No review process is perfect, which means that occasionally a review decision is in error. The purpose of an appeal process is to provide authors with an opportunity to overturn reviewing errors. The following guidelines may be useful in determining when to appeal a review decision.
- Do not appeal the decision if your primary disagreement is with the judgment of the editor or reviewers. For example, if they think that the paper is not important, that it represents an inadequate contribution to the literature, or that the methods used are inappropriate, those issues are matters of judgment, and they are not grounds for appeal.
- Do not appeal if you think you have addressed the reviewers’ (and/or editor’s) comments, but they do not.
- Do not appeal if you think the reviewers are mostly positive toward the paper, and thus the decision is unfair.
- Do appeal if you believe that the decision resulted primarily from a technical error on the reviewers’ (or editor’s) part, and you can conclusively demonstrate that an error was made.
- Do appeal if the primary reason for the reject decision, as given in the decision letter from the editor, can be clearly and unambiguously refuted.
If you wish to appeal the decision on the manuscript, you should send a letter of appeal to the editor at the Journal of Marketing office, at jom@ama.org. The appeal must be filed within three months of receiving the final decision letter. The letter of appeal should be two pages or less, in Word or PDF form, and should have three parts:
- The specific error that was made by the editor and/or reviewers.
- Evidence from the decision letter that this particular error was the difference between the paper being rejected and not rejected.
- Conclusive evidence that the specific error identified was, in fact, an error.
The editor will review the letter of appeal and will respond with a decision about whether to accept or reject the appeal. The editor’s decision is final. If an author submits an appeal that is subsequently rejected, that author forfeits the opportunity to submit any new appeals for the duration of the editor's term. If the appeal is accepted, the editor will decide on an appropriate disposition of the manuscript, which may be to accept or conditionally accept the manuscript, to request further revision, or to solicit an additional review.