Changes: US Ethnic Literature Journals

Revision as of 23:12, 10 July 2014

Please share your experiences working with these journals! Feel free to add other journals to the list. Try to stick with this format: each journal should be separated by dashes, and responses under each journal should each have their own bullet.

Back to Literary Studies Journals

African American Review

Submitted an article in 2011. Received a revise/resubmit exactly 3 months later. The reader responses were excellent and thorough. It took me about 1 month to finish my revisions and resubmit the article. Exactly three months after the resubmission, the article was accepted, with a few more small reader comments, including some praise for the revisions I had done. Thanks!!! The article has not appeared in print yet, as the journal is currently backed up, but my experience with submission and reader response was wholly positive with AAR.
Submitted article in 2011, as well. Received R&R within 3 months; similarly to the above poster, the two reviews were helpful and thorough. Also completed my revisions in a month. Second review delayed because of an unresponsive reader, a condition outside the editor's control. Ultimately a new reader was found: to his credit, the editor was patient and graceful in responding to repeated inquiries. Finally accepted about a year after initial submission. In all, totally worth the wait, as their assistance improved the essay considerably (not to mention my tenure case!).
Submitted a manuscript with a very small formatting error. The journal took six months to get back to me, and it was ultimately to tell me that the manuscript was rejected because of the formatting error, and could not be resubmitted for reconsideration. Yes, I felt like a complete idiot for the small error, and was so angry at myself, but the tone of the response from the editor was completely humiliating and alienating. If they weren't going to bother actually reading the manuscript, and were going to reject it, it would have been nice to know sooner than six months. I can only assume that they have a tremendous backlog of submissions, and look for any possible way to slough manuscripts off the pile. This was in 2012 so I hope things have changed since then.
I encourage contributors to be very meticulous about reviewing proofs and very assertive about linguistic choices you make that are crucial to your intellectual project but might not be salient to someone performing generic copyedits. The final copy of my AAR article contained typos that were not present in the proofs, contained unanticipated and inexplicable deletions of text, and ignored several important corrections that I made to the proofs. (Note that many of those corrections were only necessary because errors appeared in the proofs that weren't in the final Word document I submitted.) Significantly, I suspect that the copyeditor was unfamiliar with particularities of my material, and was content to change some of my very deliberate, nuanced, and content-specific writerly choices into generic/"textbook"-style copy. On the flip side, though, personnel were very amiable. Note that this all refers to a piece published in 2013.

Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies

Bilingual Review/Revista Bilingue

Submitted in June and never received acknowledgement. Inquired at 4 months and heard nothing. Inquired again at 6 months; again, nothing. Finally. A few days after second inquiry, I got my package with a letter stating the journal is not taking new submissions due to an 18 month backlog. I understand the drastic cuts but not indicating this on a website is irresponsible, especially to those on the T-T.

Journal of African American Studies

Journal of Asian American Studies

Latino(a) Research Review

Latino Studies

Very careful editorial process produces excellent articles. Every submission is first read and discussed by the editors, and often revisions are required before it is even sent to outside readers. A large percentage of submissions are eventually published, but sometimes after multiple rounds of revision. The journal nonetheless keeps the process moving: my essay was published one year after initial submission.

Articles are top quality, but the editorial process is tedious and out of sync with most journals, in most fields. I sent an article in, went through the initial screening, revised it thoroughly and had to wait over as year (I checked at 6 and 9 months) to be told the truth of why the review was taking so long -a reviewer had been ill. That delay didn't merit consideration of the time I took to complete the major revise and resubmit (11 months). I was told the journal doesn't review articles that "have been withdrawn," which I never did. Bottom line: not a journal to submit to if you are on the tenure track and don't have 1 - 2 years to lose on editor back and forth.
Agreed: very careful editorial process. I find it to be so helpful as they really guide you in ways that I have not experienced with other journals. Yes it makes the process a bit longer however the quality is increased and the authors themselves really learn something from this experience.

MELUS

Terrific experience in 2013-2014: 4 months from submission to R&R (with incredibly helpful reader reports); conditional acceptance within 2 months; full acceptance in just over a month after that. It's not yet in print, but the process was encouraging and improved the piece considerably.

Studies in American Indian Literatures

Submitted via email as requested and never heard anything. I later learned that the editorial staff changed. I assume the article was trashed.

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 *Submitted article in 2011, as well. Received R&R within 3 months; similarly to the above poster, the two reviews were helpful and thorough. Also completed my revisions in a month. Second review delayed because of an unresponsive reader, a condition outside the editor's control. Ultimately a new reader was found: to his credit, the editor was patient and graceful in responding to repeated inquiries. Finally accepted about a year after initial submission. In all, totally worth the wait, as their assistance improved the essay considerably (not to mention my tenure case!).
 * Submitted a manuscript with a very small formatting error.  The journal took six months to get back to me, and it was ultimately to tell me that the manuscript was rejected because of the formatting error, and could not be resubmitted for reconsideration.  Yes, I felt like a complete idiot for the small error, and was so angry at myself, but the tone of the response from the editor was completely humiliating and alienating. If they weren't going to bother actually reading the manuscript, and were going to reject it, it would have been nice to know sooner than six months.  I can only assume that they have a tremendous backlog of submissions, and look for any possible way to slough manuscripts off the pile.  This was in 2012 so I hope things have changed since then.
-* I encourage contributors to be very meticulous about reviewing proofs and very assertive about linguistic and syntactical choices you make that are crucial to your intellectual project but might not be salient to someone performing generic copyedits. The final copy of my AAR article contained typos that were not present in the proofs, contained unanticipated and inexplicable deletions of text, and ignored several important corrections that I made to the proofs. Note that many of those corrections were only necessary because errors appeared in the proofs that weren't in the final Word document I submitted. Significantly, I suspect that the copyeditor was unfamiliar with particularities of my material, and was content to change very deliberate, nuanced, and content-specific writerly choices into generic, "textbook"-style copy. Note that this all refers to a piece published in 2013.
+* I encourage contributors to be very meticulous about reviewing proofs and very assertive about linguistic choices you make that are crucial to your intellectual project but might not be salient to someone performing generic copyedits. The final copy of my AAR article contained typos that were not present in the proofs, contained unanticipated and inexplicable deletions of text, and ignored several important corrections that I made to the proofs. (Note that many of those corrections were only necessary because errors appeared in the proofs that weren't in the final Word document I submitted.) Significantly, I suspect that the copyeditor was unfamiliar with particularities of my material, and was content to change some of my very deliberate, nuanced, and content-specific writerly choices into generic/"textbook"-style copy. On the flip side, though,  personnel were very amiable. Note that this all refers to a piece published in 2013.