Calls for Contributions

At Decolonial Subversions we have a running Call for Papers, which means we accept contributions for as long as a call is running or within a deadline agreed on a case-by-case basis with the Founding Editors, and upload the contributions as and when they have satisfactorily gone through the peer review process. While our calls are themed, they remain purposefully broad in order to allow for exploration.

Given the vast range of formats and languages accepted, we ask prospective Contributors to contact us before submitting their full-length contribution, in order to discuss their submission, language and format. Generally, at this stage we request a 200-word abstract. Such an approach allows us to be flexible and to adapt guidelines on a case-by-case basis in the best interest of the Contributors and of Decolonial Subversions.


Calls for Contributions:

Look out for this space, as we regularly update it with Calls for Contributions.

Decolonial Subversions accepts contributions all year round. If you wish to contribute, please take into consideration our yearly publication cycle below:

1st January - 30th April	Discussion of abstracts for potential contributions with editors (optional)
30th April	Closure of Call for Contributions
31st May	Notification of acceptance to Contributors
1st June - 30th September	Review process
15th October	Final manuscript submission
15th October - 15th November	Proofreading
31st December or before	Aimed publication date

Since everyone on the Decolonial Subversions team has other primary occupations and most of our work is done voluntarily, these dates are tentative and may vary slightly from year to year based on our capacity.

We also run Special Issues, which are generally of a more focused nature and deal with very specific aspects of decolonisation. Special Issues can be led by the Founding Editors, Editorial Board Members, or colleagues from our Institutional Partners.


Calls for Special Issues:

‘Decolonising the university and the role of linguistic diversity’
Guest Editors: Victoria Odeniyi & Gillian Lazar
Multilingual call

‘Development meets theology: Contextualising non-western Christian missions in Africa, Asia and the Middle East’. Closed.

Vernacular Cultures in South Asia



Guidelines for Contributors

Contributors should ensure that their submissions meet all the technical requirements outlined in the Guidelines.

Contributors are expected to submit a full version of their contribution within the submission deadline agreed with the Editors.

Written and Acoustic submissions are expected to be in English in addition to a version in a local language of the author’s choice. Authors should discuss their intentions with the Editors at the time of their abstract submission, especially if an English translation cannot be produced and they will need support with finding translation partners.

The contribution must be polished and meet the general length and format/style criteria outlined in the Call. Decolonial Subversions reserves the right not to accept submissions that do not meet the required standards.

All submissions will undergo a rigorous peer review conducted by specialised professionals or academics working in the same subject area as the Contributor.

This means that Contributors’ submissions are shared with two Reviewers during the first stage, who are given about two weeks in which to provide comments. To minimise bias, we select Reviewers who are different in terms of their sociocultural background, career stage and geographical location. At least one Reviewer must be located in a Global South context.

If the Reviewers’ comments are in conflict, a third Reviewer might be invited to assess the submission. The Editors decide whether the submission is suitable for publication, based on the overall reviews and the Contributor’s response to the Reviewers’ comments.

While we do see the advantages of blind peer review carried out on anonymised papers by anonymous reviewers, we are also aware of the fact that within very specialised areas of knowledge it is often the case that Reviewers and Contributors can identify one another. Such a situation, in addition to being open to accusations of hypocrisy, risks heightening antagonism and encouraging a lack of accountability—typically associated with the protection that accrues through anonymity. We feel that it is especially important to address these issues in the context of submissions that do often leverage on the positionality of their Contributors or which may be of an autobiographical nature. As such, we leave the decision whether to anonymise their submission to the Contributors. To maintain consistency, where a Contributor opts out of anonymisation during the review process, we also engage Reviewers who agree to work overtly.


Criteria for Submissions Review

Decolonial Subversions aims to publish high-quality work and although it welcomes all submissions in all languages—in addition to the compulsory English version—there are certain criteria that need to be met for a submission to be deemed appropriate for publication on the platform. These criteria include:

1. Submissions must be pertinent to the announced Call and must follow the rough length and format/style requirements of Decolonial Subversions as outlined in the Call.
   
   All submissions should apply a decolonial perspective on their subject matter. We wish to attract contributions from a wide array of fields and in a variety of formats.
   
   Publishing formats include:
   
   Written contributions

    

   • Research articles (6,000-8,000 words, excluding footnotes and bibliography)
   • Field notes (2,000-3,000 words)
   • Book reviews (800-1,500 words)
   • Ethnographic stories centred on real encounters (1,500-2,000 words)
   • Opinion pieces or journalistic commentaries (2,000-3,000 words)
   • Poetry
   
   Acoustic contributions

    

   • Songs
   • Podcasts (20-40 minutes length)
   • Interviews (up to 60 minutes long)
   • Recounted local tales and myths (up to 60 minutes long)
   
   Visual contributions

    

   • Photography Essays
   • Paintings
   • Drawings
   • Short Films (up to 20 minutes long)
   
   Other formats reflective of local modes of knowledge production and transmission not listed here.
2. Submissions can cover all subject areas within the humanities and social sciences and can be in any language provided that an English version is supplied.
   
3. Written contributions should ideally follow the Chicago Reference Manual, both in footnotes and in the comprehensive Bibliography section. Please follow the guidelines on this link consistently throughout the manuscript: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html
   
   The style guide is as follows:
   
   The body of the texts should be double-spaced, Times New Roman, size 12, and margins of 3cm. Footnotes should be used and should be single-spaced. Quotations with fewer than 40 words should be incorporated in the text and enclosed in double quotes. Long quotations (40 words or more) must be included in a separate paragraph, without quotation marks and indenting five spaces in the left and right margin.
   
   Please ensure that:

    

   • footnotes are complete and cited in the identified reference style
   • all works cited in the text appear in the Bibliography, and vice versa
   • online materials and links are followed by a date of access.
   
   Contributors are requested to use tabs and indenting functions for the alignment of their text as opposed to resorting to the space bar. This is especially important in the case of verses and non-Latin scripts in order to maintain continuity when transferring the text onto the writing programs we use for the layout design. We encourage Contributors to submit a one-page sample of their work so that we can test it for the layout technicalities.
   
   Contributors can make stylistic choices about items not specified here, but it is imperative that they be consistent throughout the article.
4. Contributions should be submitted in Word format, with the denomination: AUTHOR.NAME_TITLE.
5. Contributions which exceed the length guidelines but remain within reasonable limits (approx. 500 words; 2-3 minutes for short films and podcasts; 10 minutes for interviews and tales), are likely to be acceptable. However, if contributions exceed guidelines by more than that, this should be communicated to the Editors. The Contributor will be encouraged to edit their work in order to remain within the specified limits.
6. Research articles following a more standard academic format will be deemed appropriate for publication providing: they are grammatically and syntactically accurate (in the respective languages), they are within the theme of the Call, and their content is presented coherently and on the basis of well-evidenced arguments. These criteria are summarised as: ‘Originality’, ‘Structure and Clarity of Expression’, ‘Strength of Argument’, and ‘Quality of Research and Contribution to the Field’. Reviewers should aim to offer comments on all the assessment criteria, including relevance to the theme and the extent to which articles agree with format guidelines.
7. All contributions will be deemed appropriate for publication providing they are polished and within the theme of the Call, and present content in a coherent manner. Sound and visual quality must be of the highest standards. Images should be submitted in high resolution in .jpeg, audios in .mp3, and videos in .mp4.
   
   Submitted contributions must also demonstrate ethical reflexivity and, where pertinent, they must demonstrate how good research practices were followed when interacting with human individuals in all types and modes of research, including in the production of audio and visual material.
   
   The Editors reserve the right to decline publication of submissions whose content is counterproductive to the aim of decolonisation, which is the chief objective of Decolonial Subversions. The vision of the platform is outlined on the website; please also read the Basic Manifesto that accompanies it.
8. In addition, Contributors will have to address the comments of the Reviewers point by point to show their ability to engage with critical, but constructive, feedback and will need the maturity to work on and improve their submissions.
9. Contributors should be respectful in their language and content throughout their article.
10. We encourage submissions that are jointly produced by multiple Contributors. All Contributors must be duly acknowledged.

 

Acknowledgements and Plagiarism

Contributors should clearly acknowledge all authors they extract ideas and quotations from in order to avoid plagiarism. Please be advised that Decolonial Subversions may use Turnitin to check for plagiarism. If contributions are found to include plagiarised content, they will be excluded from the review process immediately. If such a discovery is made post-publication, the articles will be automatically retrieved and the Contributor will not be allowed to resubmit material for review to the platform.

If you are unsure about what constitutes plagiarism or why this is important, please do not hesitate to address your concerns to us. We understand that copyright laws and the associated terminology may be unfamiliar to some Contributors outside Euro-America and we are happy to explore together the most ethical practices around the use of knowledge that may not be ‘owned’ in ways typically understood in western epistemology.


Permissions

Contributors should own the copyright for all material they use in their submissions, or they must obtain the appropriate permissions for material that is owned by others. In the latter case, Contributors must provide evidence of permissions obtained, at the time of the final submission of their revised contribution.

This regulation applies to written, visual and acoustic material. Moreover, Contributors should be able to demonstrate that all material involving human individuals was obtained with informed consent and that they have the permission of the depicted individuals for dissemination online and for the specific purposes of our platform. We appreciate that this can occur in a number of formats, and in this process we expect our Contributors to always uphold the highest ethical standards.


Publishing Rights

Decolonial Subversions publishes all articles under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. This means that the Contributors retain full copyright over their work, but give Decolonial Subversions permission to publish it. It also means that Contributors’ work can be used with attribution for anything publicly, but not for resale. In other words, the work cannot be reused commercially without a Contributor’s permission. Contributors who plan to publish similar content in future publications should be aware that publication in Decolonial Subversions constitutes previous publication. Submissions accepted for publication will be added to the official website of Decolonial Subversions.

By granting the right to Decolonial Subversions to publish their content with the platform, Contributors should be aware that they also grant the platform the right to transform their original contributions into other modes of production (e.g. written into acoustic, or acoustic into written submission).


Republication of published online materials

On a case-by-case basis, Decolonial Subversions will accept submission of previously published content, provided that:

1. the Contributors provide in writing the certification from the original or earlier publishers that republication is agreeable to them
2. the submission will be accompanied by a version in an additional language (exceptions may be considered on a case-by-case basis)
3. the submission passes through our review standards, unless it was previously rigorously reviewed
4. the previous version(s) should ideally be removed from the internet in favour of the peer-reviewed version published on Decolonial Subversions.

Contact Us

Given the vast range of formats and languages accepted, we ask Contributors to contact us before submitting their full-length contribution, in order to discuss their submission, its language and its format. Generally, at this stage we request a 200-word abstract. Such an approach allows us to be flexible and to adapt guidelines on a case-by-case basis in the best interest of the Contributors and of Decolonial Subversions. Monika Hirmer: mh121@soas.ac.uk; Romina Istratii: ri5@soas.ac.uk.



Rights and Regulations

Decolonial Subversions has standardised a set of rights and regulations that all prospective Contributors are requested to review and be aware of when they consider submitting a contribution to the platform. Further action may be required, such as seeking permissions for written, visual or acoustic material used, and Contributors should secure these within the timeframe agreed with the Founding Editors.

Please note that these rights and regulations may change over time.

Every Contributor is required to have familiarised themselves with these rights and regulations (link below) and to acknowledge the same by downloading them and sending them back to the Founding Editors via email with their signature.

Contributors should communicate directly with the Decolonial Subversions Team if they are unclear about their rights or responsibilities. You may contact Romina Istratii at ri5@soas.ac.uk, Monika Hirmer at mh121@soas.ac.uk, or contact us via the contact form.

Disclaimer

The opinions expressed in the published works are those of the Contributors and do not reflect the opinions of the publishing platform or its Editors.