Submissions

There are two broad categories of manuscripts LiCS publishes, long-form and short-form. The major difference between these two categories is that long-form submissions are sent out for peer review and short-form submissions are reviewed by the journal editors. Long-form manuscripts are sent out for double-anonymized peer review. These manuscripts typically fulfill some of the genre expectations associated with scholarly articles: they situate their intervention within a scholarly conversation, and they offer new artifacts and/or data for interpretation or offer new interpretations of existing artifacts and/or data. Short-form manuscripts are reviewed by the editorial team. LiCS welcomes interviews, symposium essays, book reviews, and new and emerging genres. Submissions may use primarily or solely alphabetic literacy or may incorporate audio, video, images, and other multimedia literacies. LiCS welcomes a range of research methods, including new and emerging methods. 

We seek articles that interpret literacy at a time of radical transformation in its contexts and circulation. Although we are open to a wide range of research and methodologies, we are especially interested in work that:

• provides provisional frameworks for theorizing literacy activities;
• studies the literacies of underexamined populations or materials;
• analyzes how literacy practices construct student, community, and other identities;
• investigates the ways in which social, political, economic, linguistic, and technological transformations produce, eliminate, or mediate literacy opportunities;
• analyzes the processes and power relations whereby literacies are valued or circulated;
• adds new or challenges existing knowledge to literacy’s history;
• examines the literacies sponsored through college writing courses and curricula, including the range of literate activities, practices, and pedagogies that shape and inform, enable and constrain writing;
• considers the implications of institutional, state, or national policies on literacy learning and teaching, including the articulation of high schools and higher education; and/or
• proposes or creates opportunities for new interactions between literacy and composition studies, especially those drawing on transnational, multilingual, and cross-cultural literacy research.

Manuscript submissions should demonstrate awareness of relevant scholarship in both literacy studies and composition studies. Long-form manuscripts should be no more than 10,000 words (including works cited and notes), adhere to the 8th edition of the MLA Handbook, and be free of internal references to the author’s identity. Manuscripts must not be previously published or under consideration elsewhere. Manuscripts should also cite scholarship from authors with diverse backgrounds or perspectives. We believe that it is through these citation practices that we acknowledge and deeply engage with the valuable work of those in our field who have been historically marginalized, rendered invisible, or tokenized in academia. For assistance, please review bibliographies highlighting minoritized perspectives. When submitting manuscripts that include human subjects participation, authors are responsible for securing any human subjects permissions pertaining to their research. Please note your institution’s IRB approval in the manuscript submission.

Multimedia Submissions

In addition to traditional manuscripts, LiCS welcomes multimedia submissions. To ensure that the journal is able to provide access to your work after internet services shift URL structures or go out of business, we need to acquire full file copies of your work. If your multimedia submission is too large to be included as an email attachment, please provide a URL for access via Dropbox.

To ensure anonymity during the review process, please eliminate any identifying information from your multimedia submission. If it is not possible to remove all identifying content, please email the Managing Editor for instructions on how to proceed.

When submitting multimedia documents, we assume that you either own the intellectual property rights to the materials used or can justify fair use exemption for sourced materials. Because all LiCS articles carry a CreativeCommons non-commercial, attribution, non-derivs license, multimedia submissions should do so as well.

To ensure that content is accessible, please abide by the following conventions when submitting manuscripts for review:

• Article text should be submitted as a .docx. If you include any supplementary documents as .pdfs, please OCR all .pdf portions of the submission to ensure machine readability.
• Provide alternative text for all images and embedded media elements.
• All videos and other forms of multimedia require captions. For help creating captions, consult with your institution’s instructional technology support or disability support office. We use Vimeo to host video files for the journal. You can find out more about captioning on Vimeo here.   
• Avoid screenshots that primarily contain text. Instead, transcribe the text and include with the image and image alt text.

As well, submissions should reflect Kelly Blewett, Christina M. LaVecchia, Laura R. Micciche, and Janine Morris’s assertion that inclusion in academic exchange and publishing not only “evokes fair and equitable representation, participation, and the desire to learn about what we don't yet know," but "signals a responsibility one feels toward community, a sense that we are better when 'we' expands, gets challenged, and is modified over time” (281). Toward these ends, we invite review submissions that engage with a diversity of sources, voices, and media, including in non-traditional formats.

Submissions may include but are not limited to:

Dialogue or interview reviews

With two or more participants that may be discussing one participant’s work or as third-person collaborative review of others’, or a dialogue format review of any text included in this call, such as those in constellations’ “Conversations” section.

Interdisciplinary reviews

That may include scholarship from fields outside of composition, rhetoric, and writing studies, and that advance our ways of understanding and studying literacy in and/or beyond composition studies, such as in health, natural, computer, or social sciences? For example, the literature reviews in Annette Vee’s “Understanding Computer Programming as a Literacy” and Dawn S. Opel’s ”Challenging the Rhetorical Conception of Health Literacy: Aging, Interdependence, and Networked Caregiving” both critically examine uses of the term literacy in other fields. 

Literacy narrative reviews

That review the impact of particular literacy scholars(hip) on the reviewer’s intellectual trajectory and the field’s, with a focus on their lived experience or relationship with what you are reviewing rather than the work itself. For example, Beth Buyserie’s “Reading Yourself Queer Later in Life: Bisexual Literacies, Temporal Fluidity, and the Teaching of Composition” examines her own lived experience through the lens of scholarship in queer and literacy studies, and vice versa.

Multimodal reviews

That employ multimodal composing to explore their subject’s themes and make connections with other multimodal sources, such as Karrieann Soto Vega’s “Sounding out a rhetoric of Resilience: Curating Plena in Diasporican Activism.”

Retrospective reviews

As an avenue for scholars to reconsider previously published scholarship and established ideas that may be considered “canonical” or “landmark” through contemporary thought and practices, using contemporary lenses and paradigms. For example, Amy J. Wan’s “Making Sense of Researcher Positionality in Foundational Literacy Studies Research.”

Reviews of field or professional conversations occurring 

Including at conferences, in organizations, online, and in other spaces that have not historically been recognized in scholarly publishing as valuable meaning-making spaces. For example: An academic journal special issue, specific panels or a group of thematically similar panels at a conference, a documentary topically connected to literacy and/or writing (e.g. Kairos Conference Reviews, CCCC Documentarians)

Reviews of industry, non-academic, non-scholarly, or popular media

Including presentations, performances, and other intellectual projects that significantly impact literacy scholarship and pedagogy. For example, Nick Marsella’s “Preempting Racist and Transphobic Language in Student Writing and Discussion: A Review of Alex Kapitan's The Radical Copyeditor's Style Guide for Writing about Transgender People and Race Forward's Race Reporting Guide.”

Synthesis reviews

That place multiple works (not necessarily scholarly monographs) into conversation with one another, e.g. multi-book reviews in College English.

Who can serve as special issue editors: LiCS welcomes scholars working in literacy, composition, rhetoric, and pedagogy to consider editing a special issue. Considering the work involved in editing, we recommend that potential editors find at least one other editor to collaborate with on the issue. 

Graduate student special issue teams: LiCS is committed to supporting graduate students’ participation in publishing. Should one or more graduate students propose and be approved to co-edit a special issue, a mentor from either the Editorial Team or Editorial Board may be named to provide support to the special issue editors. This support may take the shape of serving as a sounding board or offering advice when solicited, or providing more active support, as negotiated by the special issue editors and mentor.

Process for proposing a special issue: We ask that potential special issue editors please submit a one-page proposal, a draft CFP, and CVs for the editors to the LiCS Editorial Team. The Ed Team typically consults with the Editorial Board about special issue proposals before making a decision and may request revisions 

For these documents, we recommend including the following: 

In the Proposal

• General description of proposed special issue
• How this topic/issue fits into LiCS
• Plan for recruiting authors and potential reviewers
• How this proposal aligns with the antiracist practices of LiCS
• Potential timeline 
• Requested support from the Editorial Team

In the Draft CFP

• Context and exigency, including specific connection to literacy studies scholarship
• Range of possible issues or questions
• Possible submissions types (see Submissions info on licsjournal.org and consider what works best given the topic and vision of the special issue)
• Anticipated timeline for authors
• Connection to antiracist publishing practices, particularly in terms of citation practices (see Submissions page of licsjournal.org) 

Special Issue Editor Responsibilities

The special issue editors are responsible for: 

• Disseminating the CFP
• Responding to and making decisions about any solicited abstracts
• Sending all manuscripts out for anonymous peer review to two reviewers, in consultation with the Ed Team about the reviewers they are using. The Ed Team is also able to help in recruiting through our own reviewer pool
• Making publication decisions in light of reader reports and for providing revision guidance to authors
• Supervising manuscript revision at all stages of the process
• Doing a first round of copyediting of approved manuscripts
• Coordinating with the Editorial Team to copyedit and finalize manuscripts