The purpose of the SSJ is to provide an opportunity for young and early-career philosophers at Stellenbosch University to develop their skills and to publish in a peer-reviewed academic journal. Our review process is intended to assist them on that journey, so no prior experience with academic publishing is necessary.

While the editorial team is responsible for keeping the journal running, the core of academic publishing is the contributions of peer-reviewers. Reviewers enable the SSJ to publish academically rigorous papers of high quality.

Volunteering to review

Any lecturer or postgraduate student working on a master's or higher degree can volunteer as peer-reviewer for the SSJ, including those who have themselves submitted a paper for publication.

The editor-in-chief will issue a call for articles and reviewers which will contain the deadlines for volunteering for the current issue. This announcement will also indicate the timeline for publication, and the dates of the two rounds of review during which you should be available for review. You are welcome to volunteer as reviewer at any other time during the year as well by emailing the journal.

Because we know that being an anonymous reviewer can be a thankless task, and because reviewers are so important to the journal, we de-anonymise our reviewers after review in order to credit them in the published volume. This takes the form of a listing along with the editorial team. When volunteering you will be asked whether you would like to opt-out of de-anonymisation. You will have another chance to opt-out before publication.

When volunteering, you will also be asked to indicate your field(s) of expertise, as well as general conflicts of interest (such as if you are employed or funded by a group with particular interests regarding the content of a philosophical journal). This will assist the editorial team in assigning articles to you for review.

Guidelines for review

General guidelines

The duties of reviewers are to evaluate the academic rigour of submitted papers, and to provide guidance for authors on how to improve their work. This process is in general quite different from marking an essay, but in our case they have certain similarities. We allow submissions that are not immediately ready for publishing, and guide them to publication. Reviewers are not responsible for language- or copy-editing, and can concern themselves exclusively with the philosophical content of the papers. They evaluate and provide guidance on how to improve the authors' philosophical argumentation.

In general:

• In reviewing, please evaluate the philosophical content of the article, and indicate to the author how to improve on their argument, as well as how it is communicated. How can the argument be improved or strengthened? How can the communication of the argument be improved?
• You can concern yourself entirely with the philosophical content; ignore language, grammar, and typographical issues unless they impede the communication of the philosophical content.
• We aim to maintain as high as possible an academic standard, while taking into account that this is many authors' first foray into academic publishing. Please be as critical as you deem necessary, but always provide constructive and actionable feedback.
• While we aim for academic rigour, we want to avoid overly formal writing; it is possible for formal writing to be straightforward.
• Please note in your review any ethical concerns regarding the content of the article, such as concerns with the research methodology (e.g., regarding participant consent or data integrity) if applicable.
• You are allowed to recommend against publishing.
• You are allowed to suggest changes to the title of the article.
• Your reviews are bound to the same ethical principles as submissions, including the requirements of originality. This means that your review must not contain any work that is improperly attributed. Please do not include generated content (AI/LLM or otherwise) in your review.

Technical

• You can write your review as a separate document, or as comments on the original. Your feedback will be anonymised before being sent to the author.
• Do not make any changes to the text directly. In the event that you want to indicate a language or other issue, please enable “track changes” so that the editorial team and authors can see exactly what your changes are, and use highlights and comments rather than direct editing.
• If you choose to make comments on the text in specific places, please also include (as a comment at the beginning or end of the document, or in your return email) a short overview of your impression, and what the author should focus on in general during their edits.