Submissions

General Guidelines

Essays likely to find publication in The Journal of Popular Culture are well-written and make a significant contribution to the field of popular culture studies. Please review recent journal issues for a sense of our interdisciplinary conversation and our niche.

Articles too narrowly conceived and without an adequate analytical framework tend not to do well in the peer review process. It is wise to be familiar with the work of our editorial board and to avoid submitting essays that may fit better in a disciplinary journal, such as in literature or history. We especially welcome essays that take on new forms and new ideas not previously analyzed or that push forward an older conversation.

Essays should be written in clear US English in the active voice and third person, in a style accessible to the broadest possible audience. Authors should be sensitive to the social implications of language and choose wording free of discriminatory or sexist overtones.  Essays written in the social sciences should be qualitative in approach and adapted for a humanities journal, using a more narrative voice and MLA format (please refer to the 8th Edition of the MLA Handbook of Research Papers). 

Effective August 7, 2014, please send submissions via our ScholarOne system: Visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tjpc.  An author's guide to using the site is available under the HELP tab.  We require a title page with the author’s contact information, a short abstract, and an author’s bio as part of the submission process.  

Essays must be submitted as a Microsoft Word document, fall within the 5000 to 7500 word range, and be double-spaced text in 12 pt Times New Roman font.  The word count maximum includes all endnotes and Works Cited pages. Please note that the 5000 word minimum should be of written article material. Less than 5000 words of written material will be rejected and the author asked to develop the article further.

Please make sure that the essay contains no identifying information that reveals authorship. The TJPC  has a ‘‘blind review’’ process, meaning that a copy of the article will be sent to reviewers without revealing the author’s name.  All contributions to The Journal of Popular Culture will be forwarded to members of the Editorial Board or other reviewers for comment. When anonymising your manuscript, do not include any parts of your name in the document file name, headers, footers, or elsewhere.

Manuscripts must not be previously published nor should they be submitted for publication elsewhere while being reviewed by The Journal of Popular Culture’s Editorial Board or outside reviewers. Prior to copy editing, authors may post early drafts of their essays in digital repositories, such as academia.edu. However, after publication, authors must wait for 24 months to place their JPC-edited articles in digital repositories or on websites. 

For documentation, The Journal of Popular Culture follows the Modern Language Association style.  Consult the most current editions of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers and The MLA Style Manual.  This style calls for a Works Cited list, with parenthetical author/page references in the text. Please keep use of explanatory endnotes to a minimum. 

For punctuation, capitalization, hyphenation, and other matters of style, The Journal of Popular Culture follows the MLA Handbook and the MLA Style Manual, supplemented as necessary by The Chicago Manual of Style.

It is essential for authors to check, correct, and bring manuscripts up to date before final submission. Authors should verify facts, names of people, places, and dates, and double-check all direct quotations and entries in the Works Cited list.

We are happy to receive your artwork in digital format. Please save line artwork (vector graphics) as Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) and bitmap files (halftones or photographic images) as Tagged Image Format (TIFF), with a resolution of at least 300 dpi at final size. Do not send native file formats. More detailed information on the submission of electronic artwork can be found here.

Authors of manuscripts accepted for publication must subscribe to The Journal of Popular Culture for at least one year at the time of acceptance. Subscription includes membership in the Popular Culture Association.

Before final submission, the author will be responsible for obtaining letters of permission for illustrations and for quotations that go beyond ‘‘fair use,’’ as defined by current copyright law.

Please note that unless specifically requested, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. will dispose of all hardcopy or electronic material two months after publication. If you require the return of any material submitted, please inform the editorial office or production editor as soon as possible if you have not yet done so.

Book Reviews

Book review inquiries should be sent to the Book Review Editor: Yuya Kiuchi, Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Michigan State University, 8603 Wheatdale Dr., Lansing, MI 48917. Email: kiuchiyu@msu.edu.  

In general, we are looking for reviews between 500 and 1,000 words that adhere to MLA style and present a balanced, although mostly positive, view of the work. (We ask that criticism be constructive in nature, or that if the book is so bad, you simply decline to review it). The review should note the scope and purpose of the work, as well as its usefulness to scholars, although other information may certainly be included.

When formatting the citation of your review, please include how many pages the book is and how much it costs.  Here is an example:

Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age. Viktor Mayer-Schönberger.  Princeton UP, 2009. 256 pp. $22.00 cloth.

Please upload your completed review to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tjpc. You will need to create a user account, login, and then click on Author Center to upload your file.

Copyright

If your paper is accepted, the author identified as the formal corresponding author for the paper will receive an email prompting them to login into Author Services; where via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS) they will be able to complete the license agreement on behalf of all authors on the paper.

For authors signing the copyright transfer agreement

If the OnlineOpen option is not selected the corresponding author will be presented with the copyright transfer agreement (CTA) to sign. The terms and conditions of the CTA can be previewed in the samples associated with the Copyright FAQs below:

CTA Terms and Conditions http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/faqs_copyright.asp

For authors choosing OnlineOpen

If the OnlineOpen option is selected the corresponding author will have a choice of the following Creative Commons License Open Access Agreements (OAA):

Creative Commons Attribution License OAA

Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License OAA

Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial -NoDerivs License OAA

To preview the terms and conditions of these open access agreements please visit the Copyright FAQs hosted on Wiley Author Services http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/faqs_copyright.aspand visit http://www.wileyopenaccess.com/details/content/12f25db4c87/Copyright--License.html.

If you select the OnlineOpen option and your research is funded by The Wellcome Trust and members of the Research Councils UK (RCUK) you will be given the opportunity to publish your article under a CC-BY license supporting you in complying with Wellcome Trust and Research Councils UK requirements. For more information on this policy and the Journal’s compliant self-archiving policy please visit: http://www.wiley.com/go/funderstatement.

OnlineOpen

OnlineOpen is available to authors of primary research articles who wish to make their article available to non-subscribers on publication, or whose funding agency requires grantees to archive the final version of their article. With OnlineOpen, the author, the author's funding agency, or the author's institution pays a fee to ensure that the article is made available to non-subscribers upon publication via Wiley Online Library, as well as deposited in the funding agency's preferred archive.

For the full list of terms and conditions, seehttp://wileyonlinelibrary.com/onlineopen#OnlineOpen_Terms

Any authors wishing to send their paper OnlineOpen will be required to complete the payment form available from our website at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/onlineOpenOrder

Prior to acceptance, there is no requirement to inform an Editorial Office that you intend to publish your paper OnlineOpen if you do not wish to. All OnlineOpen articles are treated in the same way as any other article. They go through the journal's standard peer-review process and will be accepted or rejected based on their own merit.

Author Services

Author Services enables authors to track their article – once it has been accepted – through the production process to publication online and in print. Authors can check the status of their articles online and choose to receive automated e-mails at key stages of production. The author will receive an e-mail with a unique link that enables them to register and have their article automatically added to the system. Please ensure that a complete e-mail address is provided when submitting the manuscript. Visit http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/ for more details on online production tracking and for a wealth of resources including FAQs and tips on article preparation, submission, and more.

Free access to the final PDF offprint or your article will be available via author services only. Please, therefore, sign up for author services if you would like to access your article PDF offprint and enjoy the many other benefits the service offers.  Visit http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/to sign up for Author Services.