ELLITE: Journal of English Language, Literature, and Teaching is a peer-reviewed, open-access scholarly journal publishing original empirical research articles, theoretical analyses, applications of theories, material and curriculum development studies, and critical reviews in the fields of English Language, English Linguistics, English Literature, and English Language Teaching (ELT). As an invited peer reviewer, your expert evaluation plays a vital role in safeguarding the scholarly quality, methodological rigor, originality, and ethical integrity of manuscripts published in this journal. These guidelines are structured in strict compliance with the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers and the COPE Core Principles to help you conduct a fair, constructive, unbiased, and consistent evaluation.

1. Pre-Review Assessment and Scope Alignment

Upon receiving a review invitation, please first verify whether the manuscript aligns with your area of academic expertise, whether you can meet the requested deadline, and whether the topic fits within ELLITE Journal's disciplinary scope by following the decision steps in COPE's Flowchart on What to Consider When Asked to Peer Review a Manuscript. Before evaluating the technical quality of a submission, please confirm that it falls within one of the journal's three core pillars as required by the COPE Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing:

• English Linguistics: Phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, translation studies, and other related micro- or macro-linguistic subfields.

• English Literature: British, American, Australian, Postcolonial, and World Englishes literatures examined from diverse literary theories, comparative literature, gender studies, ecocriticism, cultural studies, or interdisciplinary perspectives.

• English Language Teaching (ELT): Instructional media and technology integration (CALL, MALL, AI in ELT), teaching and learning strategies, curriculum and material development, language assessment, learner individual differences, and best pedagogical practices across all educational levels (EFL, ESL, ESP, and EAP).

If a manuscript clearly falls outside these disciplinary boundaries, or if you identify gaps in your subject-matter expertise for a specific methodology, please notify the editor promptly or note this in your confidential comments and recommend "Resubmit Elsewhere" in accordance with the COPE Guidance on Peer Review Invitation Assessment.

2. General Review Criteria

Reviewers are expected to evaluate every manuscript objectively based on its intellectual merit and scholarly validity without personal, institutional, or ideological bias, adhering to the COPE Official Standards for Conducting a Peer Review. Please assess the manuscript using the following evaluation rubric:

3. Field-Specific Considerations

In addition to the general evaluation criteria, please apply discipline-specific scrutiny aligned with the COPE Study on Publication Ethics in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences:

A. For English Linguistics Manuscripts:
• Is the linguistic dataset (e.g., corpus size, spoken transcripts, informant demographics, or textual samples) clearly described, representative, and sufficiently robust to support generalizations?
• Is the analytical framework (e.g., phonological transcription, syntactic parsing, critical discourse analysis, or pragmatic coding) applied systematically and rigorously?
• Where speech recordings or community informants are involved, have participant privacy and cultural sensitivity been protected under COPE's Core Practice on Ethical Oversight?

B. For English Literature Manuscripts:
• Is the literary analysis substantive, original, and well-grounded in an established literary theory, critical lens, or historical context?
• Does the manuscript engage in deep close reading and critical interpretation of the primary text(s) rather than offering mere plot summary or biographical recounting?
• Are textual excerpts, archival materials, and multimedia adaptations properly attributed in accordance with COPE's Core Practice on Intellectual Property?

C. For English Language Teaching (ELT) Manuscripts:
• Is the pedagogical approach, instructional strategy, learning media, or curriculum model clearly explained and theoretically justified?
• Does the study demonstrate practical relevance, classroom applicability, and measurable pedagogical impact across its target educational context?
• If empirical, is the research design (e.g., classroom action research, quasi-experimental, case study, Research and Development [R&D], or mixed-methods) methodologically sound, and are any commercial interests in tested educational software or textbooks disclosed per COPE's Guidance on Conflicts of Interest?

4. Recommendation Categories in OJS

Upon completing your evaluation, please select one of the six standard recommendation categories in the Open Journal Systems (OJS) workflow, ensuring that your recommendation is logically consistent with your written report as emphasized in the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers:

• Accept Submission: The manuscript is of exceptional scholarly quality and ready for publication as stands, or requires only minor typographical copyediting.

• Revisions Required (Minor Revisions): The manuscript makes a valuable contribution and is fundamentally sound, but requires minor textual clarifications, literature updates, or formatting adjustments before final acceptance by the Editor.

• Resubmit for Review (Major Revisions): The manuscript shows strong potential within the journal's scope, but requires substantial structural, methodological, or analytical revisions and must undergo a second round of peer review.

• Resubmit Elsewhere: The manuscript does not align with the disciplinary Focus and Scope of ELLITE Journal, and is better suited for a different specialized publication venue.

• Decline Submission: The manuscript exhibits severe methodological flaws, lacks originality, fails to meet scholarly standards, or presents insurmountable ethical issues, rendering it unsuitable for publication.

• See Comments: Your specific recommendation is conditional or explained in comprehensive detail within the review comment boxes.

5. Providing Constructive Comments (Author vs. Editor Fields)

OJS provides two distinct text fields for submitting your review report. When preparing your feedback, please clearly distinguish between revisions that are essential to support the current claims of the paper and suggestions that merely extend the work beyond its current scope, as advised in COPE's Section on Preparing a Review Report:

• Comments for the Author: Provide constructive, specific, numbered, and professional feedback that helps the author understand both the strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript and offers actionable guidance for improvement. Reviewers must avoid hostile, derogatory, or personally dismissive language; please note that the Editorial Board reserves the right to screen or redact inappropriate remarks in strict accordance with COPE's Guidelines on Editing Peer Reviews.

• Comments for the Editor (Confidential): Use this field exclusively for sensitive remarks you do not wish to share directly with the author, such as suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, ethical concerns, potential conflicts of interest, or your candid overall suitability assessment. As explicitly stated in the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers, confidential comments to the editor must never be used as a venue for personal denigration or unsubstantiated false accusations made in the knowledge that the author will not see them.

6. Review Timeline and Post-Review Continuity

Reviewers are kindly requested to complete and submit their evaluation within 2 to 4 weeks of accepting the review invitation in OJS. In alignment with COPE's Flowchart on Peer Review Timeliness, if you realize you cannot fulfill the review within the stipulated timeframe, please decline the invitation promptly or contact the editorial team immediately to request a deadline extension (and feel free to suggest alternative qualified reviewers). Furthermore, consistent with COPE's Post-Review Guidelines, reviewers are strongly encouraged to accommodate requests from the journal to evaluate revised versions ("Resubmit for Review") of manuscripts they have previously reviewed to ensure continuity and fairness in the editorial decision.

7. Confidentiality, Generative AI Restrictions, and Research Ethics

To uphold the integrity of the peer-review process, all reviewers for ELLITE Journal must adhere to the following ethical obligations:

• Strict Confidentiality and Prohibition of Generative AI Uploads: Manuscripts under review, supplemental datasets, and editorial correspondence must be treated as strictly confidential documents and must never be shared, discussed with colleagues, or cited prior to publication, in compliance with COPE's standards on Reviewer Confidentiality and COPE's Discussion Document on Peer Review Ownership and Confidentiality. Crucially, reviewers must prepare their reports independently and are strictly prohibited from uploading any part of a submitted manuscript into Generative AI tools or Large Language Models (such as ChatGPT) to generate review reports, as doing so violates author confidentiality, intellectual property, and data privacy under the COPE Position Statement on AI Tools. Involving a junior researcher or graduate student in co-reviewing a manuscript for mentoring purposes requires prior explicit permission from the Editor-in-Chief.

• Disclosure of Competing Interests: Reviewers must disclose any potential conflict of interest—whether personal, collaborative, institutional, financial, or intellectual—immediately upon receiving the review invitation so the editor can determine whether recusal is required, following COPE's Policy on Conflicts of Interest.

• Reporting Suspected Misconduct: Reviewers are asked to flag any indication of plagiarism, duplicate publication, data fabrication, citation manipulation, or undeclared AI-generated text to the Editor-in-Chief immediately. In accordance with COPE's Guidance When a Reviewer Suspects Undeclared AI Use by an Author and COPE's Framework on Allegations of Misconduct, reviewers should report these concerns in confidence to the editor rather than attempting to investigate or contact the authors personally.

8. Double-Blind Peer Review Policy

ELLITE Journal applies a rigorous double-blind (double-anonymised) peer-review process, wherein the identities of both the authors and the reviewers are concealed from one another throughout the evaluation stages. In strict adherence to COPE's Anonymised Review Standards and COPE's Guidance on Reviewer Anonymity and Rights, reviewers must: (1) refrain from attempting to uncover or guess the identity of the author(s), and notify the editor immediately if the manuscript inadvertently reveals the author's identity so potential bias can be managed; and (2) ensure that their written comments and any uploaded review attachments (such as annotated MS Word or PDF files) have all personal metadata and user properties removed so their own identity is not disclosed to the author.