The Art of the Review - Episode 19 Reviewing Culture

The Art of the Review - Episode 20 H-Net History, Part 1

The Art of the Review - Episode 18 Reviewing Digital History

This episode is about the scholarly obituary and presents two different approaches to the enterprise of reviewing a scholar's life. Tasked with "reviewing" the life of historian and his own mentor, Dr. Raymond A. Mohl, Robert Cassanello interviews H-War editor David Silbey about his review of distinguished military historian John Keegan. Robert and Yelena then talk about some considerations, like what to include and the issue of objectivity.

In this episode, Yelena Kalinsky and Robert Cassanello discuss the benefits and drawbacks of writing short reviews. Yelena mentions The New Yorker's regular Briefly Noted reviews, which prove without a doubt that writing skill matters in the short review. Robert then interviews H-Diplo review editor Seth Offenbach about Seth's process for determining review length and what he looks for in a review. H-Net Reviews does not have a set word count, but we concur with Seth's opinion that 1,200-1,500 words is usually best. Don't miss this conversation if you are a reviewer wondering how to go about writing a review for the first time.

In this episode, we return to the topic of peer review, this time discussing the peer review process for editing and publishing scholarly editions. Robert interviews Mark Kamrath, a Professor of English at the University of Central Florida. Mark is the General Editor of The Charles Brockden Brown Electronic Archive and Scholarly Edition and a Co-Director of UCF's Center for Humanities and Digital Research. In the interview, Mark describes in detail his experience of editing an online scholarly edition of the papers of the Early American historian, editor, and novelist Charles Brockden Brown, as well as the difference between a print and online edition. It is an edifying episode for anyone interested in combining digital humanities approaches in the context of modern language scholarship.

In this episode, Robert Cassanello continues the discussion of reviews we liked with H-Net copyeditors Charlotte Weber and Basia Nowak.

In this second part of our two-part episode on professionalism, Robert Cassanello and Yelena Kalinsky discuss how network advisory boards can help review editors vet a review's tone prior to publication.