Aggregate Peer Review Statement

Architectural writing happens in a variety of forms. Whether it be aphoristic pieces of polemic or essays in aesthetic criticism, formal, peer-reviewed essays in history or textbook-style surveys, critical thought in architecture thrives on a combination of the substantiated and unsubstantiated, the descriptive as much as the rhetorical. We encourage, and publish, writing in all these forms, and welcome contributions from all areas, periods, and regions of research that pertain to architecture and its ancillary fields. We also welcome scholars and writers working in various methodological attitudes. We are particularly interested in:

  1. Well-argued, original research that establishes a new standard for a given area or field of research.
  2. Scholarly research and writing that opens up new lines of inquiry rather than substantiating or merely exemplifying established arguments.
  3. Experimental forms of writing or research opening up new ways to examine theory or data (visual and otherwise) that may not easily find a home in conventional forms of publication.
  4. Interdisciplinary work that foregrounds the multiple ways—socioeconomic, philosophical, institutional, epistemological—in which one could understand architecture’s relationship to the world.

The Aggregate website advances a commitment to the ideals of collaborative peer interaction on which the Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative was founded, opening up the processes of research, debate and publication to broader participation by scholars and students, creating a public forum for research in architectural history and theory. To this end, the primary mechanism for editorial review of work published here will be a process of transparent peer-review. All submissions will first be evaluated by a member of the editorial board, who will then propose accepted work for peer-review and work-shopping with members of the Aggregate website’s editorial board. This review process will aim to assist, understand, critique, and support the work of authors who are eager to engage in dialogue and debate as part of the process of revision of their work for publication. Authors may expect the review process to be a vigorous dialogue, and no author should anticipate their submission to be published in unrevised form.

Blind Peer Review: Aggregate recognizes that the conventional process of blind peer review will continue to serve a defined purpose within the practices of academic publishing and promotion. Therefore, some submissions to Aggregate Online will be evaluated with both the transparent peer review described above and a conventional blind peer review by readers outside the Aggregate editorial board. Submissions may be entered into this double review process upon the request of authors (for example, if an author requires blind peer reviewed articles to meet his or her institution’s promotion protocols) or upon the recommendation of editorial board members (who may, for example, think an assessment requires a specific body of expertise or knowledge).

Aggregate seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussions of the evaluative structures of academic writing. To assist in this aim, the process of review that a published article has undergone, whether transparent or blind, will be denoted on the final published document. Aggregate will continue to assess and modify these review policies in response to changes in the nature of scholarly work, or to Aggregate’s readership, as well as new developments in digital technology. In addition, Aggregate will use this page to maintain links to current research and discussion on the nature of peer review in academic research and publishing.

✓ Not peer-reviewed

Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative, “Peer Review Statement,” Aggregate 1 (October 2013), https://doi.org/10.53965/IOFI9169.