Announcement from Perspectives in Biology and Medicine

Beginning with this issue, the "Review Essays" section of the journal has been renamed "Critical Assessments." The new name more accurately describes not only the content of the section but also the journal's methods of assessment. Submissions to the section are peer reviewed; published essays are catalogued and indexed like the rest of the content of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine.

Critical Assessments

Where many journals publish reviews on the assets and liabilities of newly published books, the Critical Assessments section of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine aims for robust, engaging essays, written in an informal style about important new books, and also about important new articles. Books are a typical means of publishing scholarship in bioethics and the medical humanities; scholarship and research in the biological sciences and medicine are most often published in refereed articles. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine expands the range of typical review essays to include both books and clusters of articles that are thematically related. We ask our authors to integrate new and noteworthy books and articles within a field of research or a trend or development in thinking. We hope our authors will use these informal essays as an occasion to speak their minds, with descriptions, comments, and analyses of questions and issues they believe deserve broader attention. Essays that attend to two or more books, or two or more articles, are especially welcome. We believe these essays will fill a substantial gap in the scholarship of many fields in biology and medicine, such as genetics, neurobiology, and evolution, as well as bioethics, history, philosophy, medical education, and clinical practice. Essays in the New York Review of Books or Times Literary Supplement provide examples of the approach we encourage in our authors. Critical Assessments for Perspectives in Biology and Medicine will be indexed as peer-reviewed publications. Essays can range from 3,000 to 7,000 words. They should be titled with something other than "Review of …" and should include an abstract of no more than 200 words.