Focus and Scope

Focus and Scope

Anthropology Book Forum publishes reviews of both books and films of relevance and interest to a general anthropological audience, including sociocultural, linguistic, biological and linguistic anthropology as well as archaeology and cognate disciplines. More recently, the Forum has expanded the genre of the standard book review to include different forms of conversations aimed at evaluating and discussing newly published work of interest to the anthropological community.

As an open access journal, committed to a set of principles that aims to reduce barriers to accessibility, the Forum publishes weekly, every Monday.

Types of Articles

Book reviews: A book review is a thorough description, critical analysis, and/or evaluation of the quality, meaning, and significance of a book. Book review manuscripts should be between 1,000-1,250 words in length.

Review articles: A review of 2-3 titles in a single analysis. This format of review articles is a bit longer than our original type, typically around 1750-2000 words. The purpose of review articles is to allow for a more in-depth discussion, comparison, and debate of a particular theme or idea or to trace the development of a particular area of inquiry within the discipline.

Author Book Talks: In this format, authors tell the story behind their book or video in a short 10-12 minute video clip. The idea is not to provide their own summary of the book, but rather to contextualize their research and point the audience towards the larger contributions of their work. How did they get interested in asking the questions they did? What drew them to the problems at hand? How do they envision their work complementing other issues of both academic and public concern?

Author Interviews: Similar to Author Talks, this is a conversation directed by an interviewer. The interviewer and interviewer need not have made arrangements, and we will work to facilitate connections between those interested in producing an interview as a form of review with the book author. We hope that this mode of review will also provide an opportunity to bring researchers, faculty, and students together for a conversation that might otherwise not be possible.

Video Reviews: These reviews will function much as a regular written/audio review, only with the reviewer present ‘physically’ reading the review. We find that during these times of social distancing, in addition to more enduring forms of separation, it is important to offer spaces where not only written letters or recorded words can be offered at the Forum, but that authors and reviewers alike can be ‘present,’ albeit virtually.

Please also see Author Guidelines

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. For the purposes of archiving through LOCKSS, PDFs will be also hosted here on OJS.