Articles are first assessed for suitability, novelty, and scholarly significance by the executive editors and members of the editorial board, given the journal’s mission to feature pieces that substantively overturn or complicate existing scholarship, and that will appeal to historians working across a wide range of subfields.

If selected for further review, articles proceed through a double anonymous peer review process in which the identity of the reviewer and the author(s) are always concealed from both parties. To maintain this anonymity, we ask that any information or references that could be used to identify you are removed from your manuscript before you submit. There will be an opportunity after peer review to reintroduce elements such as acknowledgments. The journal's editors and independent reviewers evaluate manuscripts on a range of criteria, including relevance, originality, depth of research, and methodological rigor. We aim to provide clear and constructive feedback to all authors.

Within six to eight months, authors can expect one of three possible decisions if their work is sent out for peer review: Decline, Revise and Resubmit, or Accept with Revisions. Revise and Resubmit is the assessment most frequently recommended by reviewers. The editors consider a Revise and Resubmit a positive decision, as all of the published articles have gone through the revision process.

This description applies to the double-anonymous review of Research Articles submitted to the journal. Different review processes apply to other article types, although the same information about article decisions applies. Please see Peer Review Information for details.