| name | curranthro-review-process |
| description | Use when you need to understand how Current Anthropology (CA) evaluates a manuscript — editorial screening, peer review, and the distinctive CA✩ Treatment in which an accepted Major Article is sent to invited commentators whose signed Comments are published alongside it, followed by the author's Reply. Sets expectations and shapes the paper to survive both review and public commentary; it does not contact editors. |
Review Process & the CA✩ Treatment (curranthro-review-process)
Knowing how CA screens, decides, and publicly commentates lets you pre-empt the failure modes before
submitting. CA is the transnational, all-fields journal published by the University of Chicago Press
for the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and its defining mechanism is the CA✩ Treatment — a layer of
signed, published peer commentary plus the author's Reply that no sibling journal applies. The bar is
field-shaping significance plus sound, ethical evidence, and an argument that can withstand being
debated in print.
When to trigger
- Before submitting, to stress-test against editorial screening and the CA✩ commentary
- Choosing the right article type (only Major Articles get the full CA✩ Treatment)
- Interpreting a decision letter and setting expectations
- Understanding what reviewers — and later, commentators — are asked to weigh
How CA review works
- Editorial screening first. The editor(s) assess fit, all-fields significance, and obvious ethics
issues before sending out for review. A technically fine but subfield-bound paper can be returned or
redirected here. (CA receives roughly 230 manuscripts a year and accepts on the order of ~10% —
treat these as approximate, verify on the live site.)
- Peer review. Expert, often cross-subfield, referees evaluate the manuscript. Confirm the current
anonymity model on the live Instructions for Authors before assuming single/double anonymized.
- The CA✩ Treatment (Major Articles). Once a Major Article is accepted, the editors solicit
Comments from an international range of relevant anthropologists. These signed Comments are
published with the article, and the author writes a Reply that is printed alongside. This is the
journal's signature: your paper appears with its critics and your response, all at once.
- Decision categories. Reject; revise-and-resubmit (major/minor); accept. R&R is the common positive
outcome; exact portal labels are not fixed in this pack.
- Article-type-specific paths. Reports go through review without the full CA✩ commentary; Forums
are curated multi-author debates; Discussion items/Comments (≤ 800 words) respond to recent CA pieces.
The two audiences you must satisfy
| Audience | When | What they want | How to pre-empt |
|---|
| Referees | before acceptance | rigor, fit, all-fields significance, ethics | ground every claim; state the cross-field stake; resolve ethics up front |
| Commentators | after acceptance, in print | a bold, debatable, well-defended argument | anticipate the camps; pre-engage the strongest objections (see curranthro-literature-positioning) |
Shape the paper to pass — and to reward commentary
- Make all-fields significance explicit early (avoids the "subfield-only" redirect).
- Engage the relevant conversations across subfields and beyond the metropolitan canon — these are the
scholars who may be invited to comment.
- Make the intervention bold and defensible: a Major Article that is too safe is not CA✩ material;
one that is bold but unsupported will be dismantled in the published Comments.
- Clear ethics up front (consent, anonymization, heritage/repatriation) — an unresolved ethics
concern is a serious problem (see
curranthro-transparency-and-data).
Anti-patterns
- Submitting a single-subfield paper to an all-fields journal with no broad framing
- Forgetting the CA✩ Treatment: writing an argument that cannot survive published, signed Comments
- Targeting a Major Article when the work is really a Report (or vice versa)
- Ignoring an obvious related literature or a non-metropolitan scholarship (your commentators won't)
- Leaving consent/heritage/anonymization unresolved and hoping review will overlook it
Output format
【Screening check】fit / all-fields significance / ethics — any red flags?
【Article type】Major Article (CA✩) / Report / Forum / Discussion (right path?)
【Significance】broad enough to clear "subfield-only"? [Y/N]
【Commentary-readiness】bold + defensible enough for published Comments? [Y/N]
【Likely commentators】camps anticipated and pre-engaged? [Y/N]
【Ethics cleared】consent / anonymization / heritage resolved? [Y/N]
【Realistic outcome】reject / R&R / (rare) accept → then CA✩ Comments for Major Articles
【Next】curranthro-submission (or curranthro-rebuttal if decided / Comments received)
Calibration anchors (hedged)
- The CA✩ Treatment applies to Major Articles: expect to write a Reply to published Comments — a
different task from a normal R&R (see
curranthro-rebuttal).
- Manuscript volume (~230/yr) and acceptance (~10%) figures circulate publicly but vary by year — verify
on the live Wenner-Gren / UChicago Press pages.
- Decision-category names, reviewer counts, and the exact anonymity model are not fixed here; use the live
Editorial Manager / editorial-letter wording.
Supplementary resources
