Reviewers Guidelines

1. Purpose and Reviewer Role

Jurnal Desain applies a double-blind peer-review process to evaluate the scholarly quality, methodological soundness, analytical depth, originality, and relevance of submitted manuscripts in design, visual art, visual communication, visual culture, and related fields.

Reviewers provide an independent scholarly assessment and recommendation to the journal. Reviewer recommendations are advisory. The final editorial decision is made by the Editor-in-Chief or the authorized editorial team.

Reviewers are expected to focus primarily on the substantive scholarly quality of the manuscript rather than copyediting, formatting, or minor language correction.

2. Reviewer Selection

Reviewers are selected based on the relevance of their expertise to the manuscript, verifiable academic identity and affiliation, recent scholarly publication record, independence, and availability.

Before accepting a review assignment, reviewers should ensure that the manuscript falls within their area of expertise and that they can complete the review within the deadline stated in the invitation.

Any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest must be disclosed to the editor before the assignment is accepted.

3. Confidentiality and Double-Blind Review

All manuscripts and peer-review materials must be treated as confidential.

Reviewers must not disclose, distribute, reproduce, quote, or use unpublished information from the manuscript for personal, scholarly, commercial, or competitive purposes. Reviewers must not attempt to identify the author(s), contact the author(s) directly, or share the manuscript with colleagues, students, assistants, or other third parties without prior editorial permission.

If the identity of an author becomes apparent and this may affect the reviewer’s impartiality, the reviewer should inform the editor.

4. Artificial Intelligence Policy for Reviewers

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the peer-review process is prohibited.

Reviewers must conduct the assessment personally and independently. Manuscripts, abstracts, figures, tables, data, excerpts, review materials, or unpublished information must not be uploaded to generative AI or other AI-based systems.

AI must not be used to summarize, analyze, evaluate, score, interpret, translate, generate, rewrite, or substantively edit reviewer comments or recommendations.

The reviewer remains fully responsible for confidentiality, scholarly judgment, and the content of the submitted review.

5. Scope of Scholarly Evaluation

The review should assess the manuscript as a scholarly argument and determine whether its evidence, analysis, and interpretation support its stated contribution.

Title

Assess whether the title is accurate, specific, concise, informative, and representative of the manuscript’s principal scholarly focus or important finding.

Abstract and Keywords

Assess whether the abstract clearly presents the research objective, method or approach, principal findings, and conclusion, and whether the keywords adequately represent the article’s core concepts, research object, and/or analytical approach.

Introduction, State of the Art, Research Gap, and Novelty

Assess whether the manuscript establishes an adequate scholarly context, critically positions relevant previous studies, identifies a defensible research gap, justifies the novelty or original contribution, and formulates a clear research objective.

Novelty should not rely solely on the use of a different object, location, medium, or case without a meaningful conceptual, analytical, methodological, or theoretical contribution.

Methodology / Research Design

Assess whether the method or research approach is appropriate to the objective and is described with sufficient transparency.

Where relevant, reviewers should consider the research object or corpus, data sources, sampling or selection criteria, data collection or evidence-generation procedures, analytical procedures, validity or trustworthiness, and potential limitations or bias.

Results and Discussion

Assess whether identifiable evidence or data support the principal findings and whether the discussion progresses beyond description toward scholarly interpretation.

Particular attention should be given to the relationship between:

evidence/data → principal finding → interpretation → theoretical or conceptual engagement → critical comparison or synthesis with previous research → scholarly contribution.

Visual Evidence and Presentation

For design and visual studies, assess whether figures, images, tables, diagrams, artefacts, interfaces, prototypes, or other visual materials are readable, appropriately sourced and cited, and meaningfully integrated into the scholarly argument.

Visual materials should function as scholarly evidence rather than merely as illustration or decoration.

Conclusion, Contribution, and Limitations

Assess whether the conclusion directly answers the research objective, accurately summarizes the principal findings, states the scholarly contribution proportionally to the evidence, and addresses implications and/or limitations where relevant.

References

Assess the relevance, adequacy, recency, scholarly quality, bibliographic consistency, and appropriate use of references.

Jurnal Desain requires:

• a minimum of 15 references;
• more than 80% of references to consist of primary references; and
• more than 80% of references to have been published within the last 10 years.

Primary references include articles published in scholarly journals, conference proceedings papers, dissertations, theses, undergraduate theses, manuscripts or primary archival materials, research monographs, and other sources that constitute direct research outputs rather than compilations derived primarily from other literature.

The primary-reference requirement should not be interpreted only as a numerical threshold. Reviewers should also consider whether relevant primary references are critically used to support the manuscript's:

• state-of-the-art overview;
• research-gap analysis;
• scholarly positioning;
• originality or novelty; and
• scholarly contribution.

A manuscript may satisfy the numerical primary-reference requirement but still demonstrate weak scholarly positioning when previous research is merely listed or summarized without critical synthesis.

Relevant foundational or classical sources may still be used when academically necessary.

Reviewers should also note material citation-reference inconsistencies, unverifiable or suspicious references, or systematic problems with APA 7th edition where these affect scholarly reliability.

6. Standard for a Substantive Review

A peer review should provide substantive and constructive scholarly feedback.

Comments limited mainly to grammar, spelling, typography, formatting, or layout do not constitute an adequate substantive peer review.

Reviewer comments should identify the specific scholarly issue, explain why it matters, and indicate the direction of revision without rewriting the manuscript for the author.

Reviewers should avoid generic comments, personal or dismissive language, unnecessary requests for additional citations, coercive citation, or imposing a preferred theory or method when the author’s approach remains academically appropriate to the research objective.

7. Reviewer Comments and Annotated Manuscript

Reviewer comments should be manuscript-specific, evidence-based, respectful, concise, and actionable.

Where an annotated manuscript is used, margin comments should be applied selectively to identify representative and substantive revision points. Repetitive language corrections should normally be avoided because such matters can be addressed during copyediting.

The annotated manuscript or supplementary review file may be uploaded through the OJS review workflow.

8. Reviewer Recommendation

Reviewers should select the recommendation that best reflects the severity and correctability of the scholarly issues identified in the manuscript.

Recommendation	Appropriate when
Accept Submission	The manuscript is publishable without substantive revision or requires only negligible correction.
Revisions Required	Remaining issues are minor or moderate and can be corrected without a full new round of peer review.
Resubmit for Review	Substantive weaknesses require major revision and another round of peer review.
Decline Submission	Fatal or cumulative substantive problems make the manuscript unsuitable for normal revision.

The number of reviewer comments should not determine the recommendation. The recommendation should instead reflect the severity, significance, and correctability of the identified scholarly issues.

The reviewer recommendation does not constitute the final publication decision.

9. Confidential Comments to the Editor

Confidential comments should be used only for matters that should not be communicated directly to the author, including concerns regarding plagiarism, duplicate publication, citation manipulation, image or data integrity, authorship, conflict of interest, journal scope, or other publication-integrity issues.

Where evidence is uncertain, reviewers should report the concern for editorial verification rather than make an unsupported allegation.

10. Submission of the Review

The peer review must be completed through the Jurnal Desain OJS review workflow.

Reviewer comments should be entered in the designated review fields, and an annotated manuscript or supplementary review file may be uploaded where appropriate. Reviewers must also select one recommendation through the OJS reviewer recommendation menu.

Substantive peer-review reports should not be submitted only through personal email, messaging applications, or other informal communication channels.

11. Reviewer Responsibility

By accepting a review assignment, the reviewer confirms that the manuscript and review materials will be treated confidentially; relevant conflicts of interest have been disclosed; no AI tool will be used in the peer-review process; the assessment will be conducted independently and substantively; and the completed review will be submitted through OJS within the assigned deadline.