Journal Policies

Editorial Oversight

Since the launch of the journal Le foucaldien in 2015, renamed GENEALOGY+CRITIQUE (G+C) in 2022, the editors have been selected on the basis of an international application process with rigorous interviewing by the journal's founding editors to ensure that the highest editorial standards are maintained. All editors are academically trained in disciplines related to the journal's scope and focus. Guest editors of special collections must also undergo a thorough application process set by the G+C editorial team, whereby they have to submit both academic CVs and a thematic proposal.

The Managing Editor is responsible for ensuring that all articles and special collections are published in a timely fashion and meet the academic standards fit for publication. The editors oversee each article's individual progress through the journal's submission system and are responsible for liaising with guest editors and authors, facilitating the peer review process, copyediting manuscripts, passing manuscripts to typesetting, and for publishing them when they are ready.

G+C cultivates a broad and experienced Advisory Board that contains members from across different nations, academic institutions, genders, and demographics. The editorial team may consult these academics whenever there is a subject-specific issue that needs expert input from someone with knowledge of that field of research.

G+C is committed to ensuring that the journal's articles, special collections, (guest) editors, and advisors are international, with a wide range of expertise in various subject areas within the journal's focus and scope. Potential board members are approached by the editorial team while keeping this diversity in mind.

Peer Review Process

All submissions are initially evaluated by the editors, who decide whether the article is suitable for peer review. Submissions considered eligible for peer review are assigned to experts who assess the article for originality, sound methodology, argumentative as well as stylistic clarity, and accuracy of bibliographic information.

For research papers, the journal operates a double-anonymous peer review, meaning that authors and reviewers remain unidentified throughout the review process. For review articles, interviews, and editorials, a single-anonymous or open peer review is applied. If the authors are part of the editorial team, they are strictly excluded from the whole review process.

The review process is expected to take eight to twelve weeks. Based on the peer reviews, the editors will recommend minor or major revisions to the author(s), accept the article in its submitted form, or reject the contribution. Overall editorial responsibility rests with the journal's editors, who are supported by an expert, international advisory board. On average, one third of the submitted articles are accepted for publication (usually after several revisions).

Peer reviewers are identified and approached to review articles by the editors, who source the most fitting scholars to provide informed and thorough peer review reports via the journal's publishing platform, Janeway. Potential peer reviewers must have a recent publishing record of research that is relevant to the article to be reviewed, and work for—or are affiliated with—a verifiable academic institution or professional organization related to the respective field of research.

Reviewers are given access to all relevant manuscript and figure files via G+C's journal platform, with the editorial team first ensuring that these files are anonymized. When accepting their review task, peer reviewers must declare if they can identify or have any association with the author of the supplied manuscript. If this is the case, another peer reviewer must be sought by the responsible editor. The members of the Advisory Board may also be approached to suggest potential reviewers. It is G+C's policy not to ask authors for peer reviewer suggestions, or to use peer reviewer suggestions offered by the author, which is considered a manipulation of the peer review process.

It is not in the remit of the G+C editorial team to train peer reviewers in how to offer constructive and fair feedback on articles. However, it is important to ensure that reports made by peer reviewers are helpful to the author. The editors will assess whether the peer review reports they receive can provide an adequate base on which to make their decisions. The journal's publisher, the Open Library of Humanities (OLH), has a comprehensive "Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement" that contains more detail of best practice for peer reviewers, under the section "Responsibilities of Reviewers."

Peer review reports for G+C can give one of the following recommendations: "reject" the article, request "minor revisions" or "major revisions" to be made to the article, or to "accept without revisions." In the case of each review recommendation, the rationale of the decision should be noted clearly, with examples to show, for instance, fundamental problems that cannot be resolved through major revisions, suggested minor adjustments to parts of the author's argument, or further relevant research that the author should engage with and cite.

While editors can amend the peer review report's text to remove identifying information, the recommendation provided by the peer reviewer (such as "accept without revisions," "minor revisions," "reject," etc.) cannot be altered once it has been logged on G+C's journal system, Janeway. If a peer review report is inadequate or jeopardizes the review process, the responsible editor will approach another peer reviewer and request a separate and additional review of the article.

G+C does not publish peer review reports alongside articles, or the names of the peer reviewers who have undertaken reviews of the article. Anonymized peer review data is held securely and privately in the journal's publishing platform for the author to access whenever they choose to do so.

Organization and Governance

At the beginning of this journal was the foucaultblog, founded at the Research Center for Social and Economic History at the University of Zurich in 2013. The journal Le foucaldien was launched in 2015 and has been published by the Open Library of Humanities (OLH) since 2017. In 2022, the journal relaunched under the name GENEALOGY+CRITIQUE (G+C) with a broader scope explicitly including various approaches of genealogical research and critical theory formation. G+C is owned and managed voluntarily and noncommercially by its editorial team.

The G+C editorial team approaches all prospective members of the Advisory Board to ask whether they would be willing to be a part of it. On selection, special attention is paid to their research activity, contribution to the field, and standing in their academic institution. If the prospective member agrees to sit on G+C's board, they will be listed on the journal's editorial team page and may be asked to assist with their academic expertise, for example, they might be called upon for advice on complex editorial decisions, sourcing peer reviewers, checking the soundness of argument of specific articles should a problem be identified, or advocating for G+C. Membership of the journal's Advisory Board is considered to be ongoing, without a set term, until a member is no longer able to continue their position and wishes to step down from the board.

Business Practices

G+C does not permit any advertising on its website and will never consider requests of any kind from other parties wishing to advertise in the journal or on its webpages. G+C also does not engage in any direct marketing practices.

The journal's publisher, OLH, employs a Marketing Officer who undertakes general marketing activities for the publisher including the promotion of its journals. The Marketing Officer does not, however, engage in direct marketing for any OLH journals and this does not affect the editorial decisions of OLH journals in any way.

G+C is funded by OLH's Library Partnership Subsidy Model and does not generate any additional streams of revenue.

Special Collections

G+C Special Collections are collections of articles published within the journal, dedicated to focused research topics. These function in a similar way to special issues of traditional journals, with two key differences:

Articles are published using a rolling format, meaning that each article is published as soon as it passes successfully through peer review and is accepted by the journal, and once it is copyedited and typeset.
While articles are collated within the Special Collection, which has its own dedicated URL and DOI, they also appear within the general volume of G+C, drawing a wider and interdisciplinary humanities readership to the collection.

The G+C editorial team is open to receiving applications to guest edit Special Collections on an ongoing basis. Guest editors must apply to edit a G+C Special Collection by submitting a collection proposal and the academic CVs of the proposing editors to the G+C editorial team. This proposal is assessed by the G+C editorial team and a decision is made as to whether the collection will be published pending further revisions, or whether it will not be published. If accepted, the guest editors are responsible for prereviewing and copyediting the manuscripts, while the G+C editorial team manages the peer review, typesetting, and publication processes via the journal's publishing platform, Janeway.

Preprint Policy

G+C does not publish preprints. The journal may consider articles based on work that has already been made openly available as a preprint. However, the article must successfully pass through the journal's double-anonymous peer review process before being published. G+C's remit is to publish original research that has not been previously published in another journal.