Review Process (ci-review-process)

Knowing how CI reads submissions lets you pre-empt the failure modes before sending. CI is peer-reviewed, and all peer-reviewed and commissioned manuscripts are thoroughly reviewed by the editors-in-chief in consultation with the editorial team. The decisive question is always the same: is this a real intervention worthy of the journal's ambition bar?

When to trigger

• Before submitting, to stress-test the essay against CI's expectations
• Deciding whether your project is an unsolicited Article or a likely commissioned piece
• Considering a special-issue proposal
• Interpreting a decision and setting expectations

How CI review works

1. Editorial reading is central. Beyond external referees, the editors-in-chief read in consultation with the editorial team — the essay must persuade serious generalist critics, not only subfield specialists.
2. The ambition bar. CI seeks "cutting-edge thought" and the "best critical thought in the arts and humanities." A competent, correct, but unsurprising essay is the typical non-fit — the journal wants an intervention (see ci-argument-and-intervention).
3. Interdisciplinary legibility. Editors and readers come from across the humanities; an essay that only a single subfield can follow or value is at risk (see ci-scholarly-positioning).
4. No multiple/simultaneous submission. CI does not accept manuscripts under consideration elsewhere — submit to CI alone.
5. Commissioned and special-issue content. Critical Responses and some pieces are commissioned; special-issue proposals are accepted only when at least one current CI editor serves as coeditor, with proposal routing through the address listed on the submissions page.
6. Revisions expected. Acceptance typically follows author revisions; an invitation to revise is a serious, encouraging signal (see ci-revision-and-response).

Shape the essay to pass

• Make the intervention and its stakes unmistakable early.
• Ensure a reader from another field can both follow and care.
• Read objects closely enough that the claim is earned, not asserted.
• Get the apparatus right so review is about ideas, not formatting (see ci-citation-and-style).

Anti-patterns

• Submitting a competent reading with no intervention (the classic near-miss)
• An essay legible only to one subfield
• Submitting simultaneously to another journal (against CI policy)
• Treating theory as ornament that referees will see through
• Assuming length or erudition substitutes for a claim

Review-risk pass for Critical Inquiry

Treat this skill as an executable review pass, not a prose hint. First lock the object, theoretical stakes, interpretive turn, and permission/citation discipline; then judge whether the current manuscript answers the venue's real reader: humanities reviewers who expect a strong interpretive intervention rather than an empirical-results narrative.

• Do the pass: Turn probable reviewer objections into a ledger with response evidence, manuscript location, and the decision-maker who must be convinced first.
• Return a ledger: give claim / evidence / risk / manuscript location rows, so the next agent can edit rather than rediscover the issue.
• Sibling guard: compare against PMLA for literary-field reach, New Literary History for theory/history, Representations for historically grounded cultural analysis; if a sibling owns the contribution, recommend re-routing before polishing format.
• Stop condition: do not give submission-ready advice until the pack's resources/official-source-map.md has been checked for volatile rules and the manuscript has one concrete fix for the largest venue-specific risk.

Output format

【Intervention clear early?】[Y/N]
【Interdisciplinary legibility】followable + valuable beyond one field? [Y/N]
【Objects read, claim earned?】[Y/N]
【Single submission】not under consideration elsewhere? [Y/N]
【Route】unsolicited Article / commissioned / special issue
【Next】ci-submission (or ci-revision-and-response if decided)

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — review model, no-simultaneous-submission rule, commissioning notes, and live-check items
• ../../resources/external_tools.md — process and portal summary