is here. I've talked about the editorial policy as it relates to technical things (the bottom half of the page). Now, we should look at the substantive part (the top half); and the policy lede ("Citizen Kane's Statement of Principles"):

We believe that responsive publishing and open dialog around well formed ideas grounded in experience and/or deep study (hopefully both) serves our community better than the protracted processes found in other venues to incrementally advance the rigor of a piece before its eventual exposure to light. We want to publish viewpoints on today's issues today, rather than in months or years.

We screen submissions so that we are reasonably convinced that the articles we publish are worthwhile additions to the dialog in the community. To us, that means they are:

•An offering concise and tightly argued enough to be worthy of the time of our busy readers;

•Serious, thoughtful work from a stakeholder worth understanding, if not necessarily agreeing with;

•Relevant and of interest to practitioners of small wars;

•Reasonably factual, analytical, or otherwise substantive; and

•Written well enough that the message comes through clearly.
Saying that these articles are "Reasonably factual, analytical, or otherwise substantive..." implies to me (once an assistant editor for a couple of years on a law review) some sort of substantive review process.

In truth, "Reasonably factual, analytical, or otherwise substantive ..." might as well have been left out, because the following paragraphs establish that no one really looks at whether the article is "Reasonably factual, analytical, or otherwise substantive ...." So, the policy continues:

Our experimentation with various approaches to peer review has led us believe that the vast expertise of our readership and the immediacy of their response via open comments is far better vetting than a review panel we could assemble and labor slowly through.

We do not screen articles for their compliance with a house position or agenda. The flip side of that is that we do not necessarily agree with what we are publishing. We do not pretend to own the dialog or preach any gospel. SWJ does not promote any particular position, other than one of rigorous reflection and cross-examination given the complexities of small wars. The point is not for us, the authors, or for any site user to be right, but for all of us to be more informed and better.

We would like to provide our authors more editorial review than they get, which is next to none. We only make minor formatting and mechanical edits; we'd do more if we were better staffed. In the meantime, let's not let your red pen or our lack of enough of them get in the way of good ideas reaching the right eyes and ears promptly.

While we screen submissions, we do not and cannot fully vet authors and facts. Problems will come up from time to time. Authors who choose to submit their work to us do so courageously, realizing that they are subject to a public wire brushing by our discriminating and vocal readers for any errors.

We trust our audience to appreciate the distinction between inaccuracies that do not foul the rest of the work, and major issues: either deal-breaker errors or deception that we were too dumb and busy to interdict before publishing. If the latter two come up, we will deal with them as they arise. If livable errors come up, note and move on.
Now, to be frank, I've no problem with what these caveating paragraphs say. In fact, SWJ is neither the Harvard Law Review nor the Michigan Law Review, having a large student editorial staff and a faculty editorial board. Vetting even a couple of footnotes takes a lot of time, as my posts will soon prove. I don't expect that to happen before an SWJ article is published. As a corollary, I also don't expect SWJ articles to be necessarily "reasonably factual, analytical, or otherwise substantive ...." Caveat emptor.

Regards

Mike