Sample Peer Review Letter
Report from the Field

Thank you so much for agreeing to peer review the manuscript, [Title].

The manuscript is attached to this email.

We will look for your review by [date].

Please note that this manuscript was submitted as a “Report from the Field.” Reports from the field are intended to convey the real-world work of public historians by highlighting specific projects or activities in which the author is directly involved; these articles may describe new or ongoing projects, introduce or assess new methodologies, or bring in-the-field dilemmas (methodological, ethical, and historical) into print. Although informed by scholarly literature, they are not research articles. Also please note that because they report on projects that the author participated in, they are generally impossible to make truly “blind.”

Your comments will inform our decision and may provide the basis for our letter to the author, either recommending revisions or explaining our decision not to publish.  Detailed, constructive comments will therefore be of most use to us.

You might keep the following questions in mind as you evaluate the manuscript:

Does the paper make a significant contribution to the definition or understanding of public history?
Does the paper discuss analytically a significant public history project?
Does the paper address how questions of funding, audience, space, mission of institutions, and other issues shaped the project analyzed?
Does it discuss the use of innovative methodology by public history practitioners?
Does it help contribute to or define public history best practices?
Is the paper well written and organized?

Please also let us know whether you advise us to publish the manuscript as is, publish with minor in-house changes, return to the author for revisions, or decline to publish.

A note on confidentiality:  The identity of TPH manuscript reviewers is kept confidential for a period of fifteen years, after which all journal files are made available to interested researchers at the National Council on Public History archives. We expect that the reviewer will treat the unpublished manuscript confidentially, and refrain from revealing its contents or making public comments about it.

Please send your comments to me via e-mail at [email protected] as a word document attachment.  We are also happy to accept suggestions or comments on the text done in track changes.

Thank you in advance for your help. The editorial team at The Public Historian very much appreciates being able to benefit from your expertise.