Call for Submissions

Call for Submissions [Updated 17 March 2013]

Here we provide instructions on how to contribute, and explain our editorial process. Please read this section carefully before contacting us or submitting.

Our call for submissions is permanent. We welcome submissions from graduate students, scholars, artists, teachers, curators, librarians or any others from any academic, disciplinary or artistic background interested in any aspect of the study and/or practice of comics or other related cultural expressions.

The Comics Grid seeks to function as an online laboratory where different critical approaches to comics are publicly and collectively put to test. Though our scope wants to be as diverse as possible, our initial aim is to focus on the analysis of specific comics page layouts and panels.

All contributions are subject to an editorial process of online open peer review. Editorial revisions are signed and openly visible to authors on shared online documents. Our mission statement and editorial and guidelines exist as online documents which are shared amongst all contributors and editors.

Our research is inspired by, but not limited to, the following questions:

• How are form and format interconnected in comics?
• What is the meaning of “content”?
• How are page sizes related to what is contained in them?
• How do different technologies affect the processes of creating and reading a comics page?
• How do different panel arrangements work?
• What is the media-specificity of a comics page?
• What are some of the different possible ways of reading comics pages?

The Comics Grid  follows a collaborative and editorial process that involves contributors directly. Our editorial board is comprised by an international, multilingual network of academics who have specialised in comics studies and come from different disciplinary backgrounds. Every contribution is openly reviewed and edited online using Google docs and upon acceptance a multi-author WordPress content management system.

Please take some time to read our About page and review our previous articles to get a feel of how we expect submissions to look like. We also have a Meta Grid section, which works as the journal’s blog, and it is more flexible and dedicated to covering academic events, news, reports, interviews, reviews, etc. Submissions not observing the required guidelines will not be considered.

Style and Editorial Process

• All submissions, from first-time contributors and already-registered contributors, should be shared with efpriego AT gmail.com via Google docs, granting the permission to edit. Please do email us a brief note when you share your submission with us, but please do not email us your submission as an attachment.
• Submissions should be in English, between 1,000 and 2,000 words in length, including references.
• We are also happy to consider theoretical contributions presented in comics and/or multimedia form. (Please contact us in advance to discuss specs for these.)
• Submissions not observing the minimum or maximum word count will not be considered, unless they are presented in comics or multimedia form, since these might naturally contain less text.
• Submissions should be original and media-specific: written for online reading/viewing and having an educational or academic purpose. We publish articles that are meant to be read online on a screen.
• All submissions should be prefaced with a very brief abstract to be used as an excerpt (2 to 3 lines) and a list of at least 5 keywords to be used as tags.
• Submissions must be comprised of three essential sections:

1.   article text, with hyperlinks in all bibliographic references and mentions
2.  a minimum of one and a maximum of three image files from the media discussed in the article, embedded on the document itself and integrated into the argument’s flow
3.  a final bibliography indicated after the heading “REFERENCES“.

• Submissions for our main section should explicitly discuss the specific image(s) embedded in the document.
• All images should be referenced, including page number when available and panel numbers if appropriate. For example,  Lutes, J. (2009) Berlin: City of Stones (Montréal: Drawn and Quarterly, 131, 1-6).
• If the image has been taken from another online source, the original URL and accessed date should be included.
• Submissions should not have footnotes.
• All jargon, acronyms and obscure terminology should be glossed or at least hyperlinked to references for context.
• Submissions should be single-spaced and use Times New Roman at 12 pts.
• Block quotes should be used for any quotations of more than 3 lines.
• When academic authors are mentioned in-text for the first time, names should be hyperlinked to relevant author or institutional web sites, e.g. “…on which Mieke Bal expanded.” 
• In-text citations should include author surname(s) and publication year, in parentheses and hyperlinked to a reference when possible. Please do not include links to Amazon or book shop web sites; linking to original publishers’ or authors’ sites is encouraged, e.g. “(McCloud 2000)”; “According to Philippe Lejeune (2008)…”
• Citing and hyperlinking peer-reviewed Open Access academic publications is encouraged. We are one of a few blogging-based online humanities journals aggregated by ResearchBlogging.org so we encourage our authors to cite peer-reviewed research articles including their digital object identifiers (DOIs). 
• The complete list of REFERENCES, accompanying each submission at the end, should be indicated as in the following style:

This journal is built on WordPress. We are in the process of establishing a new submission and open peer review process that will take place via the journal’s interface. In the meanwhile, the following process will apply:

1. All submissions, by first-time and already-registered contributors will be received via Google docs, initially shared with the editorial board via efpriego@gmail as described above. Contributors will need to have a Google email account in order to work with Google docs.
2. All submissions are acknowledged by an initial email. All drafts are subject to review, editing and, if necessary, modification by members of the editorial board.  The editorial board will track changes, but please do keep a copy of your original version before submitting.
3. All reviewing and editorial comments will be shared with the contributor directly through the shared Google doc and related email.
4. Submissions that are not accepted after open peer review will receive thorough feedback and will be offered an opportunity to re-submit when appropriate.
5. Accepted first-time submissions will require the contributor to get and update a contributor account and profile. The editors will create a contributor account and the log in details will be emailed. New contributors will be asked  to update a contributor profile. Profiles require an updated Gravatar with photo (linked to the same email address the contributor is registered with on the site).
6. Accepted drafts by first-time authors and previously-registered contributors will be transferred to the journal’s shared editorial dashboard and any required further edits will be done directly by contributors. After final corrections contributors will be able to submit the draft for a final review, after which the editorial board will schedule it for publication if appropriate.

Please note there is no need to know or have used WordPress in order to contribute with us; if you have never used it before we will help you along the way, so please do not let that stop you.

Licensing and Copyright