Statistics Education Research Journal
Guidelines for Referees

1.	Journal Policy
Statistics Education Research Journal (SERJ), is an electronic journal published by the International Association for Statistical Education to:
•	Encourage research activity in statistics education; 
•	Advance knowledge about students’ attitudes, conceptions, and difficulties as regards stochastic knowledge;
•	Improve the teaching of statistics at all educational levels. 
We encourage the submission of quality papers, including research reports, theoretical or methodological analyses, literature surveys, thematic bibliographies, summaries of research papers and dissertations. Contributions in English are recommended. Contributions in French and Spanish will also be accepted.

2.	The Refereeing Process
When a paper is received it is sent to two external referees and to one associate editor, who acts as an internal referee. SERJ uses a double-blind refereeing process i.e. author(s) do not know the referees’ identity and (external) referees do not know the author(s)’ identity. When referee reports are received the editors make one of the following decisions: a) to accept the manuscript in the current version; b) to accept the manuscript after minor changes are carried out by the authors; c) to ask the author(s) to rewrite the paper and resubmit; d) to reject the paper. Referees are expected to follow the decision criteria below to make recommendations.
Anonymised reports from the internal and two external referees are sent to the author(s), with the editor’s decision re publication of the paper, and possibly some comments from the editor. This is also sent to the referees, but with the author(s) blinded to external referees. Papers revised or resubmitted after refereeing would be sent back to referees only if the changes were substantial or the editor needed a further opinion. Papers accepted for publication would be edited.

3.	Decision Criteria
3.1 Accept 
The paper fits well the journal policy, has a good quality and should be published.
3.2 Accept when revised
The manuscript is strong and interesting. However, some changes are needed before being published. These changes are small; for example they refer to complementing the references, clarifying some points or adding some minor information. Further refereeing is not needed after resubmission. The revision needs to be assessed only by the editors.
3.3 Rewrite the paper and resubmit
The theme and information provided are of potential interest to SERJ readers. However, the paper has some significant flaws in its current presentation. After resubmitting, the paper will need a second revision by the referees to assess the extent to which changes suggested were implemented.
3.4 Reject
The paper is not adequate for SERJ. Reasons for rejection include: the theme does not concern research in statistics education, the author is not acquainted with previous research on the same topic, or there is an inadequate research design, or data analysis. Even with a rewriting, it is unlikely that the paper is acceptable for publication. 

4.	Detailed Report
In addition to the recommendation about acceptance, we expect the referee to provide a detailed report that will be sent to the author(s) by the editor (together with reports from other referees and the editor’s summary and final decision). The report should include a detailed analysis of the paper that enables the author to understand the basis for the referee’s recommendation and provide suggestions that can help the author to improve the paper. 
4.1  Suggested structure and content
The report should contain four parts: recommendation, overall evaluation of the paper, detailed analysis, and (optionally) comments on smaller issues/details. The length and content of each part of the report will vary, depending on the specific nature of the paper being refereed, and the type of commentary the referee wishes to include. That said, it is expected that referees will try to keep to the suggested structure as much as possible. 
a. Recommendation:  accept / accept after revision / rewrite and resubmit / reject.
b. Overall evaluation: The opening paragraph(s) should briefly discuss overall aspects of the paper in order to explain the overall reason for the given recommendation. This paragraph could refer to the overall importance of the topic, quality of research, quality of scholarly writing and analysis, main strong and weak points, and overall potential contribution of the paper to current conceptual and theoretical knowledge and to educational practice. 
c. Detailed analysis: This part should address in detail key aspects of the paper. The section numbering system should be used to facilitate referencing. The following describes a possible structure and content relevant to empirical papers (whether quantitative or qualitative). Most points will also be relevant when evaluating research reviews or conceptually-oriented papers.
•	the appropriateness and importance of the aim/ purpose/rationale of the research/study, in light of the purposes of SERJ. 
•	soundness of the theoretical framework or the scholarly rationale for the work, quality of review and critical synthesis of previous research or bibliography .
•	relevance and soundness of research design/approach/methods, and data collection, given the research goals.
•	relevance and soundness of data analysis (including choice of analytic tools and procedures, and interpretation), effectiveness of data presentation in tables/ graphical displays.
•	discussion, including quality of analysis of the meaning and import of the key results, how the findings relate to or add to the existing literature or knowledge base, and evaluation of the limitations of the work. Given the aim of SERJ, the discussion has to also be explicit about the contribution and conclusions/implications for both research and educational practice. 
 d. Smaller issues: The report should close with a list (if needed) of finer issues, such as typographical errors, syntactical and formatting problems in specific paragraphs, confusing tables or graphical displays, inaccuracies in references, etc. Again, the section numbering system should be used to facilitate referencing. The referee may also provide here specific examples for how to facilitate improvements.
4.2 Formatting of the report
All comments should be numbered, to enable authors who write to the editor to clearly refer to each comment. For example, an author can refer to the comment numbers when submitting a corrected paper to help explain how referees’ remarks have been dealt with. It is suggested to use headers or subtitles (e.g., “Goals”, “Theoretical Framework”, “Results”, “Smaller issues”, etc) to help the author and the editor find their way in the report. All comments should be included in the report itself, with no annotations to be made on the electronic version of the paper.
4.3  Anonymity
At no point is the identity of the referees disclosed to the author(s). Each referee should take care not to make any comments in the report that would reveal his/her identity. 
4.4  Comments for the editor only
The referee may also wish to submit comments to the editors that are NOT meant for the author(s). Such comments should be clearly marked, and should be submitted separately to the editor as part of the letter that accompanies the report.

5.	Confidentiality and Copyright
As new papers are sent to referees in a full electronic copy, attention needs to be paid to both confidentiality and copyright issues. The SERJ policy is that NO copies of papers released for refereeing should be shared or circulated (via printed or electronic means) to others. Immediately following forwarding of the report to the editors, the electronic and any hard copies of the paper should be deleted/destroyed. At all times the paper and the report should be kept confidential and the paper should not be cited, before it is published, without written permission from the author(s) and the editor.

Statistics Education Research Journal
http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/serj

International Association for Statistical Education
http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase