Review Process & the CA✩ Treatment (curranthro-review-process)

Knowing how CA screens, decides, and publicly commentates lets you pre-empt the failure modes before submitting. CA is the transnational, all-fields journal published by the University of Chicago Press for the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and its defining mechanism is the CA✩ Treatment — a layer of signed, published peer commentary plus the author's Reply that no sibling journal applies. The bar is field-shaping significance plus sound, ethical evidence, and an argument that can withstand being debated in print.

When to trigger

• Before submitting, to stress-test against editorial screening and the CA✩ commentary
• Choosing the right article type (only Major Articles get the full CA✩ Treatment)
• Interpreting a decision letter and setting expectations
• Understanding what reviewers — and later, commentators — are asked to weigh

How CA review works

1. Editorial screening first. The editor(s) assess fit, all-fields significance, and obvious ethics issues before sending out for review. A technically fine but subfield-bound paper can be returned or redirected here. (CA receives roughly 230 manuscripts a year and accepts on the order of ~10% — treat these as approximate, verify on the live site.)
2. Peer review. Expert, often cross-subfield, referees evaluate the manuscript. Confirm the current anonymity model on the live Instructions for Authors before assuming single/double anonymized.
3. The CA✩ Treatment (Major Articles). Once a Major Article is accepted, the editors solicit Comments from an international range of relevant anthropologists. These signed Comments are published with the article, and the author writes a Reply that is printed alongside. This is the journal's signature: your paper appears with its critics and your response, all at once.
4. Decision categories. Reject; revise-and-resubmit (major/minor); accept. R&R is the common positive outcome; exact portal labels are not fixed in this pack.
5. Article-type-specific paths. Reports go through review without the full CA✩ commentary; Forums are curated multi-author debates; Discussion items/Comments (≤ 800 words) respond to recent CA pieces.

The two audiences you must satisfy

Shape the paper to pass — and to reward commentary

• Make all-fields significance explicit early (avoids the "subfield-only" redirect).
• Engage the relevant conversations across subfields and beyond the metropolitan canon — these are the scholars who may be invited to comment.
• Make the intervention bold and defensible: a Major Article that is too safe is not CA✩ material; one that is bold but unsupported will be dismantled in the published Comments.
• Clear ethics up front (consent, anonymization, heritage/repatriation) — an unresolved ethics concern is a serious problem (see curranthro-transparency-and-data).

Anti-patterns

• Submitting a single-subfield paper to an all-fields journal with no broad framing
• Forgetting the CA✩ Treatment: writing an argument that cannot survive published, signed Comments
• Targeting a Major Article when the work is really a Report (or vice versa)
• Ignoring an obvious related literature or a non-metropolitan scholarship (your commentators won't)
• Leaving consent/heritage/anonymization unresolved and hoping review will overlook it

Output format

【Screening check】fit / all-fields significance / ethics — any red flags?
【Article type】Major Article (CA✩) / Report / Forum / Discussion (right path?)
【Significance】broad enough to clear "subfield-only"? [Y/N]
【Commentary-readiness】bold + defensible enough for published Comments? [Y/N]
【Likely commentators】camps anticipated and pre-engaged? [Y/N]
【Ethics cleared】consent / anonymization / heritage resolved? [Y/N]
【Realistic outcome】reject / R&R / (rare) accept → then CA✩ Comments for Major Articles
【Next】curranthro-submission (or curranthro-rebuttal if decided / Comments received)

Calibration anchors (hedged)

• The CA✩ Treatment applies to Major Articles: expect to write a Reply to published Comments — a different task from a normal R&R (see curranthro-rebuttal).
• Manuscript volume (~230/yr) and acceptance (~10%) figures circulate publicly but vary by year — verify on the live Wenner-Gren / UChicago Press pages.
• Decision-category names, reviewer counts, and the exact anonymity model are not fixed here; use the live Editorial Manager / editorial-letter wording.

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — CA✩ Treatment, article types, review model, editors, acceptance figures