A forthcoming issue of postmedieval on the Staffordshire Hoard is calling on the community for crowd review. The issue, edited by the Material Collective, will be published spring 2016. The edition will utilize Crowd Review instead of the more traditional peer review making this issue of postmedieval a community project, and redefining scholarly review in the process. From their website:

Selections from the Staffordshire Hoard. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

“In the spirit of our collaborative process, we now ask contributors–and the broader public–to respond to one another’s work in the form of a crowd review. We ask for comments, queries, suggestions, and ideas for new direction. As a reviewer, you are charged with being part of the collaboration, part of the Hoard/Horde. Our goal in this open review process is not to change the form of these experimental contributions, but rather to collaborate to expand, clarify, and refine. The crowd review mirrors the dialogic and collaborative form of the volume itself, and so we have generated an interface that allows for threaded comments in which readers can respond to one another as well as to authors directly. Our hope is that a lively month-long discussion will become its own kind of response to the Hoard, and we intend to archive the threaded comments on the Material Collective website. Authors may also incorporate suggestions into individual essays before final publication of the volume in summer of 2016.”

If you are interested in the Staffordshire Hoard, feel free to contribute, even if you are not a traditional academic. This special issue follows postmedieval’s efforts to redefine academia and include all interested parties, no matter your education level or scholarly discipline.