Review guide

Dear reviewer,

The Zeitschrift für Hochschulentwicklung (Journal of Higher Education Development) and its quality are highly dependent upon your review, and we - the Editorial Board - would like to thank you for participating as a reviewer.

In the following, we would like to describe the most important cornerstones of a successful review, to ensure that high-quality contributions are included in the respective issue, while also taking the authors’ needs into account.

Constructive feedback desired! We would like to receive appreciative, constructive feedback on the submitted papers. Since the feedback should help the authors towards a successful outcome, negative criticism should always be combined with concrete suggestions for improvement. When writing your review, we ask you to keep in mind that your review - regardless of its outcome - will always be a sign of appreciation for the work the authors have done or have yet to do. We will make your review anonymously available to the authors and to the other reviewers of the paper.

Your review should address the following areas:

Research contributions (20,000 to 33,000 characters)

  • Systemic question in transdisciplinary, interdisciplinary or subject-specific contexts
  • Research gap as starting point
  • Extensive embedding in scientific discourse
  • Robust methodological approach
  • Reflection on own work

Research-driven development contributions (20,000 to 33,000 characters)

  • Higher education development perspective with sound research basis
  • Discussion and differentiation of a systemic problem in teaching development
  • Academically grounded "institutional research" contribution
  • Supported by a literature review

Development contributions (20,000 to 33,000 characters)

  • Concrete problem in higher education development at (own) university
  • Practical need
  • Embedded in scientific discourse and literature (without claiming to be an overview of said literature)
  • Suggestions for teaching and university development, with recommendations for action (if applicable)

 

The following criteria must be met:

  • the paper mentions the central content-related aspects,
  • research results, questions or practical examples are presented clearly,
  • subjective opinions of the authors are recognizable as such,
  • the explanations presented correspond to the current state of research in the respective field or in technological development,
  • the paper is written in a linguistically comprehensible manner, and core statements are also offered in shorter formulations,
  • illustrations are clear, and the source is cited when external illustrations are used,
  • the paper has a clear and comprehensible structure,
  • references and citations are in the current APA style, and
  • gender-appropriate language is used.

Review procedure

The review phase - like the entire submission procedure - is supported by the ZFHE platform, which is implemented with Open Journal Systems (OJS) at http://www.zfhe.at. Please notify us of your acceptance or rejection and always submit any queries via the page of the respective paper to be reviewed, which you can reach directly via the URL given in the request (after successful login). All the necessary steps are explained there:

  1. In the first step, you can view submission details; we request that you indicate whether or not you wish to accept the review by selecting either "Accept review" or "Reject review request".
  2. In the second step, you will be provided with a summary of our review guidelines.
  3. In the third step, please enter your expert opinion using the web form provided. Before submitting, you can download the complete text of the review. Optionally, you can make comments and additions directly in the text and upload the modified file. Please make sure that such files are anonymized (file properties); but please fill out the form in any case!
  4. With this (step 4), your review is completed. You will be informed about the editors' decision at the latest after the end of the review phase and will also receive the other review, for your information.

Orthographic and grammatical corrections are made during the editing process, which follows the review phase (and revision by the authors, if necessary).

We thank you again for contributing to the quality of our issues as a reviewer and look forward to your participation!

The members of the ZFHE Editorial Board