Please visit the Limn website at https://limn.press. The journal profile on this repository is the archive of the journal, not it's primary outlet.

Mission

Limn is an experiment in collaborative inquiry. Published in print and open-access online editions, the journal gathers scholars, artists, and activists to illuminate—or limn—problems emerging at the interface of technology, politics, and contemporary life.

Limn is a scholar-led, non-profit publication—and itself an experiment in intellectual form and function. Collaboration, curation, and design are at the heart of who we are and what we do. At Limn, we look at things differently. We respond to the concerns of the present by working collaboratively to cast the world in fresh, unexpected light. 

Each Limn issue takes on a particular topic and challenges contributors from diverse fields and backgrounds to explore it at oblique angles. Working creatively and collaboratively, Limn’s goal is to provide clear, quick-hitting, and well-designed interventions that are both timely and timeless.

Aims and Scope

Published biannually in print and open-access online editions, Limn is a more-than-scholarly journal governed and operated by scholars. Each issue, organized by guest editors alongside members of the editorial collective, starts with a prompt and then asks an invited group of contributors to address the prompt through their research. We are committed to producing work that is understandable, provocative, and accessible to everyone.

Design is foundational to how Limn organizes knowledge and communicates ideas. We work closely with contributors and our art directors to create accessible, engaging interventions. Our curated and collaborative mode of inquiry enables each issue to become its own aesthetic and intellectual experience.

History

Limn was founded in 2010 by Christopher Kelty, Andrew Lakoff, and Stephen Collier as an alternative to conventional academic journals. The open-access, design-forward publication quickly carved out a unique niche and loyal following. In the year that followed, it produced issues on topics such as public infrastructures, little development technologies, big data, and logistical chokepoints. Limn went dormant in 2018. It returned in 2024 with new editors, a new look, and a renewed vision.

Open Access

Limn is a diamond open-access journal that neither charges readers for access to articles nor contributors for publication services. All articles are freely available on its website, https://limn.press. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles or use them for any other lawful purpose without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author, in accordance with their Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license.

Funding

Limn does not require the payment of publication fees from authors, guest editors, or other contributors. The journal’s operations are financially sustained by individual donations and institutional grants. Supporters are listed on the Subscribe & Support webpage. The journal does not accept advertisements or paid promotions on its website or in print editions.

Ownership and Governance

Limn is owned by Limn Press, a 501(c)(3) public charity incorporated in the state of North Carolina. The press is governed by Limn’s editorial collective and advisory board. Editorial collective and advisory board members are listed on the About Us webpage and on the masthead of print copies. The journal is copyright © 2025 the Editorial Collective. All articles herein are copyright © 2025 their respective authors.

Author Agreement

Limn requires that authors license to the journal a nonexclusive right to publish their work. Articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License. Authors retain copyright over their articles and may deposit any version of them wherever they wish. We ask that attribution to the published version of the article be included when an article is deposited elsewhere, with the author(s), article title, issue information, and DOI.

Editorial Process and Peer Review

Issue editors work with a member of the editorial collective to finalize a prompt for the issue and to invite article submissions. Article manuscripts are single-blind reviewed by an external reviewer, then openly workshopped with issue editors, editorial-collective members, and fellow authors from the same issue. For more information, see the Pitch an Issue webpage.

Preservation

The contents of Limn issues are archived on the California Digital Library’s eScholarship repository. A previous iteration of the Limn website has been preserved by the University of California–Los Angeles Library in cooperation with the Internet Archive.