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Founded in 1969 by Robert Chrisman and Nathan Hare, the BLACK SCHOLAR (TBS) is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal devoted to the exploration of cultural, political, social, and economic issues affecting Black Americans and other peoples of African descent across the world. To provide full range for the development of Black thought in a climate where fora are still limited, we emphasize writings by Black authors. The journal retains its policy of publishing both academic and non-academic intellectuals from a variety of professions and walks of life and its choices are the sole responsibility of its editorial staff.
Journal Mandate
We are committed to interdisciplinary conversation with an interested public who may not be as intimate with the professional language or styles of certain academic trends and discourses. Publication in TBS provides a rare opportunity to reach a broader audience, so please keep in mind the breadth of Black readership that will be eager to engage the work. The goal here is to elucidate as well as inform, without compromising scholarly credibility and intellectual merit. As a cutting-edge venue, TBS is tolerant and inviting of different modes of expression, but authors should submit with this mandate in mind and keep their language accessible.
Language that fetishizes itself and the author’s primary academic micro-community may not pass muster. It is also important that authors resist the clichés that have emerged in contemporary Black cultural criticism and political ideology. For example, work that merely depends on the oppression/resistance binary, or that generates laudatory but uncritical, essentialist, and romantic celebrations of ideas like radicalism or blackness but does nothing to ground those ideas in material examples or more contradictory realities, may not pass muster. There is much more to Black intellectual and cultural production than such gestures, and TBS insists on going beyond even the limits Black thinkers may put on themselves.
Prior to submitting, authors should familiarize themselves with the scholarship published in TBS. Our archives can be found here.
To be considered for a guest editor role for a themed issue, editors should be familiar with what we publish prior to submitting a proposal of not more than 550 words to the editors-in-chief and the production/operations manager. Please clearly state your aims, why you have chosen TBS as a platform, why now, and what about your proposed issue potentially breaks with or expands on what has come before it. Please also include the names of anchor contributors who’ve shown interest in submitting to your issue. While guest editors will release a call for papers, guest editors must have anchor contributors.
Current Calls for Paper can be found here.
Submissions Guidelines
Articles that do not follow our guidelines may be delayed or returned to the author.
Submissions to TBS must be original, unpublished work not under consideration for publication elsewhere. We welcome submissions in English (and in translation) from anywhere in the world as long as they meet the criteria articulated in our guidelines. We publish articles, essays, interviews, and reviews. We do not publish unsolicited fiction and poetry. Please note that we do not give feedback on rejected, non-peer reviewed submissions.
General Information:
- All manuscripts must be submitted to our publisher’s submission portal. To submit, go to our journal’s landing page on Taylor & Francis and press “Submit an article.”
- Please contact prshelp@tandf.co.uk about technical issues with using Submission Portal. Contact hanks@theblackscholar.org for all other submission and guideline questions.
- If you have any questions re: the status of your submission, please contact The Black Scholar directly at hanks@theblackscholar.org.
- See our Book Reviews guidelines below if submitting a review or review essay.
- Authors must here to the below required Style Guide.
- We only accept manuscripts in Word format. Do not submit in PDF.
- Full-length scholarly articles for peer review must range in length from 5,000-7,500 words maximum, inclusive of endnotes. Essayistic submissions that are not for peer review should range in length from 3,000-5,000 words. Guest edited issues may have a different word count range for manuscripts, so contact your guest editor for more information or refer to the CFP.
- If submitting to a themed/special issue in response to a posted CFP, the submission portal will ask you to choose an issue to submit to from a drop down menu. TBS doesn’t use this feature anymore. Please select “Not Applicable,” but make sure to note what issue you’re submitting to in your abstract.
- Please submit an abstract of 100–200 words that clearly states the nature and point of the submission. (Note: Abstracts and keywords are for peer review purposes only and will not be published). Three to five keywords must also be submitted. A biographical statement of 75 words max, should accompany all submissions. Do not submit an author photo. When submitting, please make sure that your name and article title in your manuscript match what you enter into the required information fields.
- The Black Scholar editorial board is aware of the complicated and evolving conversations around the use of A.I. Please note that while our publisher does allow for the limited use of A.I. in manuscript preparation, as outlined in their editorial policies, TBS currently does not.
- Depending on varying factors, the peer review process can take anywhere from two to twelve months. Reviewers will be asked to respond in detail to the below questions:
Does this article/essay make an original contribution to Black/Africana Studies?
Does it make an empirical contribution to the literature?
Does this article make a theoretical or interpretative contribution to the literature?
Does the author(s) display an understanding of issues in the pertinent literature on this subject area?
Is this article/essay of significance for the interdisciplinary area of Black/Africana studies?
Is the article/essay intelligible or useful to an interdisciplinary audience?
Is its overall argument clear and concise?
On a scale from 1-5, how do you rate the quality of the writing?
Please explain your rating of the quality of the writing:
Replication of Copyrighted Third-party Material
IMPORTANT: Authors should read the information below and refer to this page for a more comprehensive explanation of our publisher’s requirements for the replication of copyrighted third-party material. Replication of images, quotes/images from social media, film, documentaries, poetry (except for poetry in the public domain) and lyrics of any length, block/lengthy quotes of fiction, etc. require permission to use.
Proof of permission in the form of an email exchange between authors and rights holder/s or a signed document including the below specific information should be obtained prior to submitting and should be included in the submission file or forwarded to the the production and operations manager at hanks@theblackscholar.org. Authors must include their email requesting the following permissions as well as the rights holder’s response. In the email to the rights holder, authors must ask them to a) agree to grant both The Black Scholar and Taylor & Francis permission to use the material, b) specify the material being used, and c) grant use under the following terms:
“The non-exclusive right to reproduce the third party content within your article in The Black Scholar, which will be available for download via the TFO platform.
Print and electronic rights for the full term of the copyright and any extensions of copyright to facilitate reproduction of the content in the journal’s print and online editions – we cannot publish third party content using a time-limited license
Worldwide English-language distribution rights”
If using quotes and images from social media (including YouTube, Soundcloud, Substack, Medium, etc.), permission to use is required. Poetry (if not in the public domain), and lyrics always require permission. Quotes from fiction that are more than nominal in length (like block quotes) require permission to use. Short run-in quotes with/without paraphrases are usually acceptable. It is also recommended that authors check with the rights holders of plays, screenplays and similar dramatic works for reuse requirements. Epigraphs, if they are not clearly referred to in the main body of the manuscript and used critically, are considered purely illustrative by our publisher and therefore require permissions. Note: Epigraphs sourced from poetic and experimentally formatted works, songs, fiction, screenplays, TV, film, scripts/plays, interviews, etc. always require permission. Quotes from screenplays, TV, film, documentaries, podcasts, scripts, plays, etc. require permission to use. Copyrighted content can be paraphrased (without a direct quote of any length) and accompanied by a complete endnote citation when obtaining permissions isn’t possible. Note: Content that requires permission to use (lyrics, poems, Tweets, etc.) but is cited from other published sources still requires permission to use.
A Note on Informed Consent: Anonymized or not, interviews (long form or pull quotes), informal conversations, and oral histories require consent to publish from participants. While oral history is excluded from IRB oversight, according to the Federal rule that went into effect January 19, 2018, authors must still adhere to both industry standards and those of our publisher. Research involving people, however, requires consent to publish and IRB oversight. Authors should understand the difference between oral history and research, submit the appropriate forms, and in either instance include a statement noting participant consent and/or ethical approval oversight in their manuscript. IRB approval forms must be submitted with manuscripts, or forwarded to the production and operations editor. For interviews, we can provide consent forms. Please request by emailing hanks@theblackscholar.org. For industry standards and information on oral history, research ethics and requirements, etc. authors must read our publisher’s policies here prior to submitting.
Please keep in mind that our publisher is in the UK. US Fair Use and other laws may not apply.
Responsibility for obtaining permissions, consent, and ethical oversight and/or finding out if these are needed for certain material, lies solely with the author. Authors should not assume fair use in unclear instances and should directly contact our publisher here with questions re: permissions or consent requirements.
Getting permissions from rights holders or consent can sometimes take months. Deciding to submit a manuscript before obtaining these may delay the processing of the manuscript and/or result in the author being asked to remove the material.
Style Guide
Our required style guide is the latest Chicago Manual of Style . We use Chicago Endnotes-Only, explained here, for our reference style.
- Keep your format clean and simple. All submissions must be in 12 point Times New Roman, double spaced, with 1″ margins. Do not underline, bold words, use multiple fonts/font sizes or unnecessary symbols, collapsible/expandable sections, horizontal lines, borders, colored bars, or non-black text colors. Remove all mark ups and comments from your manuscript and turn off Tracking Changes.
- Please use page numbers.
- We require endnotes, not footnotes, for all bibliographic information, sources, elucidation, etc. Full details must be given in an endnote at first mention of source, text, media, etc. Subsequent endnotes can then use the CMS short form (author last name, shortened title, page number). Do not insert page numbers (except in book reviews) or author names within in-text parentheses–put these in your endnotes.
- Endnotes must link to superscripted numerals in text. Use 1,2,3, etc. (not i, ii, iii…) as superscript numerals.
- Do not use hyperlink shortcuts. Full URLs (not ones shortened through third-party services) are allowed in the endnotes only and all links must be accompanied by a “last accessed” date. If URL is too long, see CMS “14.10: Short forms for URLs” for suggestions.
- Do not submit a bibliography, reference list, or works cited section.
- TBS capitalizes Black. We do not capitalize white.
Images, Tables, and Figures
- Per our publisher’s guidelines, visual material must be well considered and accompanied by discussion or assessment within the text. Authors will be asked to remove any purely illustrative images that are not critically engaged which and that do not strengthen the submission.
- Permission from rights holders to reproduce images must be obtained prior to submission and included in the manuscript file (see “Replication of third-party material” above).
- If images are in the public domain, authors must state this in their submission file and must still attribute it properly. Generally, but especially when using images in the public domain or with questionable copyright, contributors should read additional copyright information from our publisher here.
- If the images are your own, please note this in the image/figure placement marker (see below). Photos you took of other people’s work may or may not require written permissions.
- All images, tables, and figures must be submitted in separate JPEG (preferred), TIFF, or PS files only (one image per file, with files named “Figure/image/table 1” etc.) of a high resolution not lower than 600 dpi for grayscale, 300 dpi for color, or 1200 dpi for line art. Do not submit images, charts, etc. in Word document. More information on submitting artwork can be found here. Note: All images in the print edition of the journal will appear in grayscale. Color figures will be reproduced in color in the digital edition of the journal free of charge. If it is necessary for the figures to be reproduced in color in the print version, a charge will apply.
- Each image, table, and figure must have an image placement marker in the manuscript with “INSERT [figure/image/table] 1 here”. Full image metadata, such as title of work and date (if relevant), publisher, source or “Courtesy of…”, etc. must be included in the image placement marker in the manuscript.
- All figure and image file names must be numbered in the order in which they appear in the manuscript (e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2). In multi-part figures, each part should be labelled (e.g. Figure 1(a), Figure 1(b)).
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Book Reviews
The Black Scholar welcomes reviewers and will help in providing books for review. Published manuscripts from the last 2-3 years will be considered for publication in our journal.
Please also use the following format for bibliographic information (to be placed at the top of the review):
Review Title
Book Title, by Author. Publishing Location: Publisher, Year. Hardcover Price, Paperback Price. Page Length.
[Example: Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity by E. Patrick Johnson. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. $109.95. Hardcover, $29.95 paperback. 384 pages.]
Reviewed by [insert reviewer name]
Guidelines
- Book reviews must be submitted in Word format and should be approximately 750-1,500 words, with review essays between 1,500 and 3,000 words. Please note: Review essays will only be considered after a proposal stating what books will be discussed and why they are important has already been submitted to the editors and approved.
- Reviewers should use page numbers in parentheses when citing the book, not footnotes or endnotes.
- Submit a clean copy, removing all mark ups and comments from your manuscript and turning off Tracking Changes.
- Do not include images in book reviews.
- Please adhere to the above Replication of Copyrighted Third-party Material section and Style Guide.
- Reviews should appeal to the readers of the Black Scholar, focusing on race and ethnicity that includes but is not limited to Black studies, Latine studies, LGTBTQI+ studies, the African Diaspora, and the works of or about authors of color.
- TBS looks for reviewers for recent scholarly manuscripts from the following presses: Duke University, New York University, Oxford University, Cambridge University, University of Michigan, Stanford University, Harvard University, Routledge, University of Minnesota, Harvard University, University of Chicago, and University of North Carolina. We also accept reviews of books from relevant trade publishers, such as Verso, Haymarket, OR Books, Pluto, AK Press, etc. This is not a complete list of publishers, but is demonstrative of publishers TBS would be excited to receive titles from.
- Reviews of relevant trade fiction and poetry books will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Reviewers should reach out to the book review editors with a proposal prior to submitting. Reviewers should review our above guidelines, under General Information, re: replication of third-party material from works of fiction and poetry.
- TBS is also interested in works across media including films and plays. However, contributors should verify the fit of any review before submitting drafts for consideration.
- Review of music compositions (albums, music videos, live performances) will depend on the discretion of the editors. Reviewers should submit such suggestions only with a clear understanding of why the material should be considered for publications by TBS. That is, works and authors recognized for their accomplishments in the field, not simply their popularity. Music reviews in particular will require a high bar to be considered for publication.
- Although TBS welcomes books from across the publishing world, self-published scholarly texts lacking peer review or other rigorous editorial handling will not be considered.
- Reviews should strive to inform readers through summary and analysis of the text. To this end, reviewers should avoid superlatives and overt praise. Although many texts may take on poetic, or ornate language, reviewers should seek clarity for readers who may be new to the material.
- Please attend to where the book fits within the larger context of scholarship. Reviews can mention specific texts but should avoid formal citations and notes from other texts (unless the reviewer is writing a review essay).
- Reviewers should consider conflicts of interest, such as reviewing works by advisors, mentors, and colleagues.
- Unsolicited reviews will be queued after scheduled book reviews and publishing deadlines.
- Book reviews must be submitted directly to our book reviews editors.
- Please direct promotional emails and other queries to the book reviews editors.
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Submissions to The Black Scholar Blog
The Black Scholar welcomes original thought pieces and editorials on topics of contemporary or historical interest that are relevant to the mission of TBS. The goal of the blog posts are to inspire traffic, and to bring a real-time or current voices of TBS into dialogue with mainstream or newsworthy happenings, as well as invite and encourage new voices in Black Studies to provide commentary on timely topics. Your post should be geared towards our primary audience of academics and the public interested in current and historical issues of concern to Black Studies.
Guidelines
• All blog submissions must follow the above style guide for journal submissions.
• Short, well-written and high-quality original articles related to basic issues confronting Afro-America, the diaspora, and Africa. We ask that all content be original and not be published elsewhere, although we will consider reposting on a case-by-case basis at our discretion.
• As long as the vision aligns with our mission, we are open to more creative submissions that may fall outside the typical article format.
• If you would like to include a photo, audio, or video that is relevant, please make sure to have the appropriate attribution included and a permanent link to the media artifact. All images must be in jpeg and at least 300 dpi. Permission to use copyrighted images, audio, or video must be acquired beforehand and included in your submission email.
• Please include a 50 word max bio. We also welcome links to your personal website and social media accounts. You must include a photo of yourself attached in a separate jpeg file of at least 300 dpi.
• Blog posts should range from 750-1500 words.
• Submission must be in a Word document.
• TBS reserves the right to edit and adapt your guest blog content as needed, particularly to fit our formatting or space constraints. We will be sure to work with you on any suggested changes or edits. We do not give feedback on rejected submissions.
Please email your completed article to hanks@theblackscholar.org, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
