Peer review guidelines

 Peer-review guidelines

 

All articles submitted to Anthropologica - including special features, and film and exhibit reviews - undergo double-anonymous peer review. To know more about Anthropologica, please visit our webpage.

 

We want reviews to be fair and generous— generous both in collegiality and substance.

To this end, we ask reviewers to help us assess the submission in two ways:[1]

 

First, does the submission fit the mandate for our journal?

 

Anthropologica publishes innovative manuscripts that contribute to a theoretical, experimental, and practitioner-based scholarship in cultural anthropology; and, manuscripts are ethnographically based and engage with original content.

 

Second, is the submission a quality piece in its current state, or does it have promise to become one with feedback from reviewers and the editorial team in one or two rounds of revisions?

 

These questions are intended to guide reviews:

 

1/ Does the manuscript offer a clear and compelling argument and line of thought? If it’s not quite there yet, can you help crystallize it for the author?

 

2/ Does the manuscript offer an argument grounded in original ethnographic research? Can better use of ethnographic evidence be made to improve the argument? Perhaps the manuscript asks readers to stretch their ideas about what counts as ethnographic evidence, and, if so, is the rationale to do so clear and situated in the context where fieldwork was conducted?

 

3/Does the manuscript offer something new and significant, either on a new topic or a long-standing topic with a novel perspective?

 

4/ How does the manuscript engage with the literature? We do not want literature reviews; instead, submissions should engage with key literature germane to the argument at hand. Also, submissions should demonstrate awareness of citational practices, ideally, critical citational praxis that pays attention to regional scholarship, community-based scholarship, and to scholarship of Black, Indigenous, and people of colour scholars. Can you offer guidance to enhance the citational practices used in the manuscript, to ensure inclusivity, diversity, and decolonial approaches?

 

5/With respect to the readability of the manuscript, is the piece organized effectively, or can you suggest concrete revisions that would help the flow and legibility? Is the manuscript reasonably free of jargon and suitable for a broad audience? Is the writing clear? Can you suggest concrete ways to insert more dynamism or active voice in the writing to make it come more alive?

 

6/Regarding the authors’ presence and voice in the manuscript, the journal encourages the use of first person and, where relevant, reflexivity. Is the authors’ engagement with the ethnographic or field site sufficiently apparent? Does the manuscript reflect current trends in ethnographic writing?

 

7/ Do you have any comments you would like to share with the editorial board only?

 

When you write your review, please reflect on this review guideline. You can also upload an anonymous annotated document that we will share with the author(s).

 

Thank you very much for your precious collaboration.

The Editorial Team

 

[1] Please note that some of the following are adapted from the Reviewer Guidelines for the journal PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review.