Submission Guidelines for Authors of Book Reviews
The process and format of submitting a book review, described below, are different from that of an article. Please note that the commitment for MTO to publish a review only occurs after full approval from the reviews editors of a completed draft of the review.
Process
Establishing a potential review and deadlines:
Review authors may propose a review by contacting the reviews editors, or MTO may solicit authors for a review.
When authors agree to write reviews, they will negotiate completion deadlines with the reviews editors. Authors are expected to submit reviews by the deadlines agreed upon. If authors need more time to complete reviews, an extension may be requested. If authors cannot complete their review within a reasonable amount of time, editors reserve the right to withdraw the review from the publication process.
Reviews editors arrange for a copy of the book to be sent to the author of the review (if needed).
Review authors email the reviews editors to formally disclose any competing interests with the author of the book being reviewed. (See the explanation about this disclosure at the end of the document.)
Initial submission:
A review author will submit their completed review to the reviews editors directly by email by the proposed deadline. All correspondence and subsequent drafts will circulate by email, as opposed to utilizing the Open Journal System (OJS).
Once the review is submitted, the document may be sent out for peer consultation, or it may be sent directly into rounds of edits with the reviews editors.
Editing:
In the rounds of edits, reviews editors will send editorial suggestions to the review author. The review author will revise and respond to editorial comments.
Review drafts typically undergo multiple rounds of edits. The back-and-forth between the author and reviews editors will continue until the review is ready to be sent forward to the MTO editorial board. (The timeline on this step varies for each review.)
If a review author is unable to arrive at a suitable draft or the review process stagnates, a review will be considered defunct and will not be published.
Approval of final draft:
The MTO editorial board will proofread the completed review. (This step may also involve back-and-forth between the assigned editorial board members and the author.)
Publication:
The review is published online.
General Considerations
Tone:
Authors should be constructive and collegial in their review. They are strongly encouraged to point out the strengths of the book. They should also be specific and detailed about criticisms of the book and give examples where possible to illustrate their points. Criticisms in the review should be focused on the book and not on the author. The reviews editors and MTO editorial team will edit reviews to expunge bullying language.
Length:
There is no prescribed length for a review, but as a guideline, consider that recent reviews have been between 2500–4500 words. Longer reviews are typical for books over 200 pages. Multiple review authors may be solicited for larger volumes or collections of essays (as occurred in Volume 27, Number 1).
Other Guidelines
Reviews should follow the MTO author guidelines and include sequentially numbered paragraphs.
References to the reviewed volume should not be treated as a typical in-text citation; just include page numbers in parentheses.
If the book title is long, authors may consider abbreviating it in the review (e.g. “Analytical Studies in World Music (hereafter ASWM)”).
If figures will be helpful for the review, include them as embedded figures within the submission.
Citations should follow the Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition) author-date format.
Authors may use any font they wish in the writing stage, since the font will be standardized once the review is converted to HTML for publication.
Disclosure of non-conflict of interest
While we recognize that subfields within music theory are small, reviewers of books should be at arm’s length to the author whose work they are reviewing, so that the conditions for an impartial review might be optimized.
A potential review author should not be writing a review if they are a close friend, supervisor, advisor, or colleague of the author; if they have been a co-author and/or research collaborator with the author within the past several years; if they hold joint interests in intellectual property; or if they have had past interactions with the author and/or their work that would affect their impartiality.
Potential authors are obliged to email the reviews editors either to formally disclose any conflict of interest or to affirm that they have no conflict of interest.
