Submissions

This page is designed to help you ensure your submission is ready for and fits the scope of the journal.

Before submitting you should read over the guidelines here, then register an account (or login if you have an existing account)

The Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry centres on poetic writings appearing in Britain and Ireland since the late 1950s. These varied poetic practices have been described as avant-garde, underground, linguistically innovative, second-wave Modernist, neo-modernist, non-mainstream, the British Poetry Revival, the parallel tradition, formally innovative, or experimental and which have been produced in geographic clusters, such as the Cambridge School or the London School or Morden Tower. However, we are also seeking to represent uncategorised and independent voices that might fall through the cracks between different schools or clusters.

These posited movements were networked with a variety of formal and conceptual poetics, including: concrete poetry; performance writing; hybrid writing; writing that explores the interplay between orality and literacy; Black studies; diasporic approaches; translational and translingual experiments; macaronic writing and hybridisations of the English language.

The Journal recognises that these terms, and the communities of writers and readers they refer to, are always shifting, contested and sometimes controversial. As such, we are interested in a critical and expansive understanding of ‘innovative’ poetic writing, both within and extending beyond the bounds of the particular traditions outlined here.

The journal is co-edited by Scott Thurston (University of Salford), Wanda o'Connor (The Open University) and Eleanor Careless (Northumbria University). The editors are supported by the Editorial Advisory Board and Editorial Board (see here).

Please review the masthead under the ‘About’ section above for a general sense of our focus. We are keen to promote as wide a range of studies of poetry in the field as possible, whether as single-author studies, multi-author studies or via themed approaches. This scope is summarised in the following types of publication:

• Single-author focused articles

• Single-author special issues

• Themed articles

• Themed special issues

• Conference/symposia proceedings

• Book reviews of critical studies of innovative poetry (not poetry collections or anthologies)

• Conference/symposia reports

We are also interested in contributions which diverge from the traditional format of the academic article, to include:

• Video/audio essays

• Multiple-authored criticism

• Creative-Critical pieces (longer-form, peer-reviewed)

• Creative Responses (short-form, non-peer reviewed, e.g. Shalini Sengupta, 'On "Always Nervous"')

• Interviews (textual or video/audio-based)

• Works from those outside the academy as such

If you have any particular accessibility requirements around the process of preparing and submitting your manuscript, please do contact us at S.Thurston@salford.ac.uk / 0161 205 3597 or Gareth.Farmer@beds.ac.uk / 01234793190, and we will do what we can to provide appropriate support.

The Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry was previously published by Gylphi Ltd (2009-2014). Please see our Audio-Visual section for a gallery of the covers and contents of the first run of ten issues (see here).

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

1. The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
2. Any third-party-owned materials used have been identified with appropriate credit lines, and permission obtained from the copyright holder for all formats of the journal.
3. The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format. Do not submit your work as a PDF.
4. All DOIs for the references have been provided, when available.
5. Tables and figures are all cited in the text. Tables are included within the text document, whilst figure files are uploaded as supplementary files.
6. Figures/images have a resolution of at least 150dpi (300dpi or above preferred). Each is no more than 20MB per file. The files are in one of the following formats: JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, EPS (to maximise quality, the original source file is preferred).
7. If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, please ensure the paper has been set up for Blind Review.
8. Please consult the detailed style guide and ensure that your article includes a competing interest statement in accordance with our Competing Interest Guidelines.

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

• Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. If you would prefer to publish your work under an alternative Creative Commons License, please indicate this in the Comments for the Editor box when submitting, providing reasons for your request.
• Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
• Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

All articles submitted to the Journal of British and Iritish Innovative Poetry are initially assessed by one of the co-editors, who decides whether or not the article is suitable for peer review. Submissions considered suitable for peer review are assigned to one or more independent experts, who assess the article for clarity, validity, and sound methodology.

The Journal of British and Iritish Innovative Poetry operates a double-blind peer review process, meaning that authors and reviewers remain anonymous for the review process. The review period is expected to take up to two months. Reviewers are asked to provide formative feedback, even if an article is not deemed suitable for publication in the journal.

Based on the reviewer reports the editor will make a recommendation for rejection, minor or major revisions, or acceptance. Overall editorial responsibility rests with Scott Thurston, who is supported by co-editors and an expert, international Editorial Board.

Special issues will be handled in exactly the same way, except for those based on conference proceedings, which will normally be single-blind peer reviewed. The work of the co-editors and editorial board will be additionally supported by the appointment of one or more guest editors of the special issue.

The following licences are allowed:

• CC BY 4.0 - More Information  
  Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

This journal is published by the Open Library of Humanities. Unlike many open-access publishers, the Open Library of Humanities does not charge any author fees. This does not mean that we do not have costs. Instead, our costs are paid by an international library consortium.

If your institution is not currently supporting the platform, we request that you ask your librarian to sign up. The OLH is extremely cost effective and is a not-for-profit charity. However, while we cannot function without financial support and we encourage universities to sign up, institutional commitment is not required to publish with us.

The journal is published online as a continuous volume and issue throughout the year. Articles are made available as soon as they are ready to ensure that there are no unnecessary delays in getting content publically available.

Special collections of articles are welcomed and will be published as part of the normal issue, but also within a separate collection page.