Yes! We are a PLATFORM for exchanging ideas about new approaches to working with, researching, teaching and writing about the built environment and space, broadly conceived, in the light of contemporary culture and politics.
We invite you to join us in carrying out our mission—to provide a digital space for scholars, writers, activists, architects, artists, planners, urbanists, and preservationists to communicate with one another and the public. PLATFORM is explicitly international, interdisciplinary, and unbounded.
We publish short, sharp, original essays and multimedia content (audio, visual, video) that provoke cutting-edge conversations and debates engaging the built environment. PLATFORM runs eight columns: Conversations, Finding, House Histories, Opinion, Photoessays, Reading/Listening/Watching, Specifying, Speculations, and Teaching/Working.
PLATFORM is not peer-reviewed in the conventional, double-blind sense. PLATFORM selects submissions on the basis of quality, originality, and tone—in particular, writing that is rigorous but accessible, and unhampered by academic prose or jargon. (For more on tone, see PLATFORM’s writing credo, below, under the header How Should I Format My Submission?) Every PLATFORM article does, however, undergo a process of developmental editing with one of our editors or contributing editors (in some cases two depending on the area of inquiry and our own expertise).
The editors know who the authors are, and vice versa. Yet the experience we editors bring to our work—including as editors or reviews-editors of leading journals in our fields, including the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians and Buildings & Landscapes—means that we are often doing the same work we would do were we anonymous and, we believe, just as well.
Peer-review evolved to ensure standards of scholarly rigor. Blind peer-review is premised on the idea that this form of reading minimizes bias and that only when protected by the cloak of anonymity will reviewers provide an impartial opinion on the scholarly merits of the work: the paper’s evidence, the author’s awareness of the state of the field, and ability to make an original argument, among other matters. In the humanities, the blindness of peer-review is useful for maintaining scholarly standards that may include argumentation based on archival and field research or a deep sense of the discipline’s genealogy.
Yet this form of review isn’t always appropriate. Just as paradigmatic shifts in science are made difficult by entrenched ways of disciplinary thinking embodied in double-bind peer review, in the humanities anonymous review can be ineffective as a tool for expanding a field or promoting creative thinking. Additionally, the review process and length of time needed to see an article or book from submission to publication can be cumbersome. The necessary slowness of the process cannot be responsive to rapidly developing events, nor can it accommodate the need, particularly among junior scholars, to communicate ideas about research, teaching, reading, and practice in a timely manner.
At PLATFORM we have created an alternative model that suits the kind of writing we aim to publish. Our articles still undergo review, but in a manner that is open and transparent. We operate on the premise of empathetic critical reading.
After publication, PLATFORM essays are open to comments, which are lightly moderated to ensure no inappropriate posts are made, i.e. insults, ad hominem attacks, spam ads, or that violate our Terms of Service.
Yes. PLATFORM can embed video clips hosted on YouTube, Vimeo, Animoto, or Wistia. Video cannot be uploaded directly.
Write to us at info@platformspace.net, pitching your idea. We will review your proposal and an editor will be in touch with you.
We aim for posts of 500-1,000 words, with the exception of Opinion pieces, which may run as long as 3,000 words. In all cases we are interested in exploring short form writing, but we will consider a longer post, on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the topic, manner of writing, and timeliness.
1. FORMATTING MANUSCRIPTS
A. PLATFORM uses The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition, as its primary style guide.
B. Manuscripts should be formatted in Microsoft Word using Times New Roman font, 12 point. If any special characters are not available in this font, please alert the editor.
C. Notes—in the form of bibliographic endnotes—are permitted where necessary (see NOTES & LINKS section below).
D. Hyperlinks to references are preferred (see NOTES & LINKS section below). Other hyperlinks, where helpful to readers, are encouraged.
E. Illustration captions, including illustration credit information (see ILLUSTRATIONS section below), should follow the text.
F. Italicize words or phrases that should appear as such in PLATFORM.
G. The editors recognize the need for subheadings, but at the same time strongly encourage authors to pursue a narrative style that minimizes their necessity. When subheadings are included, organize subheadings logically and consistently. Do not number subheadings; leave a blank space above and below each one.
H. Quotations of more than four lines must be set off from the rest of the text as extracts or block quotes without quotation marks. Indent all lines one inch on the left side only, using the indent feature of your word processing program.
I. Digitize non-round numbers larger than 101; do not use digits at sentence opening. Consult The Chicago Manual of Style for specific guidelines. For example: three hundred, three million; 1951–1952; 40 percent; twentieth century; fifteen by forty feet; 124 x 142 feet; forty dollars, $251, $13 million, two-hour.
J. Italicize foreign terms at first use; use Roman (i.e. no added style) type thereafter. Do not italicize foreign terms commonly used in English.
K. Provide the title, subtitle and author’s name at the start of the manuscript.
L. Include a brief author bio (no more than 25 words), with a link to each author’s home page, at the end of the manuscript.
M. Include a list of proposed keywords at the end of the manuscript, below author bio.
2. NOTES & LINKS
A. PLATFORM uses links (rather than notes) wherever possible. If mentioning a website, an article, a report available online, etc., embed a link instead of using a note.
B. Where necessary—because you are quoting a source and need to indicate page number, or because it is a print or other non-web source—PLATFORM uses bibliographic endnotes for citations. Please create notes (either as footnotes or endnotes) using the Microsoft Word note-insertion feature. The editors prefer that superscript note numbers be placed at the ends of sentences.
C. In notes, provide complete bibliographic information for a work the first time it is cited. Short form or abbreviated citations are used thereafter.
D. When citing a web source in a note, including newspaper, magazine, and journal articles available online, a link should be embedded in the title of the article. The access date is not necessary unless essential to a particular source (a site with data that changes frequently). For all books, please embed a link, in the title of the book, to the book’s page on its publisher’s website (i.e. not to the book’s page on Amazon or Google Books), if available.
E. Take care to format citations correctly. Follow The Chicago Manual of Style and the practices of PLATFORM. Examples:
BOOK
Dell Upton, Another City: Urban Life and Urban Spaces in the New Republic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 16-20.
EDITED BOOK
Lauren Benton and Richard Ross, eds., Legal Pluralism and Empires, 1500-1850 (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 20.
BOOK CHAPTER IN AN EDITED COLLECTION
Lizabeth A. Cohen, “Embellishing a Life of Labor: An Interpretation of the Material Culture of American Working-Class Homes, 1885-1915,” in Common Places: Readings in American Vernacular Architecture, ed. Dell Upton and John Michael Vlach, 261-78 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986), 266.
TRANSLATED EDITION
Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, trans. Robert Baldick (New York: Vintage Books, 1962), 62.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Wu Hung, "The Painted Screen," Critical Inquiry 23, no. 1 (Autumn 1996): 37-79.
NEWSPAPER OR MAGAZINE ARTICLE
Alex Marshall, “Glass, Golden Flames or a Beam of Light: What Should Replace Notre-Dame's Spire?,” New York Times, April 10, 2019.
DOCUMENT THAT LIVES ON THE WEB
Susan Brizzolara Wojcik, Iron Hill School: An African-American One-room School (U.S. National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, 2002).
WEBSITE
“About Yale: Yale Facts,” Yale University, accessed May 1, 2017.
3. ILLUSTRATIONS
All PLATFORM pieces must include at least one image. If you are having difficulty locating an image, please consult with the editors. Do not embed images in the manuscript. Submit each illustration as a separate file, as described below.
A. Image files:
i. All images should be submitted as JPEG or PNG files. (We can also publish GIF files if your essay calls for them.) If you have TIFF or other types of files, please convert them to JPEG (preferred) or PNG, or ask the editors for help doing so.
ii. Images should, ideally, be 2500 pixels wide (and no larger), which equates to 8.33” wide at 300 dpi and 34.7” wide at 72 dpi. If you are unsure about the size of your images or need help resizing, ask the editors for help.
iii. Line art such as plans, maps, tables, charts, and diagrams must also be converted to JPEG (preferred) or PNG files at a resolution of 2500 pixeles wide. If you have Adobe Illustrator EPS , GIS , CAD , or other line-art files, please convert before submission, taking care that labels and other lettering is large enough to be legible after conversion. If you need help, ask the editors.
iv. Each illustration file must be named with the author’s last name and the same figure number used in the text and the caption list, e.g. Smith_FIG2.
B. Figure call-outs
In pieces in which the text refers to specific images, place figure references, in parentheses, at the end of the sentence in which the image is first discussed, e.g. (Figure 1).
C. Permissions
Authors must obtain permission to reproduce illustrations when necessary and pay copyright fees and other costs. Include a copy of the written permission for each illustration with the final approved manuscript.
D. Captions and credits
A caption, with credit, must be supplied for each image, and included in a list at the end of the manuscript (as described above). Captions should be brief but identify what the illustration is and why it is important. Examples:
Figure 1. Roadside Shop, Philadelphia, 2009. Phootgraph by Jan Smith.
Figure 2. Howard D. Woodson High School, Washington, D.C., McLeod, Ferrara, & Ensign, architects, 1965–72, demolished 2008. Reprinted with permission of the Washington D.C. Public Library, Star Collection, copyright Washington Post.
Figure 3. Plan of 12 Pacific Avenue, Buellton, California, Amy Parks, 1980. Redrawn by Hugh Brown from the architect’s original.
Figure 4. Film still from When That Was True, Alexa Patel, 2005. Reproduced with permission of Alexa Patel.
Our writing credo at PLATFORM is simple:
Also, for formatting reasons, short paragraphs read best on PLATFORM.