ebr Electronic Book Review

Electronic Book Review (ebr) is a peer-reviewed journal of critical writing produced and published by the emergent digital literary network. Although ebr threads include essays addressing a wide range of topics across the arts, sciences, and humanities, ebr's editors are particularly interested in critically savvy, in-depth work addressing the digital future of literature, theory, criticism, and the arts.

Peer-Review Process

All articles published in Electronic Book Review have undergone a rigorous two-stage review process: anonymous peer review and public peer-to-peer (p2p) review. In the first stage of the review process, two or more ebr editors assess whether a submission is potentially suitable for publication. After this initial screening, the submission is subjected to an anonymous peer review by two referees - an editorial board member and another expert, typically a previous contributor - who are asked to write short evaluative reports giving specific publication recommendations. The editors request that referees' positive reports be accompanied by substantive comments, which are conveyed to authors prior to publication, thereby formally initiating the intellectual conversation. Selections from the reports are published with the submission as glosses. More substantial responses may appear as ripostes or even free-standing articles.

After being accepted for publication, the submission proceeds to stage two: it is published on ebr's staging site, where the submission and selections from the referees' reports are made available for comment by members of ebr's p2p network, all of whom have previously published in ebr or received an editorial invitation, on the basis of their previous writing, to contribute to ebr.

The ebr p2p network differs, on the one hand, from traditional academic communities, in which work circulates largely among committees, not primarily among authors, and, on the other hand, from commercial production, which is also networked but where value gets determined largely by non-writers concerned with marketing. Value at ebr, by contrast, is created through acts of evaluation occurring at every stage in an essay's editorial circulation, initially by editors and referees, next by contributors in ebr's p2p network, and eventually by ebr's audience.

Publication frequency

In continuous publication since 1994, Electronic Book Review is among the longest running open-access, literary-critical journals on the Internet. To take advantage of the Web's medium-specific constraints, ebr adopted a rolling model of publication. Rather than publishing individual volumes or issues with preset publication dates, a paradigm inherited from print media, writing is accepted for publication after undergoing a networked peer-review process. Individual texts (articles, essays, ripostes, and reviews) are stamped with two publication dates: the date on which a text was first published online and the date on which it was last modified.

Open-access policy

Electronic Book Review provides open access to all of its content on the principle that making research and scholarship freely available to the public on the Internet promotes a robust media ecology.

Guest editing

The ebr editorial team welcomes proposals for guest-edited gatherings, collections of articles comparable to those published as special issues of a print-based journal, provided that the gathered material fits conceptually within current ebr threads and conforms to ebr's peer-review policies.

Online submissions 

Most articles are commissioned by ebr editors or editorial-board members. However, unsolicited essays are welcome and can be submitted as plain-text files to our managing editor. We welcome critifictions and works of designwriting, though essays must meet ebr's technical specifications.

Editorial collective

Editor: Joseph Tabbi
Managing Editor: Davin Heckman
Executive Editor: Sandy Baldwin
Senior Editor: Eric Dean Rasmussen
Associate Editors: Stefanie Boese, Ryan Brooks

Database and Application Designer: Ewan Branda
Design Editor, Site Designer: Anne Burdick