Submissions –

Submission Guidelines

Social Text welcomes proposals for website projects in the following categories:
  • Features: short essays or reviews of about 1000 words
  • Guest-edited dossiers for Periscope, which should consist of about 5-6 essays
  • Poetry and short fiction

We are not able to pay for work for the online or print journal. Please send an email of inquiry to the managing editor, Marie Buck .

For the Palestine Now online dossier: Please note that submissions to Palestine Now are on a brief hiatus as we work on the review and publication of the large number of essays already submitted. Submissions will re-open in January, with a review and publication process of a few months’ time, for spring and summer 2025. Please email submissions of 3000 words or fewer (a hard limit), with links instead of endnotes, to managingeditor.socialtext [at] gmail.com, on or after January 2.

 

Journal Submissions

Social Text welcomes submissions of individual articles and proposals for special issues. Please direct all editorial inquiries to managingeditor.socialtext@gmail.com.


Length & Format
Articles submitted to the journal should be no longer than 8,000 words, including endnotes. Text should be double-spaced. Please follow The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition, using the humanities style of documentation. The author’s name, affiliation, address, email, and phone number should be listed on the front page of the manuscript.
Short-format pieces including essays, translations, interviews, and experimental writing will be considered for publication in our Denkbild section. If you would like your work to be considered for this section, please include this information when you send your submission.

Special Issue FAQ
You should feel free to send an initial email inquiry with a brief description of the issue you envision. We can then advise whether the issue might be a fit; if so, we’ll request the materials described below for the editorial collective to consider.
What do I need to send to Social Text in order to propose a special issue?
Special issue proposals must consist of three sections: (1) a prospectus; (2) abstracts for each contribution; and (3) contributor bios.
What is in a prospectus?
The prospectus is a detailed and fully developed description of the topic the special issue will explore. It should explain both the focus of the issue and how the issue elaborates on or intervenes within previous scholarship on the proposed topic. It should also describe each of the individual contributions to the issue proposal, how each article fits within the conceptual framework of the proposal, and how the articles fit together. The prospectus should be between 1500 and 3000 words or so. Note that our special issues generally tend to be interdisciplinary, and we prefer proposals that include scholars from multiple disciplines.Other journals occasionally circulate CFPs on behalf of guest editors, but Social Text will only consider proposals after guest editors have curated the content of a special issue and developed a method for the presentation of it.
How long should the article abstracts and contributor bios be?
Each abstract should be about 250 words in length. The contributor bios should be roughly 3-4 sentences long.

How many articles should I include in my proposal?
Special issues of Social Text consist of an introduction and 5-7 articles. Moreover, the articles that are included in the proposal should function to make the issue cohere. Please note as well that we are not able to publish double issues. (If you have a special form in mind, e.g. if your table of contents includes roundtables, interviews, or similar, please contact the managing editor, Marie Buck, in advance of submitting the proposal.)

 

Will Social Text consider a special issue proposal that is also under consideration by another journal?
The editorial collective will not evaluate a special issue proposal that is being considered by a different journal.

 

What is the estimated time to publication of a special issue, if it is accepted?

This varies widely depending on what else is in our publication pipeline when you submit the issue. (Please also note that acceptance of a proposal does not mean acceptance of the issue and its contents; each essay must be reviewed individually.)

If you have further questions about the process of submitting a special issue proposal to Social Text, contact the Managing Editor, Marie Buck.

Transmitting Your Submission

Please submit manuscripts electronically as email attachments in Microsoft Word. Submissions may be sent to the managing editor at managingeditor.socialtext@gmail.com.


Including Art

If your submission includes image files, please submit images as low-resolution jpegs for ease of transmission and circulation to readers. If your work is accepted for publication, images for print reproduction must be provided as tiff files with a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.


Index/Abstract Information

Social Text is indexed/abstracted in the following:

Academic Search Elite, Academic Search Premier, Alternative Press Index, Contemporary Culture Index, Current Abstracts, Humanities Abstracts, Humanities Full Text, Humanities Index, Humanities International Index, Iowa Guide, Literature Online, Magazines for Libraries, MLA Bibliography, OmniFile Full Text V, OmniFile Full Text, Mega Edition, SocINDEX, SocINFO, Sociological Abstracts.

Frequency of publication: quarterly