Submissions and Review

How did we solicit submissions?

In June and July 2021, we distributed our Call for Proposals (with guidelines, a submission template, and sample vignettes) to about 25 different scholarly association newsletters, listservs, and Facebook groups. Disciplines included: anthropology, art and design, critical education, environmental studies, equity studies, food studies, geography, sociology, political economy and political science. Contributions emerged from a broad range of social scientists and practitioners, with the majority coming from across Canada, followed by the United States, and United Kingdom. We are grateful for those that reached us from farther afield, providing additional perspectives and world views. These included submissions from Mexico, Finland, Greece, the Philippines, and New Zealand.

How did we review submissions?

Our rigorous review process aimed at ensuring that the vignettes are as effective and accessible as possible, while also enabling authors to count them towards the narrow metric upon which academics are evaluated—peer-reviewed publications. An editorial review by both editors allowed us to move forward those submissions that fit within the critical social sciences, that were well developed, and that reflected the criteria we had established. Following an initial edit, each piece was sent to one scholarly reviewer with expertise around the given term or concept, and one community reader with similar perspectives but a less academic lens. This aimed at ensuring high-quality content that was also highly accessible to new learners. We are very grateful to our extended network of family, friends, and friends of friends, who served as community reviewers, both for accepting the challenge and offering their critical sensibilities!

In both review cases, reviewers remained anonymous, and their feedback was forwarded to the authors by the editors, often accompanied by additional comments and suggestions for revisions. The close-to-final drafts were then reviewed by one or both editors before moving on to copyediting and production. While it is common in some open publishing contexts to have both the authors and reviewers know each other’s identities (as opposed to the common convention in much academic publishing of conducting “double-blind” peer review), we opted for a more anonymous process here.

Our sincere thanks go out to the large and generous community of reviewers, both scholarly and community: Peter Andrée, Joan Andrew, Samphe Ballamingie, Kelly Bronson, Deborah Carruthers, Michael Classens, Lilly Cleary, Deborah Conners, Aviva Coopersmith, Stephanie Couey, Judith Crawley, Maria Dabboussy, Moe Garahan, Sherrill Johnson, Ali Kenefick, Meaghan Kenny, Irena Knezevic, Katalin Koller, Simon Laroche, Tess Macmillan, Florencia Marchetti, Nancy Marelli, Ajay Parasram, Namitha Rathinapillai, Tabitha Robin, Noah Schwartz, G Solorzano, Michelle Stewart, Kathy Stutchbury, George Szanto, Molly Touchie, Susan Tudin, Pamela Tudge, Annika Walsh, Bessa Whitmore, Amanda Wilson, Dana Zemel, and Trudi Zundel.

Additional thanks to our past and current students, who tested a wide sampling of vignettes and offered their opinions (and testimonials!) about what they read. This group of fearless learners includes: Brent Gauthier, Marie-Hélène Guay, Beatriz Lainez, Melissa Leam-Chen, Tony Horava, Matthew Montoni, Breena Johnson, Catherine Littlefield, and Iain Storosko.