From the Editors

Periodically, we take to the pages of the African Studies Review to thank the truly unsung heroes of our stellar journal: those scholars who review manuscripts for us. As editors with our own specific knowledge of Africa, we could not possibly evaluate the substance of all of the manuscripts submitted to our journal. Instead we rely on the expertise of our reviewers.

The database of nearly 2500 reviewers has grown from its roots in the 1997 membership list of the African Studies Association. Over the years, we have added hundreds of names on the recommendation of those on the list, who tell us in effect, "I cannot review this manuscript right now, but you should contact so-and-so." While the African Studies Review is published by the African Studies Association, we do not limit our database of reviewers to ASA members.

If you would like to review manuscripts—or books—for the African Studies Review, or if you would like to update an obsolete reviewer profile, please visit the journal's Web site at http://www.umass.edu/anthro/asr/msreviews.html, and follow the steps listed on "How to Become a Peer Reviewer."

When we decide to review a manuscript, we query our database of reviewers to match the topic, country(ies), and discipline of the manuscript with the expertise represented by our reviewers. We try not to ask any one reviewer to review more than one manuscript per year. To protect the integrity of the review process, we do not reveal to reviewers the name of the author of the manuscript, nor do we tell our authors who the reviewers are.

The results humble us. Time after time, with a passion for scholarship and a letter from us as their only thanks, reviewers write extraordinarily helpful reviews—helpful to us for making our decisions, and helpful to authors as they go into the revision process. Consistently, our reviewers offer detailed and constructive suggestions about sources, organization, ideas, and revision. We send all reviews to the manuscript authors, whether the manuscript is accepted for publication or not. In this way, authors, editors, and reviewers together enhance the scholarship of African studies.

We are pleased to acknowledge publicly our manuscript reviewers' good work by listing below the names of the 430 individuals who reviewed manuscripts over the three years ending on September 30, 2010. This list represents a total of 605 reviews of 202 manuscripts. Most reviewers wrote one review, but more than a third wrote more than one.