Artbull Review Process

Review Process (artbull-review-process)

The Art Bulletin uses double-blind peer review: both author and reviewers are anonymous, which is why submissions must be Microsoft Word (not PDF) with all author-identifying information stripped from text and notes. Knowing what referees weigh helps you pre-empt the objections that sink papers.

When to trigger

• Before submitting, to pressure-test the paper against likely referee objections
• Understanding why anonymity (Word, no self-revealing citations) matters procedurally
• Interpreting a decision letter and planning next steps
• Deciding whether the contribution is strong enough for the discipline's flagship

How the journal evaluates

1. Double-blind, expert review. The editor sends anonymized manuscripts to specialist referees; anonymity protects the process, so any breach (names, "as I argued in…," telltale metadata) is a real risk (see artbull-submission).
2. What referees weigh. The originality and significance of the art-historical argument; the quality of close visual analysis; the soundness of documentary, archival, and provenance evidence; command of the historiography; and whether the figures support the claims.
3. Images are part of review. Referees judge whether the illustrations are adequate and whether the visual claims are visible in them — thin or absent figures undermine the case.
4. Editorial judgment. The editor(s)-in-chief weigh referee reports and decide; rigorous peer review is central to the journal's standing. (As of 2026-06-22 The Art Bulletin has two Co-Editors-in-Chief; confirm the current masthead before naming them.)
5. Likely outcomes. Reject; revise and resubmit (the common path for promising work needing more); or accept (often conditional). Plan for an R&R rather than a clean accept.

Pre-empt the common objections

• "Description, not argument" → strengthen the thesis (see artbull-argument-development).
• "Thin looking" → deepen close analysis and supply detail figures (see artbull-visual-analysis).
• "Ignores key scholarship" → fix positioning (see artbull-scholarly-positioning).
• "Evidence does not support the claim" → tighten sources (see artbull-evidence-and-sources).

Anti-patterns

• Breaking anonymity in text, notes, or file metadata (see artbull-submission)
• Submitting before the argument and figures can withstand expert scrutiny
• Expecting a clean accept; not budgeting time for an R&R
• Treating reviewer disagreement as defeat rather than direction

Desk-screen and referee-axis matrix for the discipline's flagship

Before a manuscript reaches specialist referees, an editorial screen at the College Art Association's quarterly weeds out submissions that cannot be reviewed or do not fit.

Worked vignette: a strong reading let down by its plates

Suppose a fresh iconographic reading of a fresco cycle goes out for double-blind review. Referee A admires the argument but writes that the visual claims "cannot be verified in the images supplied" — the single full-cycle photograph is too small to show the detail the reading turns on. The editor's letter, read as the rubric, signals the figure problem is decisive: here the plate is part of the evidence, so a brilliant reading the reader cannot see fails on its own terms. The fix is to supply detail crops, clearing their permissions early — the figures needed rescuing, not the argument.

Reviewer-pushback patterns and the venue-specific countermove

• "This is description, not argument." The flagship rewards a contestable thesis; rebuild the claim so a reader could dispute it (artbull-argument-development).
• "Anonymity is broken." A self-revealing "as I argued in…" or live metadata can taint the double-blind process; neutralize both before resubmission (artbull-submission).

Calibration anchors (hedge where uncertain)

• Plan for revise-and-resubmit rather than a clean accept; for promising art-historical work, R&R is the common path at journals of this standing (a working expectation, not a published rate — confirm specifics against the journal's current submission guidelines).
• Because review is double-blind, the figures travel anonymized and are judged as evidence — thin or absent plates undercut even a sound argument; the editor(s)-in-chief weigh the reports and decide.

Output format

【Model】double-blind; anonymity intact? [Y/N]
【Referee axes】argument · visual analysis · evidence · historiography · figures
【Weakest axis】where a referee will push → which skill fixes it
【Likely outcome】reject / R&R / (conditional) accept — plan accordingly
【Next】artbull-submission (pre-submit) or artbull-revision-and-response (post-decision)

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/external_tools.md — anonymization and manuscript-prep tooling
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — double-blind policy and review wording (待核实)