Submission Guidelines

For more than fifty years, Genre has published smart, professional, original academic essays on topics involving literary and cultural texts and practices, the disciplines that study them, and the modes of understanding and interpretation to which they give rise. We publish identical print and online editions of the journal three times per year.

Please visit https://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/dup-gen to submit manuscripts to be considered for publication in Genre. An article abstract of no more than 400 words must be entered separately from the article manuscript. Authors sending work to us for the first time will be required to create an account in the ScholarOne system. After registering, authors will have access to a personalized ScholarOne portal for Genre that permits them to upload article manuscripts and to check on the progress of the review process.

Article manuscripts submitted to Genre must not be under consideration by another journal or press. We regard simultaneous submission to be a serious breach of professional ethics.

Articles accepted for publication must follow the author-date guidelines in The Chicago Manual of Style, eighteenth edition. For initial review, we will consider work in any professional format. Article submissions should not exceed 10,000 words, including notes and works cited.

Images and tables should be submitted as separate files. Full guidelines about art preparation including instructions for alt text for all images, will be provided upon acceptance for publication. These guidelines are also available at the general submission guidelines for Duke UP journals.

Books reviews are published only by invitation and limited to approximately 2,000 words. Inquiries about prospective topics may be emailed to the coeditors, but please do not submit an unsolicited book review.

Proposals for a special topic issue also require an invitation. Initial inquiries may be addressed to the coeditors. If a topic is approved for consideration, a coeditor will be assigned to advise the prospective guest editor(s) on a formal proposal to the Editorial Board.

Article submissions will be confirmed with an automated email to the corresponding author that includes an explanation of our review procedures. An initial review will determine in two-three weeks if an article manuscript will be sent out for confidential evaluations. If a piece is not selected for anonymous review, you’ll receive an email with a brief explanation of the decision.

Genre’s review process is double anonymized. Members of our editorial and advisory boards are occasionally contacted to assist with reader reports. We rely most often on volunteer reviewers who are established, well-published authorities in their fields of study. It is our conviction that requests for anonymous reviews should be addressed to scholars who enjoy secure employment in higher education institutions or related research organizations.

We are grateful for the generosity of scholars who give their time and expertise to Genre, but recruiting two appropriate readers can require a significant amount of time. When the process goes well, work that warrants consideration for publication in our journal can be placed with readers within three weeks of submission, and we request that our referees return reports within four to six weeks. We will be fortunate to complete the confidential review process in seven weeks; more typically, the process requires between three and six months.

Two recommendations to publish and the approval of the coeditors are required for Genre to offer an author a contract. In the case of a split decision with one recommendation to publish and another to reject, our usual editorial practice is to follow the advice of the more critical report.

Authors interested in learning if the topic of their work is appropriate for Genre are asked to review past issues. Inquiries seeking to ascertain the journal’s interest prior to the submission of an article may not receive a reply.