.24318/dvuDitEV To avoid any risk of complacency and to ease the task of the Editorial Boards, Akofena’s Editorial Secretariat is responsible for steering the review of all articles. According to this principle, all articles submitted to Akofena must go through this process. It consists of submitting the version of an article received and deemed acceptable by the Editorial Board to a review by at least two credible specialists, who may or may not be members of the Scientific and Reading Committee, and who may (or may not) ask the authors to make changes before publication. The notion of double-blind peer review means that the reviewers will read the article without knowing the author, and that they will not know the identity of the people who have reviewed their text when they make the final version, at least not before final publication.

The Scientific and Reading Committee evaluates submitted manuscripts exclusively on the basis of their academic merit (importance, originality, validity of the study, clarity) and their relevance to the scope of the journal, without regard to the authors’ race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, citizenship, religious belief, political philosophy or institutional affiliation.

Decisions to publish are not determined by the policies of governments or any other agency outside the journal itself. The Editor-in-Chief has full authority over all editorial content of the journal and the timing of publication of that content.

Each article submitted to Akofena is first rapidly evaluated by the Editorial Board, which decides whether or not to accept it. If the article is accepted, the Committee suggests two names of referees to the Editorial Secretariat, from within or outside the journal’s Scientific and Reading Committee, depending on the article’s speciality. Ideally, the referees will be from a university other than that of the contributor, but will be familiar with the context of the article. The reviewers receive the Word version of the article to be reviewed, together with the review form. They have two (02) weeks to write their assessment. The Akofena Editorial Secretariat ensures that deadlines are met and that the quality of the evaluation is maintained. It forwards these evaluations to the journal’s Editorial Board, which will summarise them.

They can still request changes, provided they justify them. This justification forms part of the article’s history. The Editorial Secretariat carries out a full linguistic revision of the final version of the accepted article: errors, typos, typography, reference checks, metadata checks (summary in several languages, keywords), anti-plagiarism software. If there is still room for improvement in the corrected text (complicated wording, misunderstood passages, missing references, confusion, etc.), the Editorial Secretariat will draw up a revision report and send it to the author for further information. The author will then be asked to respond promptly in the same file and return it to the Editorial Secretariat. The revised version is sent to the authors for final approval before being posted on the journal’s website.

If the assessments are contradictory, the text is sent to a third assessor for an opinion. When the process is complete, the Editorial Secretariat sends the authors of the article a summary of the assessments and the Editorial Committee’s recommendations. This evaluation report sets out the strengths and weaknesses identified by the evaluators, with the aim of helping authors to bring their text up to standard in terms of form and/or the advancement of knowledge on the subject it covers, but it also reminds them of a number of provisions (inclusive writing, translation of the abstract into an African language, application of APA standards) that must be complied with in order to publish in Akofena. Authors whose texts are recommended for publication with modifications have two weeks to produce a second version of their work. The Editorial Board is responsible for the final decision on the second version of the article.

Articles undergo a double blind review by members of the Scientific and Reading Committee and/or experts specialising in the fields covered by the journal. They each fill in a detailed assessment form, concluding with an opinion on the publication: either “publication authorised” (A), or “publication accepted subject to the necessary corrections being made” (B), or “publication not recommended” (C) (form published on the website). If both opinions are favourable to publication (A), the Secrétariat Éditorial summarises them and sends them to the author. If both opinions express reservations (B),

the anonymised files are sent to the author by the same route. After correction, the article is again submitted to the same experts (as far as possible). If the two opinions are unfavourable (C), the anonymised files are sent to the author by the same route. If the two opinions are contradictory, a third opinion is requested from one of the members of the Scientific and Reading Committee; the majority opinion determines the procedure for communicating the results to the author.

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