archipelagos


Table of Contents

Valence 1a | Critical Essays

Critical Essays are 6000–8000-word articles that showcase groundbreaking, argument-based reflections on the theory, methods, and practices of digital scholarship and scholarship on the digital within the frame of Caribbean Studies.

Submission Description

An essay that presents a clear argument relevant to the field of Caribbean digital studies, broadly understood. All valence 1a essays go through a double-blind peer review process.

All submissions should be:

  • within 6000–8000 words
  • double-spaced and follow the Chicago Manual of Style
  • written in English, French, Dutch, Papiamentu/o, or Spanish
  • submitted in .docx or .md format.

Articles including images or other multimedia elements should follow the formatting instructions under for authors in the journal’s website.

Please familiarize yourself with the review process and guidelines for critical essays, detailed in the following before completing your evaluation. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at: archipelagosjournal@gmail.com.

Review Process

  1. Authors submit a guideline-compliant essay.
  2. Reviewers evaluate and offer initial feedback within five weeks of receiving the essay, answering the questions outlined below and then sending feedback to the journal editors (archipelagosjournal@gmail.com).
  3. Editors read reviewer feedback and notify both authors and reviewers of the final publication decision.
  4. If accepted for publication, but with minor or major revisions, authors revise their submission within four weeks.
  5. Authors have a final opportunity to provide minor edits once the final proofs have been prepared.

Reviewer Guidelines

Please answer the following questions with as much elaboration as you feel the author and/or editors may need. Please enter answers on this form.

  1. Is the submission coherent, well structured and lucidly presented?
  2. Since many of our articles are media-rich—linking prose arguments rhetorically to visuals—we ask our reviewers also to provide feedback on the figures, images, and interactives used in articles. If the submission includes visual materials, how effectively integrated are these materials into the argument? Are there too many images? Too few?
  3. Does the submission make a new and significant contribution that has relevance to a Caribbean platform of criticism?
  4. Does the submission exhibit the kind of critical rethinking that is consistent with the archipelagos project? (description copied below.)
  5. Does the submission display a knowledge of existing literature on the subject and contribute to its critical examination?
  6. We are particularly interested in submissions that provide a clear sense of what is at stake in their conceptual and analytical interventions. Do you recommend this submission for acceptance? For acceptance with revision? For rejection?

Valence 1b | Process Essays

Process Essays are 4000–6000-word articles that showcase work related to the theory, methods, and practices of digital project construction.

Submission Description

An essay written by project authors that foregrounds the labor and decision-making processes of bringing digital scholarship projects to fruition. These essays propose narratives of project development and infrastructure creation and/or provide details about new major features/stages of the digital project in question. All valence 1b articles are subject to a single-blind peer review process.

All submissions should be:

  • within 4000–6000 words
  • double-spaced and follow the Chicago Manual of Style
  • written in English, French, Dutch, Papiamentu/o, or Spanish
  • submitted in .docx or .md format

Articles including images or other multimedia elements should follow the formatting instructions under for authors in the journal’s website.

Please familiarize yourself with the review process and guidelines for process essays, detailed in the following before completing your evaluation. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at: archipelagosjournal@gmail.com.

Review Process

  1. Authors submit a guideline-compliant essay.
  2. Reviewers evaluate and offer initial feedback within five weeks of receiving the essay, answering the questions outlined below and then sending feedback to the journal editors (archipelagosjournal@gmail.com).
  3. Editors read reviewer feedback and notify both authors and reviewers of the final publication decision.
  4. If accepted for publication, but with minor or major revisions, authors revise their submission within four weeks.
  5. Authors have a final opportunity to provide minor edits once the final proofs have been prepared.

Questions For Reviewers

Please answer the following questions with as much elaboration as you feel the author and/or editors may need. Please type your answers on this document.

  1. Is the submission coherent, well structured, and lucidly presented?

  2. We ask reviewers to carefully weigh the de facto or possible intellectual contribution of the project described. Reviewers should consider the nature of that contribution appropriate to the current stage of the project’s development and consider early signs of process-derived knowledge; the project’s relationship to existing literature/projects; and/or early conversations in the literature about the project (where appropriate).

    • Are the methods used in the project appropriate to the research questions it poses?
    • Do the project’s methods contribute to digital scholarship in general, and if so, do the authors address how?

  3. We ask reviewers to be conscious of the labor that goes into the development of a digital project. archipelagos encourages the crediting of work where credit is due and the acknowledgment of the scholarly and interpretative work involved in data curation, design, and the engineering of digital projects. Reviewers should ask the following questions of a project:

    • Do the authors address how contributor attribution is handled?
    • Are the labor conditions under which the project was (or is being) produced made evident?
    • Does the work cite its (digital scholarship) precedents and data sources appropriately?

  4. When considering the life cycle of a digital scholarship project, reviewers should not consider preservation in terms of indefinite periods of time. We encourage authors to be realistic about the plausible rate of decay of their projects and to have plans in place to manage the obsolescence of the technologies they use. We encourage our reviewers, therefore, to look for signs that the project team has considered the project’s future. Possible questions are:

    • What standards have been used and why?
    • How is the project managing its rate of decay?
    • Is the level of complexity of the project appropriate for its socio-technical or institutional context?

  5. Since many of our articles are media-rich—linking prose arguments rhetorically to visuals—we ask our reviewers also to provide feedback on the figures, images, and interactives used in articles. If the submission includes visual materials, how effectively integrated are these materials into the argument? Are there too many images? Too few?

  6. Does the submission exhibit the kind of critical rethinking that is consistent with the archipelagos project? (See description below.)

  7. We are particularly interested in submissions that provide a clear sense of what is at stake in their conceptual and analytical interventions. Do you recommend this submission for acceptance? For acceptance with revision? For rejection?

Valence 2 | Digital Project Dialogues

Dialogues comprise synthesized critical exchanges in prose between the authors and reviewers of a publicly available, typically mid-stage digital project.

Submission Description

A concise and edited exchange between site author(s) and reviewer(s) of a publicly available digital project. Reviewers evaluate the Project Statement prepared for them by the project authors along with the online digital project and submit comments to editors. Before publication, the journal editors revise and consolidate both author and reviewer notes. The published outcome is a nuanced conversation around digital scholarship on the Caribbean between reviewer and authors. All valence 2 essays go through a single-blind peer review process.

All author submissions should be:

  • within words 600–800 words (Project Statement)
  • double-spaced and follow the Chicago Manual of Style
  • written in Dutch, English, French, Papiamentu/o, or Spanish
  • submitted in .docx or .md format

Articles including images or other multimedia elements should follow the formatting instructions under for authors in the journal’s website.

Please familiarize yourself with the review process and guidelines for digital project dialogues, detailed in the following before completing your evaluation. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at: archipelagosjournal@gmail.com.

Review Process

  1. Project authors submit a Project Statement of 400 to 600 words explaining their goals and the rationale of their decision-making.
  2. Reviewers prepare an evaluation of the Project Statement and the online digital project site based on the questions outlined later in this document. The assessment should be sent within five weeks to the journal’s email address: (archipelagosjournal@gmail.com).
  3. Editors anonymize and share reviewer feedback with authors. If applicable, authors work on revising their project to incorporate reviewer comments and provide a link to the revised version (under development or publicly published).
  4. Project authors submit a 1000-to-2000-word narrative responding to reviewer feedback and explaining how they addressed (or plan to address) any concerns. This response is sent directly to the journal, and not shared with reviewers prior to publication.
  5. Before publication, editors condense both author and reviewer perspectives to create a dialogue between both parties. The final version generally ranges between 2000-to-6000 words.

Questions For Reviewers

Please answer the following questions with as much elaboration as you feel the author and/or editors may need. Please type your answers on this document. These guidelines are also available under the for reviewers section of the journal’s website.

  1. We ask reviewers to carefully weigh the de facto or possible intellectual contribution of the project. Reviewers should consider the nature of that contribution appropriate to the current stage of the project’s development and consider early signs of process-derived knowledge; the project’s relationship to existing literature/projects; and/or early conversations in the literature about the project (where appropriate).

    • Will the project frame new conversations in the relevant subject area?
    • Are the methods used in the project appropriate to the research questions it poses?
    • Do the project’s methods contribute to digital scholarship in general, and if so, how?

  2. We ask reviewers to be conscious of the labor that goes into the development of a digital project. Digital projects generally depend on more distributed collaboration than monographs or articles. archipelagos encourages the crediting of work where credit is due and the acknowledgment of the scholarly and interpretative work involved in data curation, design, and the engineering of digital projects. Reviewers should ask the following questions of a project:

    • Does the project credit its contributors openly and fairly?
    • Are the labor conditions under which the project was produced made evident?
    • Does the work cite its (digital scholarship) precedents and data sources appropriately?

  3. Although design constitutes a separate category of review, we ask reviewers to understand design in terms of its relationship to the purported intellectual contribution of a given project. For archipelagos, design includes back-end architecture, workflow, and front-end interface design. We ask reviewers to consider the overall temporal and technical structure of a project and how this structure relates to the goals of the project. A reviewer may ask questions like:

    • How do effort and resources used in the project match its import?
    • How do the graphic and UX design elements of the front end contribute to the goals of the intellectual contribution? (When considering the public-facing design, reviewers should not place undue weight on “ease of use” or “glossy design” but rather consider whether the project’s features fit the intellectual mission of the project and the resources the project’s team had available to them.)
    • How does the back-end architecture hinder or move forward the contribution of the project and perhaps link it to existing digital scholarship projects?

  4. When considering the life cycle of a digital scholarship project, reviewers should not consider preservation in terms of indefinite periods of time. We encourage authors to be realistic about the plausible rate of decay of their projects and to have plans in place to manage the obsolescence of the technologies they use. We encourage our reviewers, therefore, to look for signs that the project team has considered the project’s future. Possible questions are:

    • What standards have been used and why?
    • How robust is the documentation on the project? Could the project be decomposed and recomposed based on this documentation?
    • How is the project managing its rate of decay?
    • Is the level of complexity of the project appropriate for its socio-technical or institutional context?

  5. Does the submission exhibit the kind of critical rethinking that is consistent with the archipelagos project? (See description below.)

  6. We are particularly interested in submissions that provide a clear sense of what is at stake in their conceptual and analytical interventions. Do you recommend this submission for acceptance? For acceptance with revision? For rejection?

Valence 3 | Digital Project Reviews

Submission Description

A brief reviewer-authored essay commenting on the merits and development of a public digital project. The review includes a paragraph-length description of the project in question followed by the review itself. The section is akin in format and length to scholarly book reviews. As opposed to valence 2 (Dialogue Review) submissions, there is no dialog between project creators and reviewers.

All submissions should be:

  • within 1000–2000 words in length
  • double-spaced and follow the Chicago Manual of Style
  • written in English, French, Dutch, Papiamentu/o, or Spanish
  • submitted in .docx or .md format

Review Process

  1. Editors solicit public reviews from reviewers directly or accept proposals from reviewers for consideration on a rolling basis. Editors work directly with reviewers to ensure the quality of the essay.

  2. Reviewers evaluate a digital project and send a 1000-to-2000-word essay within five weeks of confirming the review. They answer the questions posed below and send their first draft to archipelagosjournal@gmail.com.

  3. Reviewers revise their submission based on the editors’ feedback and send their final, revised submission to the journal.

The questions and comments that follow aim to provide a general line of discussion and evaluation for external reviews of digital projects. You can also find a copy of these guidelines published under the for reviewers page in our website. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at: archipelagosjournal@gmail.com.

Questions For Reviewers

Please answer the following questions with as much elaboration as you feel the author and/or editors may need when writing about a project.

  1. Is the submission coherent, well structured, and lucidly presented?

  2. We ask reviewers to carefully weigh the de facto or possible intellectual contribution of the project. Reviewers should consider the nature of that contribution appropriate to the current stage of the project’s development and consider early signs of process-derived knowledge; the project’s relationship to existing literature/projects; and/or early conversations in the literature about the project (where appropriate).

    • Will the project frame new conversations in the relevant subject area?
    • Are the methods used in the project appropriate to the research questions it poses?
    • Do the project’s methods contribute to digital scholarship in general, and if so, how?

  3. We ask reviewers to be conscious of the labor that goes into the development of a digital project. Digital projects generally depend on more distributed collaboration than monographs or articles. archipelagos encourages the crediting of work where credit is due and the acknowledgment of the scholarly and interpretative work involved in data curation, design, and the engineering of digital projects. Reviewers should ask the following questions of a project:

    • Does the project credit its contributors openly and fairly?
    • Are the labor conditions under which the project was produced made evident?
    • Does the work cite its (digital scholarship) precedents and data sources appropriately?

  4. When considering the life cycle of a digital scholarship project, reviewers should not consider preservation in terms of indefinite periods of time. Is the project under review realistic about the plausible rate of decay of their projects and to have plans in place to manage the obsolescence of the technologies they use? We encourage our reviewers, therefore, to look for signs that the project team has considered the project’s future. Possible questions are:

    • What standards have been used and why?
    • How robust is the documentation on the project? Could the project be decomposed and recomposed based on this documentation?
    • How is the project managing its rate of decay?
    • Is the level of complexity of the project appropriate for its sociotechnical or institutional context?

  5. Does the project reviewed exhibit the kind of critical rethinking that is consistent with the archipelagos project? (See description below.) We are particularly interested in reviews of projects that provide a clear sense of what is at stake in their conceptual and analytical interventions.

archipelagos journal is a born-digital, peer-reviewed publication platform devoted to creative exploration, debate, and critical thinking about and through digital practices in contemporary scholarly and artistic work in and on the Caribbean. Given the wide implications of the “digital turn” for our very conceptions of knowledge, our mission is to discern the ways in which the digital may enhance and transform our comprehension of the regional and diasporic Caribbean. archipelagos responds to this challenge with three distinct dimensions of critical production: scholarly essays; digital scholarship dialogues; and digital project reviews.

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