Reviewing for BMCR

Publishers may send books for review to:

Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Thomas Library, Bryn Mawr College

101 N. Merion Ave.

Bryn Mawr, PA 19010

classrev@brynmawr.edu

Books Currently Available for Review

Reviewers' Guidelines (Printable version of BMCR formatting guidelines)

BMCR accepts any American or European style for references and punctuation. Please italicize all book and journal titles, and please follow the more specific instructions below.

Please send your review of no more than 2000 words (including text and footnotes) as an email attachment in .doc, .docx, or .rtf format to classrev@brynmawr.edu within four months. If this will be a problem (e.g., the book is not what you expected), let us know and we will reassign it. Once we have received your review, it should be published within two months; if it is not, ask us why.*

Rolando Ferri, r.ferri@flcl.unipi.it
Richard Hamilton, rhamilto@brynmawr.edu
Camilla MacKay, cmackay@brynmawr.edu

A. Format (Please do NOT neglect this section)

Heading

Please include the information about the book that we published in our monthly Books Received list (search the website if you no longer have that information: http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/archive.html).
Please give YOUR name, institution, and email address.
Check Google Books for a Limited Preview or Full View of the book (not a snippet view). If a preview or full view exists, insert a link in the review (see below for more on URLs):
Preview
If there is no Google Books link, please include the table of contents, in one of the following forms. A table of contents should be included for volumes of collected studies but can be omitted where it provides little information to the reader.
Search LC (http://catalog.loc.gov/), the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (https://portal.d-nb.de/opac.htm), or other library catalogue to see whether there is a link to an html or PDF table of contents in the book record, which can then be inserted into the BMCR review below the reviewer's name in the form: Table of Contents.
Insert the table of contents at the end of your review, noting at the beginning of the review: “[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]” (You may be able to copy the TOC from the publisher’s website.)

Review Body

Please do not abbreviate names of authors.
Follow each paragraph with an empty line . DO NOT indent or use tabs.
DO NOT use italics, bold-face, or underlining. Please tag titles or anything else that should appear in italics with ..., e.g., nomen. Bold and underlining is not possible with our system..
DO NOT use footnotes. Both the note and the reference to the note should be numbered [[1]] [[2]] [[3]] etc. (that is, the number of the note in double square brackets). References in the text must be made manually: type [[1]] [[2]] [[3]] etc., where you would otherwise place the footnote marks, e.g. “in the earlier book,[[1]] …” (i.e., after any punctuation, with no space). The notes themselves should go at the end of the text, numbered [[1]], [[2]], [[3]] etc.
To insert a link, tag it as follows: Bryn Mawr Classical Review, with the link you wish to appear between the ... tags. Links to BMCR reviews only should be encoded BMCR 2009.01.01. (In our system, is not code for bold text; rather, it automatically generates a link to the BMCR site.)
If you wish to indent a long quotation (i.e., more than seven lines), please use <q>...</q>. Otherwise use quotation marks.
Single line breaks must be tagged. Separate lines of verse or any lines that should be single-spaced with <v> before and </v> after each line. (A paragraph return will not work.)
Superscript and subscript characters are coded … and … (e.g., IG II2

Languages, accents, and symbols

Any characters in any language (including Greek) and any symbols can be used in your review, but they must be Unicode; please contact us at classrev@brynmawr.edu if you have any questions.
A good font to use for polytonic Greek is New Athena Unicode, which can be downloaded from http://apagreekkeys/NAUdownload.html.

B.Content

We expect that reviews will have:

A a brief summary of the book's content and purpose, indicating its major sections;
an assessment of the argument and the use of evidence;
a discussion of its place in current scholarship, i.e., aspects of the book which the reviewer thinks are important and innovative or of doubtful success or value;
notice of factual errors and their gravity (presentation or appearance should generally be ascribed to the press, and content to the author).

We expect that reviews will not have:

ad hominem arguments;
longwindedness or excessive detail (you're judging the author's case, not re-making it);
excessive quotation, either of the book or of primary sources;
attacks for not being the book you would have written.

The longer and more detailed the review, the more important it is that the reviewer structures it so as to make the reader's work easier, and the Board may ask the reviewer to revise with that in view. The key idea is to structure the review in accordance with good journalism-the big picture clear as a bell in paragraph one (the contents, purpose and quality of the book, audience, accomplishments, etc., as noted above) followed by the expansive material and/or the details. Always end with a definite conclusion. The quibbling can be tacked on at the end. We ask that the reviewer remember that many readers will be interested only in getting an overview of the book; they should be able to extract what they need without having to work through masses of detail (no matter how important it is to the author and the reviewer).

BMCR accepts reviews in German, French, Italian and Spanish, as well as in English. All reviews are edited to bring them up to the standards of scholarly prose; if the editors judge that the submission requires excessive editorial intervention, the reviewer will be required to submit a revised version.

Books are assigned to reviewers with the help of the editorial board. Books unassigned at the end of each month are published as an email to all subscribers and on our webpage. Reviews, once received, are divided between senior and associate editors, depending on subject and language, who then send them to members of the editorial board, thus ensuring that most reviews are edited by at least two people. Unless editorial intervention is significant, reviews will be published as they are completed. The entire process can take as long as two months, but most reviews are published more quickly.

*A note on the editorial process. Completed reviews are assigned at the beginning of each month to a senior editor or an associate editor, who then assigns reviews to a member of the editorial board, ensuring that most reviews are edited by at least two people. The entire process of editing reviews can take two months, but usually takes less time. Reviews are only returned to reviewers if editorial intervention is significant.

Statement on Publication Ethics

Bryn Mawr Classical Review is committed to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics and takes all possible measures against any publication malpractices. All authors submitting reviews to BMCR for publication as original articles attest that the submitted works represent their authors’ contributions and have not been copied or plagiarized in whole or in part from other works. The authors acknowledge that they have disclosed all and any actual or potential conflicts of interest with their work or partial benefits associated with it. BMCR is committed to objective and fair peer-review of the submitted for publication works and to prevent any actual or potential conflict of interests between the editorial and review personnel and the reviewed material. Any departures from the above-defined rules should be reported directly to the senior editors, who are committed to providing swift resolutions to such problems.