Submissions

Composition Forum welcomes four kinds of submissions: articles, interviews, program profiles, book reviews, and news. We welcome proposals for special issues as well, featuring essays thematically organized around a central and relevant issue or topic. Send proposals for special issues to our editors.

Composition Forum encourages interested authors to submit work composed in a range of multimodal formats. As an online journal, we welcome authors to creatively compose multimodal texts that make good use of our platform. The pages of our journal can support embedded media files and/ or may be able to host standalone webtexts. However, we cannot accept webtexts hosted on other servers or embedded media files solely hosted on other web-based or social media platforms due to the ephemeral nature of some platforms and applications. For this same reason, we request transcripts or alt-text to be provided as well. If you would like further clarification as to what multimodal submissions we can publish, please do not hesitate to email the editor(s) for the section to which you intend to submit.

Articles

We welcome articles of interest to scholars and teachers of college composition, specifically articles that explore the intersections of composition theory and pedagogy, and that theorize practice in sophisticated and provocative ways. Before submitting, please visit our editorial transparency page to understand our review process and check out our FAQ’s about publishing in Composition Forum.

The average length of articles published in Composition Forum is between 6,000 and 8,000 words, although longer articles may be considered.

If your research is based on the work of human subjects, please submit, along with your essay, the appropriate approvals from your Institutional Review Board. Composition Forum advocates the CCCC Position Statement on the Guidelines for the Ethical Conduct of Research in Composition Studies.

Submissions which include multimedia are welcome. After peer review, our web editor will work directly with you to prepare multimedia for web presentation.

Please review our manuscript preparation guidelines, below, and send letters of inquiry to our editors. Send manuscripts, as well, to our editors. You should receive a confirmation email that your submission has been received within two weeks. If you do not receive a confirmation email, contact Rachel Daugherty or Jackie Hoermann-Elliott.

After receiving a submission, the editors determine if the manuscript should be sent out for external review to two anonymous reviewers. These reviewers then have 12 weeks to determine if the manuscript should be accepted, revised, or rejected. The editors aggregate these reviewers’ comments and send them back to the author with the decision. If the article is accepted with revisions, the author will have 6 months to make the revisions.

We are always looking for reviewers, and we especially encourage scholars from underrepresented groups to join our reviewer database. If you would like to serve as a reviewer for Composition Forum, please email the editors (editors@compositionforum.com).

Retrospectives

Composition Forum invites queries regarding or nominations for the Retrospectives section of the journal.

The goal of the Retrospectives section is to provide a space for authors of seminal articles or books to revisit and reflect on their earlier ideas, and dialogue with others in the field about how their ideas have changed since publication.

Queries should state which seminal and influential work (article or book) the author would like to revisit, and why. The original piece should have been published at least five years prior.

Readers who nominate another scholar for Retrospectives should explain which piece he or she would like that author to revisit and why. The Retrospectives editor will consider the nomination and, if appropriate, invite the scholar to submit.

Retrospective accounts should briefly outline one or more of the primary arguments made in the author’s original piece, and then discuss how (and why) the author’s view or understanding of this issue has changed in the subsequent years. When drafting, the author might consider what colleagues, readers, and graduate students have written and asked about related to the original piece. The author might also consider commenting on the circumstances of the original text, and how those circumstances influenced the arguments, evidence, tone, etc.

Retrospectives authors are encouraged to take an informal and first person tone, discussing their views and development as writers, teachers, and scholars since the original piece.

Generally Retrospective accounts should be 3,000 to 5,000 words, although longer or shorter pieces will be considered. If the author would like to include long segments from the original piece (for example, appendices, tables, charts, transcripts, etc), he or she should seek reprint permission from the copyright holder.

Please send Retrospective queries or nominations to the Retrospectives editor.

Interviews

We welcome substantial and relevant interviews with key figures in the world of writing studies. The average length of interviews is 6,000 to 8,000 words, and interviews that include multimedia are welcome. While interviews are commissioned by the journal, we invite suggestions for future interviewees/interviewers.

Please send interview queries—not unsolicited manuscripts—to our interview editor.

Program Profiles

Composition Forum invites submissions to the Program Profiles section of the journal. These profiles should describe the ways in which theories, research, and pedagogies shape individual college writing programs and inform programmatic initiatives. Composition Forum considers writing programs in its most inclusive definition, including first-year composition programs, professional writing programs, writing across the curriculum and/or writing in the disciplines programs, writing centers, course-embedded writing fellow programs, graduate programs in rhetoric and composition, and undergraduate major or certificate programs in writing.

Program Profiles are generally 5,000 to 7,500 words, although longer or shorter profiles may be considered. Submissions are to include:

a general description of the program—its history, context, and goals as relevant to the context of the Profile’s emphasis;
discussion of the theory/theories informing the program or programmatic initiative being discussed;
why and how the profiled program or programmatic initiative contributes to our field’s understanding of writing program development and administration;
a description of the program’s organization and/or function, as relevant to the context of the Profile’s emphasis;
a description of the constraints (institutional, budgetary, etc.) guiding or controlling the program or programmatic initiative’s growth and development; and
a section that addresses at least one of the following questions: “If I knew then what I know now, I would have done X differently.” Or, “if I could reinvent this program from scratch, I would do X.” Or, “what I’ve learned from my directorship of or participation in this program/programmatic initiative is X.” Such exploratory comments will serve to inspire, to warn, and to educate present and future program administrators.

Identifying details need not be anonymized in Program Profile manuscripts prior to submission.

Please review our manuscript preparation guidelines, below, and send queries to our program profile editors.

Reviews

Composition Forum publishes reviews of books, websites, and other texts that may be of interest to teachers and scholars of writing. Single reviews are generally 1500 words, and review essays are approximately 2500 words. While reviews are solicited by the journal, we welcome suggestions for texts to be reviewed, as well as requests to be placed on our list of reviewers.

Please send review queries—not unsolicited manuscripts—to our review editor.

Special Issues

Composition Forum welcomes proposals for special, guest-edited issues thematically organized around a central issue or topic. Special issues which include multimedia are welcome.

We invite proposals that discuss the importance, relevance and timeliness of the topic of the proposed special issue and provide an overview of the kind of questions, issues and concerns the special issue will address. Proposals should provide a list of potential contributors or, if you plan to put out a call for submission, a draft of the CFP. We encourage proposals that consider the relevance of the topic to other sections of the journal, identifying, for instance, a potential interview, retrospective, related book(s) for review, or possibilities for program profiles. Please include a brief bio and CV with your proposal.

Contact the special topics editor if you’d like to propose or guest-edit a special issue.

Suggested timeline for special issues of Composition Forum

July (one year before publication of the volume):

Guest editors of accepted proposals should begin disseminating their CFP through all channels at least a year prior to the publication of their special issue. [NOTE: Special Issues will be published in July, so the CFP should be ready to share the summer before the issue is to be published.] Guest editors are encouraged to contact and solicit “expert” potential contributors, network, and begin to promote their special issue. After their CFP is ready, guest editors should send a copy to Shane Wood so he can add it to our newsfeed. To lessen any potential confusion, guest editors should include specific instructions on how and to whom authors should submit proposals. Regular reminders up until September 1st (suggested deadline for the proposals) can also be useful to promote their special issue and, more generally, Composition Forum.

September-October (one year prior to publication):

Final due date for collection of proposals. Guest editor(s) will evaluate proposals, and send accept/revise/reject notices to potential contributors, underscoring that the abstracts that are accepted to move forward with are contingent on a publishable final manuscript. At this time, guest editor(s) should also update CF editors on their progress.

January (the year of publication):

Collect completed drafts of all major features. Articles should either be reviewed by the guest editor(s) and one external reviewer or should be reviewed by two external reviewers. Materials submitted for other sections of the issue will be reviewed by the guest editor(s) but may also be sent out to an external reviewer for additional feedback. After receiving feedback from the external reviewer(s), guest editor(s) will prepare comments and feedback, sharing drafts and feedback with section editors. At this time, CF section editors may sign off or provide additional feedback.

March (the year of publication):

Gather any feedback section editors might offer, deliver feedback and revision suggestions to authors. Note: Section editors may provide a final accept/reject on manuscripts.

May (the year of publication):

Collect final, revised versions of all materials for a final copyediting stage prior to publication. All final revised versions should go to CF section editors before being sent on to the website editor for formatting. At this time, guest editor(s) will work with editor Christian Weisser to create a “From the Editors” column to introduce the volume.

June (the year of publication):

CF section editors will send uploaded manuscripts to authors for final line editing/proofreading of uploaded manuscripts, providing proofing notes to the website editor. While authors may correct any typos, errors of fact, or address other serious mistakes not addressed by our editorial process, stylistic changes or other revisions cannot be made at this time.

July:

Final publication and circulation of the volume.

News, Calls for Papers, and Other Announcements

We encourage submission of news, calls for papers, and other announcements of interest to the writing studies community for inclusion on our weblog. Send any items you wish to be considered to our editors. Please include the following: a proposed title; a very short summary (less than 40 words); tags (keywords) to be included with the post.

Manuscript Preparation

All manuscripts should be submitted electronically to the relevant editor(s) noted above. Please include a prominently displayed word count. Double space all paragraphs, including quotations, endnotes, and the Works Cited list. Please use MLA style, following the MLA Handbook, 9th edition, or the MLA Style Manual, 3rd edition.

For articles only: please ensure your manuscript contains no identifying information—neither on the title page, nor in running headers or footers. Because all articles are blind reviewed, we ask that you substitute institutional names with generic equivalents: for example, “State University” or “Private Liberal Arts College.” This will help our editors send your work out for review as quickly as possible.

Please attend closely to style as you prepare your initial submission and, if your submission is accepted, as you work with our editors to make revisions suggested by reviewers. Once your submission has been copyedited by our editorial staff, it is prepared for web presentation by our web editor. At that point, you will be invited to review it online and point out any problems introduced by the conversion to Web format. You may also correct typos, errors of fact, or address other serious mistakes not addressed by our editorial process. However, stylistic changes or other revisions can not be made at this time.

Metadata

Please include the following descriptive metadata with your submission of interviews, articles, or program profiles. We will use these metadata to make your article more visible to search engines and other scholarly indexes.

Abstract:: Write a short summary of your article, between 100 and 150 words (less than 1,000 characters). Abstracts will precede your article and be provided to search engines as well. Reviews need not include abstracts.
Tags:: Provide a set of tags (keywords) we can use for indexing your article in online databases such as Google Scholar.

Copyrights and Licensing

As an open access journal, Composition Forum allows free distribution and use of articles we publish, ensuring the widest possible audience for your work. We use the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license for our journal. You retain the copyright, and grant Composition Forum and our readers rights to use, quote from, print, and redistribute your work, providing you are credited. Furthermore, this license allows the production of derivative works, as long as you are credited, and as long as producers similarly allow their derivative works to be shared. We welcome your questions about our use of Creative Commons licensing.

Composition Forum ISSN: 1522-7502.