Author Guidelines

Submission Guidelines

All manuscripts should be submitted using our online submission process: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/aq. Before you submit your manuscript, please carefully review our essay submission and vetting guidelines and policies below. Book Reviews, Event Reviews, Special Issues and additional forms of writing have specific submission instructions.

Manuscripts are evaluated anonymously, so authors’ names should appear on a separate title page or in correspondence only. Manuscripts should be in the range of 5,000 – 10,000 words, with a maximum of 10,000 words total, including footnotes or endnotes, and conform to the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition.

Please note:  we do not require that you format your essay in AQ style before it is accepted for publication, but we do require that submissions be of reasonable length. Essay submissions over 12,000 words will be returned to authors without being read.

Images should be dis-embedded from the manuscript and submitted individually. Please indicate where in the essay images should be placed and attach images in separate emails. See details about submitting images below in “How to Submit Images.”

If you have questions after reviewing the below manuscript submission and vetting process, please email us at aquarter@usc.edu. Please do not send your submission to this email address.

Editorial Policies

American Quarterly receives approximately 300-350 submissions per year. AQ has a broad, interdisciplinary readership, and very limited space. We are looking for essays that situate their topics in relation to the larger issues of the field of American studies. The review process occurs in the following stages:

Editor and Associate Editor Review

Every manuscript that is submitted to the journal is read by the editor and at least one associate editor who decide together if an essay should go out for external peer review. Given the high rate of submission, it currently takes about eight months to generate a decision on whether or not to send a submission for external review. The primary reasons that an essay is returned at the initial stage of editor and associate editor review include: 1) the essay is not an appropriate fit for the journal, 2) the essay is not adequately situated in relation to the existing literature on the topic, and/or 3) the arguments in the essay are not worked through adequately. Another common reason that we reject manuscripts at the first stage is that they are too narrowly focused or would be more appropriate to more specialized journals, such as literature or regional journals. The AQ editors also sometimes recommend revisions at this stage.

External Review

If the submission is sent to an external reader, we ask the reader to provide us with a report in about a month’s time. Manuscripts that are sent out for peer review receive a reader report and a report from the editors, usually in about two to three months. This is a blind process, which means that the reader does not know the name of the author. In some cases, a manuscript may require review by more than one external reader, but not usually more than two readers.

Board Review

Based upon the external reader report and recommendation, the editor will decide whether to send the submission for board review. The Managing Board reviews the manuscripts along with the reader report(s). This is a blind review process. Our board meets three times a year (once during the fall semester, once at the start of the spring semester, and once at the end of the spring semester). At each meeting, the board weighs in on as many manuscripts as possible. If all goes smoothly and each manuscript is given ample time for review and discussion, the board makes one of the following decisions:

  1. Conditional Accept
  2. Revise and Resubmit
  3. Reject

When a submission advances at any stage, the AQ office notifies the author. The editor will contact the author directly with final decisions and provide her/him with a summary report which includes the associate editor review, as well as the external reader and board reviews, if applicable.

This entire peer review process can take anywhere from eight months to over a year from submission to the final editorial decision, depending on the length of time that readers and revisions take.

How to Format Your Essay for American Quarterly

Get a PDF of the AQ Style Sheet

Your manuscript should be submitted in 12-point Times New Roman font. Everything, including endnotes and block quotes, should be double-spaced. We will accept manuscripts that have not been formatted in the AQ style. However, please format your manuscript as close as possible to the Chicago Manual of Style’s 15th edition. What follows is a short guide to citing in Chicago Style.

Citing References: Chicago Style

Citations within the Text: Please use only endnotes, not footnotes or parenthetical notation. Underline book and journal titles, rather than using italics. Reference numbers for notes should generally go at the end of a sentence, after punctuation marks, including parentheses. The only punctuation that can follow a reference number is a dash. Reference numbers should be superscripted. Microsoft Word will automatically superscript reference numbers if you use the “Insert” menu on your toolbar.

Notes Page

The Notes page should be located at the end of the article.

Note Content

Author (s), “Title of Work,” in Title of Book, ed. Editor(s) (Place: Publisher, date), page number.

Quinsong Zhang, “The Origins of the Chinese Americanization Movement: Wong Chin Foo and the Chinese Equal Rights League,” in Claiming America: Constructing Chinese American Identities during the Exclusion Era, ed. K. Scott Wong and Sucheng Chan (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), 41-63.

Author, “Article Title,” Magazine Title, date, page.

Stephen Lacey, “The New German Style,” Horticulture, March 2000, 44.

Film Title, DVD/VHS, directed by Director (release date; production location: Production Company, date of DVD/VHS printing).

North by Northwest, DVD, directed by Alfred Hitchcock (1959; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2000).

How to Submit Images

We can accept images either as black and white photographs or as electronic scans (this is preferred).

Do not submit images embedded in Word or PDF files. Using our online submission process, please submit your images individually, labeled as such: Author Last Name figure number. file extension. For example: SmithFig1.jpg

Size

5 x 7 is the average size submitted; however, please scan images at 100% if possible.

Format

TIFF format is preferred for photographs. The resolution must be at least 300 dpi at a size of no less than 4 inches x 6 inches. JPEG format is acceptable IF the dpi (resolution) is at least 300 for grayscale images (photos) and 1200 for black-and-white line art (charts, diagrams, drawings at a size of at least 4 inches x 6 inches). EPS format is fine for line art.

Captions

Please submit captions in a separate file clearly noted by figure number.

Labels

The placement of images should be noted in the text, such as: [Insert figure 1 here]

Permissions

You are responsible for getting proper permission for your illustrations and should submit the permissions along with your final essay before your essay is copyedited. AQ can pay some moderate image fees, but our budget is limited. Images are in the public domain if they were published in the U.S. prior to 1923 or if they are the work of the U.S. government. A good source for public domain images is the Library of Congress website.

An argument for fair use is occasionally possible for images that are discussed in your essay; however, you must consult with us well in advance if you want to claim fair use for an image. Otherwise, you must contact the owners of the images you would like to use and obtain both print and electronic world rights for the use of the images. Please use the template that follows. It is important to explain to the copyright holder that we need world rights chiefly because we have print and electronic subscribers outside the U.S. We need electronic rights, in addition to print rights, because the on-line issue appears in Project MUSE at the same time as the print issue is mailed. The copyright holder may also want to know the circulation of the print journal; it is approximately 6,000 copies per issue.

Please use this template when corresponding with image copyright owners:

I am writing to request permission to reproduce the following material:

This material is to appear in a scholarly article entitled “XXXX” in the < date > issue of American Quarterly, to be published by the Johns Hopkins University Press.

JHUP requests nonexclusive world rights to the material as part of the article only in all languages, for print and electronic editions of the issue; and the nonexclusive world right to grant permission to reprint the material as part of the article only in all languages and print or electronic editions. The electronic edition of the journal is subscribed to by academic libraries with paid subscriptions and retransmitting from site is restricted; online art is not reproducible at original quality if downloaded.

May I have your permission to republish the above material in my essay in American Quarterly? If you are not the copyright holder, or if additional permission is needed for world rights from another source, please so indicate.

Thank you for your consideration of this request. Please return this form to me at the address above. A duplicate copy is enclosed for your records.

Sincerely yours,

 

Permission granted:________________________________________(name)

________________________________________________(signature)

Date: ___________________ Title:___________________________________________

Caption acknowledgment should read:

 

Johns Hopkins University Press Colophon The Johns Hopkins University Press | © American Quarterly