Peer Review Process

MESA has introduced a two-tiered system of review:

Tier 1

This tier is mandatory and consists of affirming that a digital project or resource meets sufficient scholarly and technological standards for inclusion in MESA followed by open review by the user community.

All discussion will be conducted on the MESA listserv. The Editorial Board will determine whether proposed member projects meet minimal technical and scholarly standards and whether the project is appropriate for MESA (i.e. whether or not it is a scholarly resource in the field of medieval studies). Following this, comments will be solicited from the community broadly. Registered users of MESA and members of the Digital Medievalist listserv will be notified of the new project and invited to comment; additionally, specific communities might be invited to contribute feedback as needed – e.g., Anglo-Saxonists, musicologists, theologians.

The identities of reviewers will be public and the author/manager/representative of the project or resource will have an opportunity to dialogue with reviewers. A post in the MESA discussion forum will facilitate feedback and include guidelines for that feedback.

Once a project has been accepted for open review it is considered accepted as a member of MESA, but the Editorial Board reserves the right to exclude the project if the review process reveals substantial problems.

Tier 2

The second tier is optional and only projects and resources that have been through Tier 1 and have been integrated into MESA are eligible.

This tier is designed for scholars who wish to have a more traditional review process for purposes such as tenure and promotion.

The director of the project or resource can request that the project be submitted for blind peer review by relevant experts in the field. At this point, the editorial board will solicit two such reviews. The MESA directors will supply a cover letter on behalf of the editorial board explaining the peer review process along with copies of the reviewers’ reports on the project or resource.

Projects and resources that have been through tier two review will be identified as “Peer Reviewed” in MESA and will be listed separately from the Tier 1 reviewed resources. Projects and resources that have gone through peer review previously (for example, in the process of being published) may be identified as “Peer Reviewed” without having to go through Tier 2 review.

Interested in submitting your project? For more details, please read our Submission Workflow.