Critical Inquiry Critical Inquiry

The editors invite submissions of manuscripts in English appropriate to the aims of Critical Inquiry. Manuscripts should not exceed 9,500 words; this limit includes discursive notes and all bibliographical information.  We do not accept multiple submissions or submissions submitted simultaneously elsewhere. It is our general policy not to publish any material that has appeared online or in print previously unless it is accompanied by specific citations and indicated by quotation marks. The journal does not pay contributors. Permissions for published images must be secured by authors before publication. Authors will receive a complimentary one-year electronic subscription to the journal and one copy of the issue in which their articles appear. Reviewers will receive a PDF copy of their reviews.

Peer Review:
All peer-reviewed and commissioned manuscripts are thoroughly reviewed by the editors-in-chief in consultation with the editorial team. For both peer-reviewed and commissioned manuscripts, acceptance is conditional on revisions made by the author(s) at the editors’ request. Authors of accepted manuscripts will be consulted and be given a chance to approve typeset proofs before final publication.

Preparation of Copy:
1. Manuscripts must be submitted as Microsoft Word files.
2. Footnotes should be numbered consecutively throughout the manuscript. Please do not include a list of works cited.
3. All quotations, titles, names, dates, and page numbers should be double-checked for accuracy.
4. Please submit to www.editorialmanager.com/ci/
5. Do not embed images in your document. Images must be submitted with the manuscript as separate 300 ppi JPEG or TIFF files.

Format of Footnotes:
All footnotes should be typed double-space. They should be numbered consecutively and should correspond with the numbers in the text. Footnote style roughly follows The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition.
Some examples:
1. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York, 1994), p. 96.
2. See Barbara Johnson, "Rigorous Unreliability," Critical Inquiry 11 (Winter 1984): 278–85.
3. Zora Neale Hurston, "Spunk," in The New Negro: An Interpretation, ed. Alain Locke (New York, 1925), p. 110.
4. See Walter Benjamin, "Chaplin," trans. Rodney Livingstone, in Selected Writings, trans. Livingstone et al., ed. Marcus Bullock et al., 4 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1996–2003), 2:199–200.

Second and later references to a previously cited work should be referred to by the author's last name and the title of the work. Do not use op. cit.

Critical Responses:
1. We only publish responses to Critical Inquiry articles.
2. All responses should not exceed 3,000 words.
3. Please follow format and footnote guide for articles.
4. Please submit as "Critical Response" to www.editorialmanager.com/ci/

Reviews:
1. All reviews should not exceed 500 words.
2. Please limit reviews to a single, current monograph. We are unable to reach out to publishers and ask for review copies for unsolicited reviews.
3. We do not publish reviews of work by the editors or faculty of the University of Chicago. 
4. Please submit as "Review" to www.editorialmanager.com/ci/. 

Special Issues:
1. We only accept proposals for special issues in which at least one current editor of Critical Inquiry serves as coeditor of the issue.
2. Proposals for special issues that include at least one CI coeditor can be submitted to cisubmissions[at]gmail.com

Copyright:
If a manuscript is accepted for publication, the authors are required to sign a publication agreement that assigns copyright to the University of Chicago.

Statement of Publication Ethics:
Critical Inquiry adheres to the University of Chicago Press’s publication ethics statement: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/publication-ethics-statement

Open Access Policy
The open access policies of the University of Chicago Press ensure that no author is prohibited from submitting to or publishing in the journal due to a funder's open access requirements.

Green open access. The University of Chicago Press supports green OA across its entire portfolio of journals. Authors have the ability, at no cost, to self-archive their own work and make it freely available through non-commercial institutional or disciplinary repositories. Authors may deposit either the published PDF of their article or the Author's Accepted Manuscript (AAM)—the version of the manuscript that is accepted for publication in the journal, after editorial (peer) review and prior to copyediting—with a 12-month post-publication embargo on public availability. You must apply for any available waivers from your funding body or institution if they require a post-publication embargo of less than 12 months. If a waiver is not granted, you may deposit your manuscript according to the terms of the mandate, but in that case, only the AAM may be deposited.

If your funder or institution requires that a Creative Commons license be applied, you may only deposit the AAM. The AAM should be made available under a CC BY-NC license, which allows for its non-commercial reuse. If your funder or institution states that an alternate license, such as a CC BY-ND or CC BY license, is required, you should apply (if possible) for a waiver and request to use the CC BY-NC instead. If you are denied permission to use a CC BY-NC license, you may post the AAM in a green OA repository with a CC BY-ND or CC BY license as required by your funder or institution.

Please note that most funder mandates can be accommodated with green OA, and it is the option to choose if your funder allows you to meet its requirement via the green OA route.

Gold open access. The gold OA option is provided primarily for authors with research funding from an organization that mandates gold OA as a condition of publication and does not permit green OA as a route to compliance. The fee is $2,500. This request should be made at the time of submission, but not later than the time of acceptance. It is expected that the funder and the grant will be noted in the acknowledgments of the manuscript in the conventional manner. Articles published as gold OA are made available under a CC BY-NC license. If a CC BY or other license is required by your funding body, please notify the editorial office at the time you submit your manuscript. Articles published under a CC BY license are subject to an additional fee.