Last updated: 11 August 2026
The Ascend: Journal of Interdisciplinary Scholarship and Innovation (AJISI) adheres to the highest standards of academic integrity, transparency, and ethical responsibility. All parties involved in the publication process — authors, editors, reviewers, readers, and the publisher — share responsibility for maintaining public trust in scholarly work.
Confidentiality
Manuscripts must be treated as confidential documents. Reviewers must not share — publicly or on any social media platform — reproduce, or use any part of the work before publication.
Constructive Feedback
Reviews should be fair, timely, and focused on improving the manuscript.
Conflict of Interest
Reviewers must disclose any potential conflicts of interest and decline the review if impartiality cannot be maintained. Declining promptly is genuinely helpful — it lets the editor invite someone else the same day.
Ethical Vigilance
Reviewers should report suspected plagiarism, data manipulation, or ethical violations encountered during review.
What a Useful Review Contains
The most useful reviews are specific. “The methodology is weak” tells an author nothing; “the sampling frame excludes non-enrolled respondents, which likely biases the estimate upward — this should be addressed in the limitations” tells them exactly what to do.
- Open with a short summary of what you understand the paper to claim
- Separate major concerns from minor ones, numbered, with page references
- Give reasons for every criticism
- Address the work, not the author
- Note what is done well — editors need to know a paper’s strengths as much as its weaknesses
Reviews are completed on the journal’s peer review evaluation form. See the peer review policy for the four recommendations and what each means.