Thank you for offering your time and expertise in reviewing for the Oral History Review. These guidelines explain our philosophy and our expectations, then provide a workflow of the review process and instructions for writing and formatting your review.
Along with books, the OHR reviews different kinds of media we believe will interest our readers, including theater, films or music, for instance, as well as museums, art exhibits, podcasts, archives or other interactive presentations. Works to be reviewed ideally should present oral history effectively. When possible, work should be accessible for OHR readers to experience, in person, online, through archival recordings, texts or other sources.
The Reviewer’s Commitment
Your review means a great deal to our readers, the scholarly community at-large, the creator(s) of the work, and, of course, to us, the OHR editorial team. We could not function without you. For this reason, please take your commitment seriously. Once you agree to review a work, we expect you to follow through on your commitment. If you find you can’t meet the due date, don’t worry. Just contact the Media Review Editor for an extension, and we’ll find a date that works for both of us. If you find you need to drop the review for any reason, no hard feelings, but please let us know as soon as possible, as the Media Review Editor may choose to assign it to another reviewer.
Sometimes we misjudge a work’s relevance for OHR readers. If you propose something that seems appropriate for the journal and, after experiencing it, realize it isn’t, please contact the Media Review Editor, Bud Kliment at OHRmedia@outlook.com to discuss.
Workflow at a Glance
Media reviews should be 700-1,000 words in length. We generally assign a three- to six-month writing period, but the due date is flexible.
Here is an overview of steps, from your selection of a work to published review.
- Read this document. Please review these guidelines before you begin and once again before writing the review.
- See or experience the work. This is the fun part!
- Write the review. This is the hard part and what we value most in your efforts. Write the review according to the content guidelines in the next section and read some example reviews. Then follow the formatting guidelines in the section below to prepare the document according to OHR specifications. Send it to OHRmedia@outlook.com as an attachment. Use the subject line: “Media review: [your name].”
- Review and approve the edited version. OHR editors will go over your review and usually make some suggestions. We will return it to you with suggestions indicated in MS Word Track Changes. Please review the document and make the changes indicated or respond to tell us why you think the changes should not be made. Return the edited review to the OHR editor at the email address above. If everything looks good, the editor will sign off on the review and forward it to the copy editor for final editing and typesetting.
- Sign License-to-Publish document. Right before publication you will receive a license-to-publish document from Taylor & Francis, a division of Routledge, the OHR publisher. By signing this document, you give your approval to publish the review and transfer copyright to Taylor & Francis.
About the Timeline
Media sponsors and reviewers are sometimes surprised and disappointed that it takes so long for a review of a new work to appear in print. So are we, and we do everything within our control to narrow the gap between a work’s appearance and review publication. But most of the delay has to do with the nature of scholarly publishing and is beyond our control.
First, scholarly publishing focuses on quality rather than speed, and quality requires many layers of review and approval, even for reviews. Second, the editorial staff at OHR (and probably most scholarly journals) are volunteers and must juggle time for the journal among many responsibilities. Third, OHR is published only twice a year with a production cycle requiring final submissions months in advance of print publication. If your review doesn’t make it through the editing process in time for one production deadline, it must wait for the next, six months later.
All this is to say that we do our best to assign or accept media reviews when works and reviewers are readily available, and to move your completed review through the editorial process as quickly as possible. Even so, it is not unusual for a review to be published a year after submission. All of us – authors, publishers, OHR editors, and reviewers – are working toward the same goal of a timely publication of the review that meets our high standards for quality.
Content Details
OHR uses the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed., and the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate and Unabridged dictionaries as the designated authorities for writing style.
The body of the review should utilize description, analysis, and evaluation to construct a thoughtful, in-depth overview of the work with OHR readers in mind.
Description is a straightforward description or summary of the work. It can be organized sequentially, or thematically. The description forms a significant part of the review but does not constitute a review by itself.
Analysis refers to the breaking-down of a topic into smaller parts in order to explain a complex concept. It is fine to draw on your own expertise of the topic and use examples from real life or other written sources. Analysis is an expository process and does not include value judgment.
Evaluation does require judgment. It consists of a thoughtful opinion, pro or con, of the work’s merit and significance, backed with illustrations or evidence from the work, the reviewer’s expertise or research and on the creator(‘s) success in achieving the goal in crafting the work. It is fine to offer constructive criticism, but it should be balanced and supported by evidence and examples.
Use these three writing approaches together or separately to form the body of your review.
Note: On top of these guidelines, we also provide reviewers with a copy of media reviews that we think are good and highlight the areas we like. We strongly recommend that you read these for examples, and/or read the Review for any published reviews to both see what kinds of reviews we publish and to analyze and deconstruct them yourselves as we do with those that we provide you.
Other Considerations
Address these points, when appropriate, in your review:
Relation to subject. Consider whether and how the work succeeds. Is it informative, surprising, compelling or moving? Does it seem to cover new material? A new approach? Does it seem to challenge existing thought? Do some research if you aren’t sure. Please give special consideration to the type of media form under discussion.
Creator(s)’s qualifications. Mention the creator(s)’ relationship to the subject and their qualifications in creating the work. This section need not be lengthy, but some mention will help readers understand the creator(s)’ perspective and their background(s). You should consider their intentions. Do you believe that the creator(s)’ goals were achieved successfully?
How the creator(s)’ uses oral history. How does oral history contribute to the experience of the work? Is it used to further the work’s thesis or impact? Is methodology identified? Did the creator(s) conduct interviews or draw on archival interviews, or both? Try to consider every detail from an oral history perspective: if archives were used, what archive, where? How many interviews? Who conducted them?
How does the creator(s)’ methodology line up with OHA’s best practices and principles? How are narrators’ voices presented, and how successfully? A discussion of the work through the lens of oral history is an important component of every review and is what makes OHR reviews unique in the larger body of scholarly literature.
OHR reviews should be written in a formal style commonly used in scholarly journals. The style can include humor, irony, or playfulness, as long as the writing remains within the bounds of scholarly writing standards. Avoid incomplete sentences, contractions, and exclamation points. Be careful not to use language that could give offense to our diverse community of readers.
Remember, not everything we review employs oral history methodology. If the creator(s)’ uses oral history peripherally or not at all, comment on the fact, but evaluate the work on the basis of its success supporting its thesis. (For example, journalists do not use oral history methodology, but they do interview people and sometimes publish articles that are interviews only. Use the same analysis to evaluate their contribution.)
Examples. Choose examples from the work to support the points you make in your review, and give readers a sample of its oral history elements to make the review interesting. Don’t go overboard: examples should be few and carefully selected to support your main job of providing a critical analysis of the work.
Highlights or special features. Comment on any special features in the work you find noteworthy, such as visuals, organization, performances, or accessibility.
Why the work will interest OHR readers. A useful way to end the review is to comment on how the work should be of special interest to OHR readers. Does it present an interesting use of narrators’ voices to tell a larger story? Does it use interviews as context, or to tell a single life story? Is it intended to raise awareness about a social injustice or a little-known point in history? Does it focus on methodology? Would the work be useful and effective for students to experience?
Formatting Details
Please follow these instructions for formatting your review. Our editorial staff can tweak the piece, but the more closely your review follows our format specifications, the quicker we can process your review for publication.
Setting Up the Document
Set the document for Times New Roman typeface at twelve-point font size, double-spaced, and one- inch margins. The first paragraph of the review is not indented; subsequent paragraphs are indented. There are no additional carriage returns between paragraphs. Do not number the pages of the document.
Sample Citations
Any relevant details about the work reviewed, including its creators and how readers can access it (URL, performance or exhibition dates, location, etc.) should appear at the top of the review in one of the formats that follows. This information is extremely helpful to our broad-based readership, so we include as much information as possible to help readers locate or access the work.
EXAMPLE 1 – Archive
Black Liberation 1969 Archive. Allison Dorsey et al. 2015
https://blacklib1969.swarthmore.edu/.
EXAMPLE 2 – Film
We are the roots: Black Settlers and their Experiences of Discrimination on the Canadian Prairies. Dr. Jenna Bailey and Dr. David Este with Jeff Allen Productions. Bailey and Soda Films. http://www.baileyandsoda.com/. 2018. 67 minutes. Available for streaming free on http://www.baileyandsoda.com/ and Vimeo.
EXAMPLE 3 – Exhibit
“Under One Roof.” Tenement Museum. New York, N.Y. http://www.tenement.org/ Permanent exhibition. Kathryn Lloyd, director of programs; Alisa Martin, vice president of educational opportunities.
EXAMPLE 4 – Radio Program/Archive
Bughouse Square with Eve Ewing. WFMT Studs Terkel Radio Archive and the ChicagoHistory Museum, 2018-2019. https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/bughouse-square.
“Making Gay History, Season Eight,” 2020-2021, hosted by Eric Marcus. WFMT StudsTerkel Radio Archive, Making Gay History, the Podcast. https://makinggayhistory.com/season-eight
Quoting from the work
OHR uses inline references rather than endnotes in reviews. Cite only direct quotations from the work, not paraphrases or references.
References
Do not use footnotes or endnotes in the review. References to works other than the work being reviewed generally follow format rules for footnotes of the Chicago Manual of Style, with the exception that square brackets are used instead of parentheses around the facts of publication (place, publisher name, and publication date) when the title of the referenced work is included inside the citation. The following are a few examples:
- In Michael Frisch’s A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1990)….”
- As Michael Frisch (A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History [Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1990]) already made clear….”
- Valerie Yow ( …?) discusses this very issue.
- Thinking about the relationship between oral history and biography, Valerie Yow (“Biography and Oral History,” in Handbook of Oral History, ed. Thomas Charlton, Rebecca Sharpless, and Lois Myers [Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2006], 425-464) notes that…
Your Name
The review concludes with the reviewer’s name and institutional affiliation in italics, right justified.
Helpful Links
Oral History Review online, https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/uohr20/current
OHA Principles and Best Practices, http://www.oralhistory.org/oha-principles-and-best-practices/
