The American Indian Culture and Research Journal welcomes unsolicited article and commentary submissions, solicited book reviews, and proposals for special issues. Please note that we no longer publish literature or poetry, unless they are proposed as part of special issues. The AICRJ accepts scholarly essays and commentaries pertaining to the research and vitality concerning Indigenous peoples across the Americas. While most of the essays we have previously published concern the Indigenous peoples of North America, we aim to expand to include topics across the hemisphere. 

Please note that we do not accept fiction or poetry, unless this content has been curated by special issue guest editors. We may consider essays that include literary analysis in some part, particularly when in service to a scholarly thesis beyond the scope of fiction. All content besides book reviews is peer reviewed.

By “scholarly essay,” we mean those analytical essays which critically draw from and contribute to the contemporary scholarship on Indigenous Studies methods and theories. By “contemporary scholarship,” we mean that our journal’s scholarly essays critically engage (not simply reference) those methods and theories in the field of Indigenous Studies published within the last eight years.

In contrast to this scholarship, our published “commentaries” may take the form of how-to articles, still uninterpreted case studies, opinion pieces from situated Indigenous perspectives that may provide insights for scholars and/or other Indigenous communities. We think of commentaries as being less concerned with drawing from and contributing to contemporary scholarly literature, though they may do so.

Feel free to reach out to our Editor-in-Chief for any clarifications. 

In our Reviews, we primarily feature reviews of scholarly books, though we also welcome reviews of films and exhibitions that feature or impact the vitality of Native peoples. 

Our content specifically concerns American Indian and Indigenous issues. While we primarily focus on scholarship across North America, we will consider essays that cover Indigenous scholarship across the Americas. We are not accepting submissions that only cover Indigenous matters outside of the Americas; some content, whether the scholarly literature or comparative studies, must include Indigenous content from the Americas. 

Please note that the differences between scholarly essays and commentaries are described under this website's menu item, "policies."

We do not charge submission or publication fees. 

We do not rely on presubmission approvals or acquisitions. 

You do not need to contact us before submitting your essay on eScholarship. 

Submission Procedures for Articles, Commentaries, and Book Reviews

• Click “Submit” in the upper right corner of this page
• Sign in or create an account
• Follow the online prompts
  

Article and Commentary Guidelines

• Include cover page indicating the following:
• whether the manuscript is an essay or commentary
• the manuscript’s scholarly significance
• the word count (maximum 10,000), including notes and works cited
• that the manuscript has not been previously published and is not under review elsewhere
• that the author(s) is (are) the sole copyright owner(s) of the manuscript

• Include bio of two to three sentences
• Include 250-word abstract
• Adhere to 10,000-word maximum, including notes
• Essays less than 7,500 words are regularly returned pending a deeper and more-extended level of analysis
• Follow Chicago Manual of Style format
• Auto-number endnotes; all notes should be endnotes, with no references to bibliographic material within the body of the article
• Ensure that URL links in endnotes are active
• Secure permissions for images

Style Standards for Publication

Please note these are abbreviated. Adherence to Chicago Manual of Style rules will be required before publication.

End Notes

End notes should be formatted electronically (with automatic numbers).

1.       Kim TallBear, Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), 125–28.

2.       Henry David Thoreau, “Walking,” in The Making of the American Essay, ed. John D’Agata (Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2016), 177–78.

3.       Cynthia Lillian Rutz, “King Lear and Its Folktale Analogues” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2013), 99–100.

To cite information from the internet: author’s first and last name or the name of the hosting site, “Title of Internet Article,” publication dates, formatted digital object identifiers (DOI) or URL (http://www.addaddresshere.org), any revision dates. Only use your access dates (month/day/year) if other citation information is not available.

1.       María de la Luz Inclán, “From the ¡Ya Basta! to the Caracoles: Zapatista Mobilization under Transitional Conditions,” American Journal of Sociology 113, no. 5 (2008): 1,316–50, https://doi.org/10.1086/525508.

2.       PBS, “Warrior in Two Worlds,” accessed July 11, 2005, http://www.pbs.org/warrior/index.html.

Citations of electronic journal articles must include the permanent digital object identifier (DOI) number, which journals usually place on an abstract, first page, or table of contents. Use the following format: https://doi.org/ immediately followed by the number. For example, https://doi.org/10.1629/22161.

Subsequent appearances of a specific source in the end notes should include author’s name, shortened title, and page number. If the note immediately follows the same citation, use “Ibid.” and the page number:

1.       Blessing, Ojibway Indians Observed, 121.

2.       Ibid., 133.

When giving pagination, do not use p. or pp. before page numbers.

Heads

With some exceptions, articles should have subheads for ease of reading. The article should never start with a subhead (e.g., no “Introduction”). No end notes are allowed on heads.

Quotations

Prose quotations of ninety words or more should be extracts (blocked quotations indented half an inch from left and right margins). The first paragraph of a block quotation is not indented; subsequent paragraphs are. Do not use ellipses at the beginning or end of a quotation.

Italics

Do not use italics for emphasis.

Use italics for non-English words. If a word can be found in an English dictionary, it should not be italicized. We italicize each instance of a non-English word, not just the first mention. Exception: proper nouns (such as a spoken language, the name of an organization, or a city) are not italicized.

Special terminology being introduced is set in italics on first appearance.

Words used as titles are set in italics except for a thesis or treatise (“Treatise of Bellydancing”). For journal or magazine articles, the journal title is set in italics, the article is offset with quotation marks, as above.

Special Issues

To propose a "special issue" in which the collection of essays address a particular theme or subject, please write our Editor-in-Chief with a one-page proposal that contains

• the guest editor(s) name(s) and their affiliations
• a short paragraph highlighting the theme's contemporary contribution to Indigenous Studies
• a list of likely contributors (and their affiliations), when known
• a suggested date of when the entire collection would be submitted for peer review

For your planning purposes, here is the general list of stages for a special issue:

The Editor-in-Chief approves your Call for Papers in the case you do not have all the authors already selected for your issue.

Guest editors and the journal distribute the Call for Papers among our networks including on social media. 

You receive titles and abstracts from possible authors. Please note that for special issues, we accept commentaries, scholarly essays, panel q/a's, poetry, some images, or a mixed genre. 

You decide if any proposed projects need tweaking and then you ask if the authors are amendable.

You decide who you should tell that they are included and who are not. 

You set a date by which authors submit a draft to you for review. Only after you have read each piece fully and made a decision if they are ready for review, please then tell the authors whom you have selected to then submit to our journal on this platform and by which date. If necessary, you ask for any further edits before submission. 

You send the Editor-in-Chief the authors' names and their titles. This helps us begin the preemptive search for reviewers as well as helps us know when the collection is fully submitted. 

Please note that special issue guest editors write introductory essays. If the editors want these peer reviewed along with the full collection, then they go out with the full collection at review time. Or, they can wait and submit it if/when the collection is accepted for an editorially reviewed piece. 

Guest editors send the Editor-in-Chief the names of four to six names of professionals or community elders in the field of the issue's themes. Reviewers of special collection essays read all the essays/poems/commentaries/etc. We also would heed a list of reviewers preferably not asked for reviews.

Note: It has been taking upwards of two months to find reviewers these days, even more so for when they are being asked to read a whole collection of essays. Please communicate these expectations with your authors.  

Once the reviews are in, you go over them with the Editor-in-Chief.  We reserve the right to make final decisions about whether essays are rejected, accepted with minor revisions, accepted with major revisions, or accepted. In this discussion, we also decide on the various essays' revision due dates. Some may need a second-round review; though, again, we decide that together.  Please keep in mind that often authors do not complete essays by deadlines, simply stop responding, or have situations preventing them to complete the essay or the requested revisions in a timely manner (or at all). These all impact the time from original submission to published issue. 

During the time that authors are working on revisions, we start enlisting the possible artists for the "cover," though we are fully digital these days. When provided by the guest editors, images get used in social media posts about the various pieces. 

Closer to publication, we also communicate with the authors directly about art they might like for their social media posts, regardless if the images were in the published essay. 

Please feel free to email us at editorinchief@aisc.ucla.edu with any questions.

Book Review Guidelines

Go to https://journalpub.escholarship.org/aicrj/submissions/. Click on Login.

Either Log In with your account information or Register a New Account.

If registering a new account, confirm your account through your email before logging in.

Click on Submit New Article.

Check Copyright Notice box. Scroll to bottom of page and click Start Submission.

Type in the book Title you are reviewing. Write something (your name—anything, really) in the Abstract field. Choose the Language (English), Section (Review), and License information (CC BYNC 4.0), then click Save and Continue.

Click on Add New Author. In the draw-down menu Select Main Author, choose yourself—then click Save and Continue.

Upload your review file (must be a Microsoft Word document), then click Save and Continue.

Review your submission, add any comments to the editor in the text field at the bottom (scroll down), then click on Complete Submission.