International Centre for Olympic Studies

Journal Article Reviews

Thank you for your interest in contributing to Olympika's journal article reviews. You may find these suggestions useful; they are intended as a pointer in the right direction for the composition of your review.

First, journal article reviews published in previous issues of Olympika are available via the search page of the LA84 foundation: check "Olympika" under "Periodicals" and enter "journal article review" in the keyword search box. Alternatively, you can inspect the tables of contents of previous issues of Olympika here and then search the LA84 Foundation holdings by review author or title.

Second, please review the instructions to authors at the bottom of this page.

Third, Robert K. Barney's guidelines for preparing a scholarly review might be useful. Note that these are suggestions, not every review will make reference to all of these points (keep in mind that a journal article review is shorter than a book review where these guidelines would be applied more fully).

  1. An introduction that will set the tone for your perspective on the article - positive? critical? 'middle of the road'?
  2. Article's thesis, intention, or argument - how well is it executed?
  3. Discussion of noteworthy / important / controversial / strong /weak points, with which you agree or disagree.
  4. Flaws in the article (outright errors, weakly supported arguments).
  5. Strenghts of the article.
  6. Quality of data / evidence / documentation provided.
  7. Comparison to other work in the same research space (this is more typical of book reviews than journal article reviews).
  8. Value of the article to the body of knowledge in its research space.

Suggest an Article?

Journal Article Review editor Andrew Pettit will make available on request a list of current scholarly articles of topical and related interests. Feel free to suggest articles of your own choice, but please do not submit a review before clearing the article selection with Andrew. Olympika is interested in articles on Olympic and Paralympic research in the wide gamut of 'socio-cultural' studies, i.e., the disciplines of history, sociology, management, philosophy, cultural studies, anthropology. 

Instructions to Authors