The science education research community has recently been engaged in a heated e-mail discussion about the journal review process. This debate began with a professor's long open letter to an editor in which he protested the decision to reject his submitted manuscript and listed his disagreements with two of the reviewers who had rejected his paper. His protest has led to some soul-searching within the science education community about the journal review process. Reading through some of that mail caused me to think again about the peer-review process as it works with this journal. The JRME review process is different from that used by most journals.
Most journals have large editorial boards, and only board members review submissions.
But although every article submitted to JRME is reviewed by a JRME Panel member, the other three or four reviewers are selected from throughout the international mathematics education community. I think that question can be addressed only by first asking about the purpose of a journal and of its peer-review process. As an editor, I have been surprised at the difficulty of publishing papers in areas in which little has been formerly published, at least in mathematics education journals. For example, papers dealing with semiotics invariably seem to be negatively reviewed by reviewers who claim some expertise in this field. I would like to publish a paper that addresses semiotics in a way that would introduce this field to the readership of JRME, but I cannot accept a paper if the reviewers find it seriously flawed.