Revitalizing Hypothesis

Erin Foster, Carol Perryman
2021 Hypothesis : the newsletter of the Research Section of MLA  
Hypothesis has existed for over 30 years -the first issue was released in 1987 with at least one issue published per year since its debut. With this kind of legacy, the journal has experienced change at multiple levels ranging from leadership (both editorial and Sectionlevel) to the logo. As co-editors, it has been our privilege to steward the journal through a process of revitalization and repurposing, which we recently had an opportunity to summarize when applying for the Section Project of
more » ... e Year Award. While Hypothesis is part of the Research Section's "normal operational programming", efforts made in the past year have arguably extended beyond the standard operating procedures and, with encouragement from leaders of the Research Section, we threw our hats into the ring! In past editorials, we discussed the submission system now used by contributors (https://www.mlanet.org/e/sx/in/eid=70) as well as the work taken to standardize journal policy, format, and content categories (https://www.mlanet.org/page/hypothesis). For this issue, Hypothesis piloted peer review checklists for both research and non-research project/program description papers. These checklists aim to define the peer review criteria for these article types as well as guide peer reviewers in the process of reviewing. We received excellent feedback from our awesome reviewers on these forms and hope to have them up on our public site within the new year so Hypothesis contributors can see the criteria used to evaluate their submissions. This issue also contains content that demonstrates how Hypothesis is dedicated to supporting the dissemination of information about research beyond just the results. In our "Research Project Spotlight", Angela Spencer details a research project to explore health
doi:10.18060/25137 fatcat:iylziym5mfaabih3azq77xu2nq