Academic Book Review Community

Welcome to the Academic Book Review Community! We are an online community for you who are currently writing a book review for an academic journal, coordinated by NordMedia Network. We want to support you in finding the best practices and giving you feedback along the way!

Academic Book Review Community in Short

What: an online-based learning network for academics writing a book review in English for an international scientific journal in the Nordic-Baltic region

Why: to support academics in writing book reviews and getting familiar with the requirements of the genre, to raise academics’ interest in the genre, to ensure more extensive high-quality supply of academic book reviews for the Nordic-Baltic journals, to support academic book review editors’ work at scientific journals and to support doctoral training programs to include the review genre in their educational content

How: by providing scholars with an open online resource, combined with occasional virtual sessions, with a structured outline and schedules for writing and collection of existing online resources

Who: run and hosted by NordMedia Network at Nordicom, in cooperation with relevant academic media and communication research journals in the Nordic-Baltic region

Open Educational Resource

A Guidebook for Writing Academic Book Reviews

We have published an author’s guide for writing academic book reviews titled “Joining the Scholarly Conversation: The Basics of Writing an Academic Book Review”. This online guidebook, the first one in our series of open educational resources, deals with the objectives, ideals and practices of reviewing new research. It is a resource for everyone who wants to gain the basics of book reviewing for academic journals.
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A Guidebook for Writing Academic Book Reviews

Recorded Discussions

Launching the Academic Book Review Community

Welcome to our new community at NordMedia Network! Maarit Jaakkola and Kristin Clay present the idea of NordMedia Network’s new initiative, Academic Book Review Community.

Discussion with Two Nordic Book Review Editors

What is a good book review? Why should academics write reviews of books? Book review editors Ivar John Erdal from Norsk medietidskrift (Norway) and Jonatan Leer from MedieKultur (Denmark) discuss the possibilities and challenges of the book review genre.

Discussion with an Editor at John Benjamins

What is the role and importance of book reviews for book publishers? Anke de Looper, Acquisition Editor at John Benjamins Publishing Company, talks about the value of book reviews, followed by a Q & A. The webinar was held on 15 April 2021.

Authors’ Experiences

Researchers Matteo Stocchetti (Finland), Gunhild Ring Olsen (Norway) and Kelechi Amakoh (Denmark/Netherlands) share their experiences from writing book reviews. The discussion was recorded on 6th May 2021.

Online Writing Retreats

Discover our next online writing retreat arrow_forward

Read More about Online Writing Retreats

Join NordMedia Network’s Online Writing Retreat (NordMedia Network, February 1, 2023)

Experiences from NordMedia Network’s Online Writing Retreats (December 9, 2022)

NordMedia Network Offers Online Writing Retreats for Media Scholars (October 4, 2022)

Academic Bookstagram

Share Your Readings in Social Media

Are you preparing a book review? What are you reading at the moment? Share your current academic readings or create visibility for your recent published book review on Instagram by joining the Academic Bookstagram! Add #academicbookstagram and #academicbookreview to your personal post or follow others’ posts by searching with these hashtags. If you want to be discovered by us, also use the hashtag #nordmedianetwork. You also find as on Instagram – follow @nordmedianetwork!
Explore the Academic Bookstagram arrow_forward
Share Your Readings in Social Media
Academic Book Reviews on Goodreads

Join the Goodreads Discussion Group

We created a closed discussion groups for everyone interested on the book discussion site Goodreads – and you are welcome to join! Goodreads is an online community site for discussing books and book reviews, mostly beyond the academic community. As a social book cataloging service, it enables users to record what they are reading, what they intend to read, and set out goals for reading.
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Join the Goodreads Discussion Group

Research on Academic Book Reviewing

Aveyard, Karina (2018). Academic Book Reviewing. Media International Australia, 166(1), 81–83.

Fimi, Dimitra (2020). Tolkien and the Art of the Academic Book Review. AC Review of Books, 1(1), 1–10. oi

Hartley, James (2006). Reading and Writing Book Reviews Across the Disciplines. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(9), 1194–1207.

Hérubel, Jean-Pierre, V.M. (2020). The Book Review Landscape in American History: Specialization, segmentation, value, and history journals. Publishing Research Quarterly, 36, 350–364.

Hyland, Ken & Diani, Giuliana (2009). Academic Evaluation: Review Genres in University Settings. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kitchin, Rob & Fuller, Duncan (2005). The Academic’s Guide to Publishing. London: Sage.

Lewis, Marilyn Nesta (2020). Here’s a Good Book: Hints on Writing a Book Review for Academic Journals. RELC Journal, published online on June 10, 2020.

Lindholm-Romantschuk, Ylva (1998). Scholarly Book Reviewing in the Social Sciences and Humanities: The Flow of Ideas within and among Disciplines. Westport: Greenwood Press.

Nicolaisen, Jeppe (2002). The Scholarliness of Published Peer Reviews: A Bibliometric Study of Book Reviews in Selected Social Science Fields. Research Evaluation, 11(3), 129–140.

Oinas, Päivi (2013). Views on Book Reviews. Regional Studies, 47(10),  1785–1789.

Orteza y Miranda, Eveline (1996). On Book Reviewing. Journal of Educational Thought, 30(2), 191–202.

Tse, Polly & Hyland, Ken (2006). ‘So What is the Problem this Book Addresses?’ Interactions in Academic Book Reviews. Text & Talk, 26(6), 767–790.

Download a complete list of further readings (pdf)

More Material Will Follow!

We are constantly developing the Academic Book Review Community. Our hope is to support scholars with an intention to review books for academic journals, including the Nordic media and communication research journal Nordicom Review, by providing a source for insights and inspiration.

Contact Information

For inquiries regarding the activities, please contact the community managers:

Maarit is the editor-in-chief of the NordMedia Network platform and responsible for the Academic Book Review Support Community. She is also a book reviews editor for the journal Nordicom Review.

Kristin a community manager in the Academic Book Review Support Community. As an editor and copywriter, she proofreads all Nordicom’s publications and takes care of the English-language editing.