Reviews will communicate to specialists (and non-specialists) the scope of the book's content, assess its major points and contributions, and provide a reasoned judgment about its worth. In keeping with proper scholarly method, any critique should be directed at an author's work. Reviews that contain materials considered to be directed towards an author's character or that are considered to be potentially libelous will be rejected. The Journal of Global Buddhism will be the final arbiter in all cases.

When you have agreed to review a volume for us, please discuss a realistic submission date with your editor. The Journal of Global Buddhism aims at publishing book reviews within three months from the time you have received the volume. We realize that this is not always possible, but it has proven to be a good guideline. Occasionally, reviews may have to be reassigned or dropped. Reviews that do not meet the journal's professional standards or that fail to conform to conditions agreed upon by the reviewer and editor will be rejected. All such decisions are at the sole discretion of the Journal of Global Buddhism.

For specific information on review length, format, style, and submission procedures, click here. Reviews may be of any length. However, they will typically not be less than 500 words or more than 5,000. Many reviewers find a length of 1,200 to 1,500 words about right. Reviews of more than 5,000 words will be considered review articles and screened by both the book review editor and the general editors of the Journal of Global Buddhism.

After your review has been copyedited, it will be returned to you for a final proofreading. Please be especially careful in proofreading any transliterations in your review. We ask that you ensure that Sanskrit and Japanese words are in the JGB's transliteration format [see Style Guide] before you submit a review to our editors.

Please do not submit drafts or incomplete articles or reviews. While minor changes are permitted during final proofreading, JGB policy does not allow changes to an article after it has been published on the site.

Headers should be set up as in the following example:

The Selfless Mind: Personality, Consciousness and Nirvaa.na in Early Buddhism. By Peter Harvey. London: Curzon Press, 1995, viii + 293 pages, ISBN 0-7007-0337-3 (paperback), £14.99; ISBN 0-7007-0338-1 (cloth).

Reviewed by
Rupert Gethin
Lecturer in Indian Religions
University of Bristol
rupert.gethin@bristol.ac.uk

References should be cited in the body of the review. Where you quote from the book you are reviewing, refer to an author's argument or a prolonged discussion, or note points of particular interest or controversy, please give page references in the format illustrated at the end of the General Guidelines below.

Avoid footnotes if at all possible. Please do not use bold anywhere in the document. Use italics for emphasis. Do not indent. A double space should be left between paragraphs. Click here for a sample review. Your review may be sent either by e-mail in plain text or as an attachment to an e-mail message. We prefer to receive attachments in Microsoft Word format, but WordPerfect or other popular formats are acceptable. The review should be submitted to the editor with whom you have been working.

Please contact one of our editors before sending us books for review. Books received unsolicited may not be reviewed and will not be returned to the sender.

Contact Alana MacMillan at alanamacmillan@yahoo.com.

• Copyediting done according to the Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition
• American (i.e., not British) English
• Use serial commas
• 1500s, not 1500's
• "1960s," not "sixties"
• Periods and commas go inside quotation marks
• Semicolons and colons go outside quotation marks
• Commas after "e.g." and "i.e."
• No "smart" (curly) quotation marks
• "em" dashes should be denoted by XXX with a space on either side (because of translation problems between machines)
• Space between initials in a name (e.g., J. P. Smith)
• Titles like "assistant book editor" are not capitalized (unless used in a heading)
• Numbers one to ninety-nine are written out; numbers 100 and over are in numerals (but "36 percent")
• Approximations in place of numbers are written out (e.g., "around eight hundred")
• "chapter one," "chapter two," etc., not "chap. 1" or "Chapter One" or "Chapter 1"
• "seventh century," not "Seventh Century" or "7th Century"
• 650 B.C., A.D. 1998, 621 B.C.E.
• March 5, not March 5th
• Numbered lists and footnotes in text: (1)...(2)..., etc. (no superscripts)
• Change fractions to decimals where possible
• pages 232-238, not 232-38; 1980-1984, not 1980-84
• Conference titles such as "Buddhism and Human Rights" are in quotation marks, not italics
• Book titles are italicized; article titles are enclosed in quotation marks
• JGB does not use tabs and does not indent new paragraphs; new paragraphs flush left with a two line spaces between paragraphs
• Page number references within the text are formatted: (p. 1), with a space between the "p." and the number

Please consult www.amazon.com for missing publication information on reviews.

Authors should direct queries about technical terms to the above individuals and not the JGB Copyeditor.

• Long vowels are doubled
• Consonantal diacritics precede the consonants marked by them; thus retroflex consonants are written as .r .t .th .d .dh .n .m .s
• visarga is written as .h
• The palatals that take diacritics are ~n and "s
• The gutteral nasal is written "n
• da.n.da is written |

Chinese can be romanized by either the pinyin or Wade-Giles system.

Japanese requires only doubled vowels for romanization, which can be treated as indicated above for Sanskrit.

Please note that queries concerning the transliteration of terms in Buddhist languages should be sent here and not addressed to the JGB Copyeditor.