Press Release
Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) Receives Mellon Foundation Grant to Re-Imagine Peer Review in Humanities Publishing
NEW YORK – December 23, 2024 – The Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) has been awarded a grant of $555,000 from the Mellon Foundation to advance equitable and inclusive practices in peer review and scholarly journal publishing within the humanities. This initiative will conduct a survey and create resources and workshops aimed at transforming conventional peer-review processes to better align with principles of diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) and knowledge justice.
CELJ, an international organization supporting editors of scholarly journals, focuses on professionalization, inclusivity, and collaboration in academic publishing and has a longstanding mission to mentor early-career authors and editors into scholarly publishing. With this grant, CELJ will conduct the first large-scale survey to examine peer-review models and practices within humanities journals. The findings will guide the development of innovative tools and workshops designed to address systemic inequities and outdated processes in editorial workflows.
Transforming Peer Review for the Humanities
At the heart of this initiative is a commitment to making peer review more transparent, developmental, and collaborative. CELJ aims to challenge traditional double-anonymous peer-review models, which often perpetuate inequities, and propose alternative approaches that value inclusivity and diverse scholarly contributions.
“Conventional peer-review models no longer serve the diverse and rapidly evolving needs of humanities scholarship,” says Cheryl E. Ball, executive director of CELJ and principal investigator for the grant. “This initiative seeks to reimagine peer review by creating systems that are inclusive, transparent, collaborative, and sustainable for the academic community.”
Building a Strong Foundation for Change
Ball says the project team, made of CELJ board members, is “excited to build on recent diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racist publishing initiatives from C4DISC and the Library Publishing Coalition, among other groups, and to translate and expand those initiatives for humanities journal publishing specifically.”
The project will collect data on peer-review experiences from various stakeholders, publish an open dataset and a report on the state of peer review in humanities journals, and develop free workshops and toolkits with actionable strategies to implement equitable and collaborative review practices. The workshops will cater to a variety of audiences, including editors, authors, reviewers, and publishers, addressing each group’s unique challenges and roles in the academic publishing ecosystem.
The project team will be guided by a diverse advisory board of editors, reviewers, and publishers with expertise in a range of DEI and knowledge-justice practices. With the project team, they will shape the survey questions, test workshop materials, and ensure the outcomes are broadly applicable and impactful to the ways humanities scholars want to circulate knowledge.
Sarah Salter, co-PI of the project team, says “We are eager to begin work on these urgent discussions on the ethics and futures of scholarly peer review. This grant offers us a chance to develop a larger conversation on inclusive review that addresses our contemporary publishing and cultural landscapes.”
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About the Council of Editors of Learned Journals
CELJ is an international organization supporting scholarly journal editors in the humanities and social sciences. Since its formal founding in 1980, CELJ has been dedicated to fostering collaboration and professional growth among its members. Through mentorship, workshops, and innovative resources, CELJ helps editors navigate the complexities of academic publishing. For more information about this project and CELJ’s work, please visit www.celj.org. CELJ is a project of its fiscal sponsor, K|N Consultants, Ltd., a 501(c)3 working in higher education, open-access publishing, and scholarly communication.
Media Contact:
Cheryl E. Ball
Executive Director, Council of Editors of Learned Journals
celj.editors@gmail.com
313-444-9919
About The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at mellon.org.
