Mostly, one is asked to review an article in an edited collection. But in a situation when one is asked to review all the papers within the 'book', how does one approach this kind of critical review?
Interesting question. It would be important to contact the editors to discuss the approach with them. The authors would no doubt prefer separate reviews of their contributions. An ego thing. But that would not be very interesting nor informative. If I were a reader or researcher in the topics of the book I would prefer a thematic approach.
Good Day:
(I am writing as an editor, not as a scientist)
I am not trying to be facetious, but a better question might be "Should I do a critical review on an edited collection?" If the answer to that is "Yes", then a preliminary check is in order to confirm that the collected edition is in fact an edited collection not just an assemblage of pieces.
Should I Spend My Time on it?
In many fields, an edited collection (ed. coll.) simply does not count for prestige, for tenure, or for profit. An ed. coll. is often viewed as a reflection of a desire to put thing in groups or find safety in numbers. The contents are often mismatched and sometimes double submitted. Nothing beats a refereed journal article published in the top journal in a field, and an ed. coll. is often viewed as more valuable for profiling, networking, or justifying conferences than for advancing a field or codifying knowledge.
If the members of the field do not value the form of publication, is it worth your effort to make a contribution by reviewing it? How feasible is it for you to give a critical review of perhaps dozens of articles, compared to the effort you would put in to review a separate one?
Ok, with that question out of the way, Is it an edited collection in more than name?
Is there a reason for the collection, other than assembling disparate conference proceedings or worse, vanity publishing? What is the thesis for assembling the parts?
Who are the authors? What is the quality of the individual cats that the editor had to herd to assemble this collection?
Is it an edited volume of new works or is it a topical reader of older or excerpted material?
Here are some things I feel a review should cover:
Your review had to do more work than a review of a single paper has to do. That review tells the reader what the paper is about, what author says about what the paper is about, and what you the reviewer think about both. The review of an ed. coll. must also grapple with the meta analysis of the editorial unity and its evaluation of its own contents.
Is it collection of integrated intellectual contributions or is it a collection where (as is too often the case) the "quality of the chapters is uneven". Do the parts cite the central concepts or ideas of the editors? Is there any internal citation between the chapters? Does the collection present dominant themes or will you find that only certain chapters have merit? Does the collection have weight for others in terms of "research, policy, practice, or theory?" Does it “advance scholarship”?
A couple of sources: Edited Books: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Mark A. Davis and Bernd Blossey) and What’s wrong with most edited volumes? (Michael E. Smith) These present a large number of factors deemed critical in an effective ed. coll. Factors which will affect your critical review.
Edited Books: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Mark A. Davis
Department of Biology, Macalester College, Saint Paul, Minnesota 55105 USA
Bernd Blossey
Department of Natural Resources, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Cornell University,
Ithaca, New York 14853 USA
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1890/0012-9623-92.3.247/pdf
Why are so many edited volumes worthless?
Publishing Archaeology
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Michael E. Smith
http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2007/08/why-are-so-many-edited-volumes.html
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