Although Kairos is often described as an innovative journal because we publish webtexts that take advantage of the affordances of the media available for digital scholarship, I believe the review process that we've developed over the past ten years is actually the most innovative feature of the journal. When a submission comes in, it's first evaluated by the editors for appropriateness and level of development. When we changed the subtitle from "A Journal for Teachers of Writing in Webbed Environments" to the more general (and easier to say) "Rhetoric, Technology, Pedagogy," part of the rationale was that we would be better able to describe what kind of work we wanted to publish. So at the first stage of review, I always wanted to see engagement with "technology" and at least one other of the subtitle elements. (For instance, I have fielded a few submissions that were print-linear histories of rhetorical tropes -- no technology or pedagogy was addressed in those submissions, so I sent off polite rejection letters suggesting other venues that might be more appropriate).

At the second level of review, the entire editorial board would be given an opportunity to review the text and discuss their reactions and suggestions on our editorial board list. The large number of editorial board members helps ensure that each submission will get a quality review and it also provides a system of checks and balances to mitigate against unprofessional activities (giving a negative review based on personality conflicts, for instance). If someone on the board were to engage in that kind of behavior, it would be quickly called out by the other editorial board members (that this has never happened is certainly due more to the professionalism and exceptional collegiality of our editorial board than to the system though). More...

Over the history of the journal, our review process has been described as alternately a two-tiered or three-tiered process: the initial review for appropriateness was original considered "Tier 1," but was later re-numbered "Tier 0" because, although important, it did not represent the uniquely open and collaborative review activity that the other components of the process provided.

Our new Co-Editors, Cheryl Ball and Beth Hewett, have instituted some refinements to the review process -- keeping the good and unique practices that work and changing some of the later-tier processes that often caused more work and slower completion times for both author and editorial board members. See their description of these changes in the Logging On section of this issue.