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.

Stage	What it checks	Common failure here	Where to fix it
Desk — form	Word (not PDF), anonymized, within caps	A PDF that cannot be anonymized; identifiers in metadata	artbull-submission
Desk — fit	Significant contribution, not a catalogue entry	"Under-studied object" as the whole point	artbull-topic-selection
Referee — looking	Close visual analysis tied to figures	"Thin," "impressionistic" analysis	artbull-visual-analysis
Referee — figures	Whether the plates make visual claims checkable	Absent or low-quality illustrations	artbull-images-and-permissions

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)