Exploring the Role of Peer-Review as a Mechanism of Quality Control of Academic Marketing Research Submitted for Publication in Arab Refereed Journals: A Proposed Standardized List of Evaluative Criteria

Abstract

This study aimed at exploring the progress of the academic marketing research submitted for publication in Arab refereed journals, diagnosing the current problematic situation and developing what can be considered as a unified and standardized list of evaluative criteria that may be used by these journals in assessing the validity and suitability of the academic marketing research for publication. Those journals are adopting varied evaluative forms (lists of evaluative criteria) to determine whether the research paper is publishable or not. The data required for this research were collected from a sample of 305 staff members of both, the departments of Business Administration and Marketing at the Arab universities which are active members of the Association of Arab Universities (AARU). The sample consisted of two groups: the first was the reviewers’ group which consisted of 180 members. While the other was the authors’ group which consisted of 125 members. The data was collected by using two different questionnaires (one for each group). Quantitate and qualitative statistics were used in the data analysis. The main outcome of this study was the standardized list of evaluative criteria which was reached through the 8 steps procedure developed by the researcher.