Review (journal)

“ The first of these is through trust in nominal journal or publisher brand; the problems of prestige to which much of Chapter 2 was dedicated. The second way in which journal or publisher quality is crudely measured and the one that surely most affects scholars’ perceptions lies in the duplication of labour when reading an article or book; a type of second review in which academics bring their own evaluative skills to bear on already published work. During this constant re-evaluation, the blame for poor quality is often put down either to the author or to the journal/press brand. ”

“ The criteria governing selection of journals and reviews have never been explained; coverage of a journal is often erratic and issues incompletely indexed; and the compilation procedures and editing hardly inspire confidence in the accuracy and thoroughness. However, the breadth of coverage—the most wide-ranging of any single index—makes IBR a useful complement to the other review indexes in this section. ”

“ Every writer of experience knows that certain critical journals will condemn his work without regard to its quality, even if it has never been his fortune to learn, as one author did from a repentent reviewer, that in a journal pretending to literary taste his books were given out for review with the caution, “Remember that the Clarion is opposed to Mr. ”

“ Scholars sneer at and would fain dispense with them altogether; and the public, grown lazy and helpless by this constant use of props and stays, can now scarce brace itself even to get through a magazine article, but reads in the daily paper laid beside the breakfast plate a short notice of the last number of the long established and popular review, and thereupon passes its judgment and is content. ”

“ Because of its weak coverage of the humanities, limited scope (currently, about 109 periodicals, many of them popular) , and numerous restrictions—in many volumes books must be published or distributed in the United States, reviews must appear within 18 months of publication, a nonfiction work must have two reviews (fiction, three) in the periodicals indexed, at least one review must be published in the United States—Book Review Digest is more useful for identifying reviews of popular fiction and nonfiction than scholarly works. ”

“ In the narrow sense of the term, they are not literary reviews; the function of periodicals that discuss present day politics, sociology, theology, history, science, art and numerous other generic subjects is more inclusive and appeals to a much larger audience than the periodical of literary criticism. In the quarterlies and monthlies we look for the most authoritative reviews of the important books of the day; but for general [Pg xxxvii] literary review and gossip, a new class of monthlies, best represented by Dr. ”

“ I have resisted, with undeviating firmness, every attempt to encroach upon me, every solicitation of publisher, author, friend, or friend's friend, and turned not a jot aside for power or delight. In consequence of this integrity of purpose, the Review has long possessed a degree of influence, not only in this, but in other countries hitherto unknown; and I have the satisfaction, at this late hour, of seeing it in its most palmy state. No number has sold better than the sixtieth. ”

“ At length another objection was conjured up against the review; mathematicians complained that they were neglected to make room for experiments in natural philosophy; the historian sickened over works of natural history; the antiquaries would have nothing but discoveries of MSS. or fragments of antiquity. Medical works were called for by one party, and reprobated by another. In a word, each reader wished only to have accounts of books, which were interesting to his profession or his taste. But a review is a work presented to the public at large, and written for more than one country. ”

“ Open journaling, which manage the process of publishing peer-reviewed journals online, allowing authors to track submissions through the review process, which creates a sense of openness and transparency uncommon in traditional, peer-reviewed publications. ”

“ I know a young man who made a place for himself by writing an article for the North American Review: nobody read the article, so far as I know, but the fact that he wrote such an article, that it was very long, and that it was published, did the business for him. Everybody, however, cannot write articles for the North American Review—at least I hope everybody will not, for it is a publication which makes me a quarterly visit; but everybody, who is somebody, can do something. ”

“ In this book-making age, we are aware that it is impossible for a Quarterly to review the twentieth part of the productions constantly issuing from the press: but if, as we suppose, it is the design of these periodicals to direct the taste of the public in every department of science and literature, surely they should contain reviews of such works selected from the mass, as are best worthy attention ”

“ A young man who has gained an entry into the journalistic world can sometimes get through a prodigious amount of work, and at the time I am speaking of it often happened that within the week, besides my morning duties upon the Globe, I would furnish one, and sometimes two, articles to the Saturday Review, an article to the Examiner, another to the World, and, in addition, three or four columns of art criticism to the Pall Mall Gazette, apart from regular work in the same department for the Manchester Guardian, and occasional articles in other daily or weekly journals. ”

“ The history of every successful newspaper has interest, and that of the Spokesman-Review bears out the rule. As the name implies, the paper is the result of a combination of two competing journals. The Review was the older paper. ”

“ Reviews in form, although within the plan of this Journal, do not constitute one of its most leading objects, and we do not hold ourselves responsible for analyses or even for notices of new American books, unless they appear particularly interesting or important, or hold a very intimate connexion with the great design of our work. ”

“ There are, however, some “Journals” published by or “under the auspices of” societies which are really periodicals, and should be so treated in entry, the society being not the author but the editor. Again, there are works which occupy a borderland between the two classes, in regard to which the puzzled cataloguer should remember that it is not of much importance which way he decides, provided he is careful to make all necessary references. Examples of such doubtful cases are “Alpine journal: a record of mountain adventure and scientific observation. ”

“ The reason is that the historical book review still maintains the traditions of the essay in criticism. The reviewer is expected to put his best pen for ward, and, besides giving all necessary bibliographical information, to make some remarks of a general nature appropriate to the occasion. Knowing what is expected, the faithful fellow does his best ”

“ That the period when satisfactory compensation can be made to all writers whose pieces are inserted, and to whom payment will be acceptable, is not distant, may perhaps be hoped, from the spontaneous expression of the following opinion, by the distinguished editor of one of our principal literary journals, whose letter is now before me. “The character of the American Journal is strictly national, and it is the only vehicle of communication in which an inquirer may be sure to find what is most interesting in the wide range of topics, which its design embraces. ”

“ It aims, on the one hand, to record truthfully the scope, character and subject content of books as they appear, and, on the other, to supplement this descriptive information from month to month with excerpts culled from the best current criticism appearing in forty-five English and American magazines which make a prominent feature of book reviews, thus furnishing to the librarian and bookseller a basis for the evaluation of books. ”

“ In publishing a new periodical, they consider that they are merely supplying a want of the public, which desires to be informed as to passing events, new discoveries in science, the proceedings in lawsuits, &c. This journal will interest all classes of readers, not only people in easy circumstances who live on their income, but merchants and mechanics, who will find in it intelligence of which they stand in need. ”

“ The Review, which is the organ of no party, and no sect, and supported by men of all shades of opinion, aims at the collection and production in a popular form of all that is important in the history, the politics, the topography, the statistics, the philology, the manners and customs, the political and domestic economy, &c. ”

“ The use of his book to cultivated people might lie in its affording a kind of standard by which they might take measure of the maturity and producible quality of their own thoughts on a hundred important subjects. He will write a page or two, giving evidence of that accumulated power and attainment which, with a more strenuous temperament, might have sufficed for an effective volume. Continually, in the Journal, we pause over things that would rank for beauties among widely differing models of the best French prose. ”

“ The play-reviewing of the daily journal is akin in aim to the book-reviewing, which has for its purpose the swift consideration of the volume in vogue at the moment. In our morning and evening papers the book-reviewing and the play-reviewing are both of them necessarily up-to-date, in fact, up-to-the-last-minute. To be contemporaneous, instantly and necessarily and inexorably, is their special quality and their immediate purpose; it is the reason for their existence and the excuse for their being. ”

“ Furthermore, continuing this sketch, which forms a part-response to my third question of how quality and prestige interact, peer reviewers are the other important signal of quality that the current system in the humanities somewhat disregards in favour of an accumulation of prestige. Peer review is, in the most basic terms, an expression of endorsement: which academics said that a piece of work was good and worthy of publication. ”

“ The critical review is occupied not so much with books for themselves, as with the general trend of historical thought and investigation, and with the relation of history to other branches of knowledge ”

“ There is an editorial tradition—it might almost be termed a superstition—which I think will have to be abandoned. It is that a certain space in the journal must be filled with editorial, and that some of the editorials must be long, without any reference to the news or the necessity of comment on it, or the capacity of the editor at the moment to fill the space with original matter that is readable. There is the sacred space, and it must be filled. ”

“ It will be the constant study of the Editors to maintain in the New Work all those general features which for Twenty-two Years have given their Journal its extensive popularity—a cheerful Light Literature, comprehensive Information, sound Ethics, and enlightened views of a Progressive Social Economy, without the admixture of controversial matter of any kind. ”

“ This whole species of literature is typical of the age; let us see how it is conducted.
A journal is a meeting-place between the forces of intellect and of commerce. The men who become editors always bear some relation to the intellectual interests of the country. They make money, but they make it by understanding the minds of people who are not taking money, but thought, from the exchanges that the editors set up. A magazine or a newspaper is a shop. Each is an experiment and represents a new focus, a new ratio between commerce and intellect. ”

“ There are, of course, practical problems with revealing reviewer identity to which I will return in the pragmatic path that I suggest in Chapter 5, but there is something to be said for a system in which people publicly endorse others’ work, as is done in the marketing blurbs of monographs.10 Going even further, it is curious to think that the pages upon pages of feedback that academics write for one another as part of the review process are discarded after use every year. ”

“ Not less important than the preservation of newspapers is that of reviews and magazines. In fact, the latter are almost universally recognized as far more important than the more fugitive literature of the daily and weekly press. Though inferior to the journals as historical and statistical materials, reviews and magazines supply the largest fund of discussion concerning such topics of scientific, social, literary, and religious interest as occupy the public mind during the time in which they appear. ”

“ It is extremely hard to form a fair judgment from documents alone, and especially from those documents which most generally come before the public, namely, articles in such reviews as the Contemporary Review, on the one hand, and the Civiltà Cattolica on the other. ”

“ Its best period is probably before the advent of copious indefatigable journalism, before men have taken to publishing letters in the morning papers, and when they have not yet acquired the economical habit of reserving all their valuable ideas and information for signed articles in some monthly review. ”

“ Perhaps of all the different kinds of papers, that most useful to the beginner is the "popular weekly" class, chiefly represented by Tit-Bits, Answers, Pearson's Weekly, Cassell's Saturday Journal, and Success. These papers pay liberally and promptly (one or two of them before publication) , and they do not exact from the contributor a high literary standard. Their matter falls into two main divisions: articles beginning with "How"--broadly, "How the other half lives;" and articles enumerating curious facts and incidents--for example, "Peers who have become Cabmen." ”