A New Take on Peer Review

The Journal of the Digital Humanities just released its inaugural issue. It is an open access journal with a new take on the peer review process. As described in the editorial, the idea of community is the starting place for the journal. 

Reversing the ‘closed’ selection and review process usually used, the journal starts with the materials noted on the Digital Humanities Now blog, which itself is a selection from the materials available through all the websites included in the very comprehensive Digital Humanities Compendium. Interestingly, anyone can add their site to the Compendium, so accordingly there is no formal submission process to the Journal. If you want to be considered, get your stuff into the Compendium. How you do it is not an issue.

The materials are winnowed down to a few dozen in the Editor’s Choice, and then further selected, reviewed, edited, copyedited, etc., until an issue is produced. This inaugural issue worked with materials appearing in the last three months of 2011, so undoubtedly they are now working hard on the next issue right now.

Also worthy of note: the license allows commercial use of the materials (with attribution), and the journal is available in EPub format, which should go well with your tablet.