Guidelines for book review authors

Book reviews are in scope if:

• The book being reviewed demonstrates a novel use of computing education research, and/or
• The book opens new directions for computing education research.

Book reviews should contain the following elements, not necessarily in the order listed (except for the first element).

• A bibliographical entry that includes author(s) or editor(s), book title, publication year, and publisher. This should be the first paragraph of the review.
• A summary of the topic, scope, intended audience, and purpose of the book.
• A brief characterization of the book as a whole, including the thesis or message of the book.
• The author’s point of view, and/or the research tradition that the book primarily draws upon.
• A description of the author’s use of methods, data sources, and evidence.
• Relationship and contribution of the book to the current discourse in the field.
• An evaluation of the author’s success in achieving the author's purpose.

What to Avoid:

• Criticism of typographical errors or minor errors of fact, unless they are numerous enough to raise questions about the book’s overall quality and reliability.
• Criticism that the author has failed to refer to or discuss some other author’s work, unless that work is essential or central to any discussion of the subject.
• Using the review as an opportunity to express the reviewer’s own strongly held views.
• Criticizing the author for not writing the book the reviewer thinks the author should have written.

Guidelines for reviewing book reviews

Book review recommendations are as follows:

• Accept. The review meets all of the requirements above.
• Accept with Revisions. The review meets all of the requirements above, but would benefit from some minor changes to improve clarity.
• Revise and Resubmit. The review could meet all of the requirements above, but does not yet, and authors are encouraged to revise it so that it does.
• Reject. The book is out of scope, the review does not and cannot meet all of the requirements above, or the review has already been revised once and does still not meet requirements.

Book reviews are assigned to an Associate Editor and are assigned no more than 2 reviewers. The Associate Editor will make one of the recommendations above and the EiC will approve.