Signals are an important part of the JoPP peer review process. They are intended to widen the scope of publishable articles by placing the reputational cost of publishing an imperfect article on authors, rather than on the journal.
Please note:
Positive signal = 1, negative signal = 0, positive/negative signal = 0.5
Only signals marked with a “*” are used to calculate the JoPP Signal.
Objective categories
Activist: 0/2
Article proposes a critique of a policy or practice with specific action proposals or suggestions.
Academic: 2/2*
Article follows conventions of academic research article — e.g. position in literature, cited sources, and claimed contribution.
Prospective: 0/2
Article is based on developments that have not yet occurred.
Formalised: 0/2
Article is based on formal logic or mathematical technique.
Language quality: 2/2*
Standard of English expression in article is excellent.
Subjective categories
Scope of debate: 2/2
Article addresses an issue which is widely known and debated.
Comprehensiveness: 2/2*
Most related sources are mentioned in article [this is an invitation to careful selection rather than a demonstration of prowess in citation collection — i.e. apt and representative choices made in source citations.
Logical flow: 2/2*
Ideas are well organised in article.
Originality: 2/2*
The argument presented in article is new.
Review impact: 2/2
The article has been significantly changed as a result of the review process
Commendations
Reviewer A
This is an outstanding contribution to the field. The article introduces ‘place-based civic tech’, as citizen engagement technology co-designed by local government, civil society and global volunteers. It argues that autonomous self-organization allows for the emergence of a parallel, self-determining and more place-based geography of politics and political action by combining online tools with offline collaborative practices. The authors investigate whether the civic tech co-created and co-designed from the bottom-up by civil society, local councils and global volunteers is actually creating a digital space for autonomous self-organization and whether it allows the emergence of a parallel, self-determining and more place-based geography of politics and political action. They also ask whether this place-based civic tech decentralizes politics differently or more effectively than a government-led approach.
Reviewer B
The paper “Decentralizing geographies of political action. Civic tech and place-based municipalism” offers an interesting insight in some of the most recent developments of practising democracy Madrid and Barcelona. It shows which role civic tech played in the specific context of these two Spanish cities. It is an interesting case study that deserves further research and contextualisation.