| Manuscripts |
1. Please note that all articles in Critical Review should avoid policy advocacy, policy recommendations, and criticism of proposed policies. That is, all articles should address themselves to the causes and consequences of past conditions and policies, not directly to what should be done in the future. Please leave it to our readers to infer what policies or reforms they should favor, based on your analysis of their past effects or politics.
2. Controversial assumptions about the desirability of capitalism, liberalism, or freedom, or the equivalence of capitalism or liberalism with freedom, should be avoided. These are some of the issues that the journal is designed to debate, rather than take for granted.
3. Critical Review publishes (i) research papers, (ii) review essays, (iii) articles, (iv) symposia, and (v) replies and rejoinders to previous papers. All research papers, articles, and review essays, unsolicited or invited, may be subject to editorial and peer review prior to acceptance. Therefore, they should not contain indications of your identity in the text or notes. Peer review is undertaken at the discretion of the editor and is anonymous; authors receive copies of the reviewers' comments. Symposium contributions, replies, and rejoinders are not usually subject to peer review, although they may be rejected as inappropriate and the editor may, as with all articles, suggest revisions.
4. All articles in Critical Review, including review essays, are expected to be substantial and serious contributions to scholarly discussion. We do not publish "opinion pieces" or short book reviews. Book reviewers and symposium participants, like all contributors, are expected to set forth the relevant aspects of their topic in detail before providing their own rigorously argued, evidentially supported response.
5. Audience: Critical Review's readers are scholars and advanced students accustomed to reading scholarly works in their own disciplines and, like readers of The New York Review of Books, willing to pursue complex issues in other disciplines as well. However, specialization makes the most technical aspects of some disciplines inaccessible to nonspecialists. Technical jargon, topics of interest only to experts, and visual displays that merely re-express ideas presented verbally should be avoided.
6. Tone: Although Critical Review is not a specialized research organ, it is a scholarly journal that attempts to foster the dispassionate exploration of political and cultural issues. It seeks to consider alternative points of view respectfully and sympathetically. Ideological and personal polemics have no place in its pages.
7. Review essays: The purpose of Critical Review's review essays is neither to recommend books to our readers nor to pan them. Rather, their aim is to allow our writers the opportunity to confront important issues discussed in the books under review. A book's ideas and arguments, not its organization, style, or physical appearance, should be the reviewer's main concern.
8. Article length: 4000 words (@ 20 typed, double-spaced pages) is usually the minimum required to explore a topic in appropriate depth. We can accommodate longer manuscripts if necessary.
9. Format: Manuscripts should be paginated and double-spaced throughout, including the notes and references. In review essays, the first mention of a book should include parenthetically: (city: publisher, year). Subsequent page references need not include the book's author, unless more than one book is being reviewed.
10. Title, subheads: Please suggest a title for your paper or review essay and brief, underlined (not capitalized) subheads every four or five pages. Only very long articles should use numbered subheadings; please use Roman numerals for such enumeration.
11. Abstract: A 100-word-maximum double-spaced abstract should appear at the beginning of all essays, review essays, and research papers. It should be in the form of a direct summary statement of the substance of your argument rather than a description of the issues discussed or the methods used to investigate them. Please consult back issues for sample abstracts.
12. Biographical note: On a separate page please provide a three- or four-line double-spaced biographical note for us to publish with your paper. Include your name; academic affiliation; mailing address; telephone and telefax number or email address; the titles, publishers, and years of any recent books; and any acknowledgements.
13. Page citations should be written as in these examples: "10-12," "101-2," "213-14," "252-53." Do not use the abbreviation "p." or "pp."
14. Gender-neutral language is preferred; alternating he and she is acceptable.
15. Quotation marks: Please follow standard American literary usage. Double quotation marks should surround quotations, with commas and periods enclosed. Single quotation marks should surround quotations within quotations. Single words or phrases take double quotation marks.
16. Citations and references should follow the "author-date" system
described in the American Political Science Assn. Style Manual, copies
of which are available from the Business Office (e-mail requests, including
your mailing address, to critical.rev@gmail.com).
When the text directly refers to a work, omit parentheses: "As Tversky
1990 shows...." When referring directly to the author of a work, include
parentheses: "Tversky (1990) is among those who argue...." When making
the first direct mention of an author, use his or her first name:
"Amos Tversky (1990) is among those who...." Classic works that have appeared
in many editions with a universal section-numbering system may be cited
like this: Aristotle N.E. X.iv.1175a13. Please do not use postal acronyms
for the states of publishers (i.e., write "Cambridge, Mass.," not "Cambridge,
MA"). Do always put a space between the colon following journal volume
numbers and page numbers. Do not abbreviate authors' names with initials
(e.g., J. Q. rather than James Q. Wilson) unless this is how the name
appears in the cited work.
17. Explanatory notes should be in the form of end notes, not
footnotes.
18. Please use italics for emphasis; no bold or underlined type.
19. Please do not right-justify your margins; leave them ragged.
20. Sumbit manuscripts to Jeffrey Friedman, Editor, at edcritrev@gmail.com. Within three months of the submission of an unsolicited manuscript, you will receive either a notice that the manuscript is inappropriate or, should the paper be accepted, editing suggestions. Authors are asked to provide a Microsoft Word draft of papers accepted for publication if possible.