Journal of Research in Applied Linguistics (RALs) is committed to ensuring integrity and promoting innovative and evidence-based sources of information in order to maintain the quality and impact of the papers published, according to the Core Practices set by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). RALs favors a double-blind peer-review process, which means that both the reviewer and the author remain unknown to each other, ensuring objectivity during the process.

Once you have submitted your manuscript to RALs, it goes through the following editorial and peer-review process:

The Editor evaluates each submitted manuscript in order to establish if the main criteria for further manuscript consideration are met. Manuscripts that do not meet the main criteria (scope of the journal, and priority of publication) are rejected without peer-review. The estimated time from submission to the initial screening is almost one week. Contributions that qualify for further consideration are checked by the Editor for any type of research misconduct or other questionable research practice that may have occurred. If any suspicion is raised at this point, the Editor-in-Chief has the right to return the manuscript for correction or reject the manuscript because of unacceptable research practice. If there are no questionable research practices, the manuscript is further assigned to peer-review for the methodological quality, statistical analysis, and data presentation by at least two reviewers; typically, one reviewer has broad knowledge of the field, and one has expertise in the particular topic or methodology. The estimated time from submission to the first peer-review decision is almost 9 weeks. If a manuscript is considered for publication but requires modifications and improvements, a revision is requested. The authors should follow the reviewers’ comments in order to reply or rebut them, if applicable. Authors are usually given 3 weeks for manuscript revision. When all the requirements in the revision process are adequately fulfilled, the manuscript is accepted for publication.

After acceptance, the manuscript is processed by the Editor-in-Chief in order to ensure that all contributions fulfill editorial standards. After final editorial processing, the copy-edited PDF version of the manuscript is sent to the corresponding author for final proofreading. In this step of the editorial process, only minor linguistic and spelling corrections are allowed without content alterations. Occasionally, authors might be asked to clarify or explain specific sections of the manuscript. Since no corrections or alterations are possible after final proofreading and following publication, authors are advised to check the edited version of the manuscript thoroughly and carefully. The corresponding author is asked to return the corrected version of the manuscript within 3 days. The article will be published online after receipt of the corrected proofs. This is the first official publication citable with the DOI. After the release of the printed version, the paper can also be cited by issue and page numbers. The waiting time for publishing the printed version depends on the number of accepted articles. After publication, all articles in PDF and XML formats can be downloaded for free on the website.

The Editor-in-Chief has full authority over the complete editorial process and decision-making responsibility. Articles may sometimes be accepted for publication but later rejected in the publication process, even in some cases after public posting in "Articles in Press" form, in which case all rights will revert to the author.