Monday, May 10, 2004

Article about JBL

The SBL Forum this month has an article providing some information about the Journal of Biblical Literature:

Journal of Biblical Literature Today
Susan E. Haddox

It's an interesting insight into some of the behind-the-scenes issues, for example the review process:
Even articles clearly unsuitable for publication, often by amateur scholars, receive consideration. O'Day generally assigns these articles to Emory doctoral students, who benefit from learning how to respond to papers in a professional manner. The typical well-researched and organized article gets two reviews. If there is a split between the two about whether the article should be accepted, it is sent out for a third read. In this way, the weight of the decision rests with the reviewers, rather than with the individual editor. O'Day prefers this approach because it respects the peer-reviewed nature of the journal and scrupulously protects the double-blind review process, in which neither the reviewers nor the author knows the identity of the other.
There are also some interesting figures on the number of articles submitted and how these break down into different areas, the numbers of men / women / US / non-US etc.

No comments: