Submissions

The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (JCRT) is a peer-reviewed journal devoted to both disciplinary and interdisciplinary scholarship of a cutting-edge nature that deals broadly with the phenomenon of religious and cultural theory.  Subfields include, but are not limited to, philosophical and cultural theory, theological studies, postcolonial and globalization theory, religious studies, literary theory, cultural studies, ethnic, area, and gender studies, communications, semiotics, and linguistics. 

The JCRT is free of charge, and is published two to three times a year.

Current institutional sponsors are the University of Denver and Syracuse University. For more information about institutional sponsorship, contact the editors at [email protected].  If you have an article you would like to consider for publication, you need to submit a 500-word abstract of the article along with a curriculum vitae to the editor via the contact form or [email protected]. All articles must rigorously fit the mission of the JCRT (See Submissions Policy below).  No term papers, religious advocacy pieces, unsolicited book reviews or opinion pieces, etc. will be considered.  

Submission Checklist

Before submitting, please ensure the following:

1. The submission file is in PDF, Microsoft Word, or RTF format and is titled “[LastName]_[FirstName]_[ManuscriptTitle].”
2. Any submitted figures are in TIF, JPG, PNG, or PDF format, with a resolution of at least 300 dpi. Figure files are titled “[LastName]_[FirstName]_[Figure#]_[AdditionalDescriptiveInformation].”
3. Where available, URLs and DOIs for the references have been provided.
4. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of references and quotations, and should ensure they are correct in substance and style.
5. The text is single-spaced, uses Book Antiqua 12-point font, employs italics rather than underlining (except with URL addresses), and places all illustrations, figures, and tables within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.

Download our article submission guidelines (PDF)

Download our book review submission guidelines (PDF)

Fees

JCRT charges authors nothing at any stage: no submission, processing, publication, page, colour, or withdrawal fees. See Fees and Funding.

Peer review

Research articles undergo double-anonymous peer review by at least two external reviewers; the editors make the final decision. Essays and book reviews for Religious Theory are reviewed editorially. The full process, including how special issues and editors’ own submissions are handled, is described on the Peer Review page. Submissions must be original, not previously published, and not under consideration elsewhere.

Authorship and generative AI

Everyone listed as an author must have made a substantial contribution to the work and approved the final version. Any use of generative AI or other automated tools beyond routine language editing must be disclosed in the manuscript; such tools cannot be authors or be cited as sources. See Publication Ethics.

Publication ethics

JCRT’s policies for authorship, competing interests, complaints and appeals, allegations of research misconduct, corrections, and retractions follow the core practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and apply to manuscripts submitted, manuscripts under review, and published articles. See Publication Ethics.

Copyright and open access

Authors retain copyright of their work. Articles are published open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, and authors may deposit any version of their article in a repository of their choice without embargo. See the copyright notice and the archiving and repository policy.

A Note on Open Source Publishing

The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory was established in 1999 as one of the true, early pioneers in electronic, open source publishing, and has been committed to that mission ever since.  Because of the ongoing commercialization of the internet during that same period, many once easily accessible print journals have increasingly been locked up behind high-priced, electronic subscription paywalls by international publishing conglomerates who have at the same time managed to corner the market on citation access and convince some university administrators that these kinds of publications are therefore more “credible” and “prestigious”, when in fact the opposite is often the case.  In addition, academic reputations are made by readers becoming widely familiar with published material, not by corporate publishers demanding exorbitant fees for simple access to one’s scholarly contributions.

As a non-profit entity, we at the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory believe that this unholy alliance between profit-oriented, commercial publishers, university administrators, and (by extension) tenure and promotion committees is unconscionable, and we do, and continue to, resist this invidious “neoliberal” trend in academic publishing.  We also invite our authors to resist it as well, and we are more than happy to provide letters of support to faculty to assure them that their submissions have been thoroughly peer-reviewed and chosen for their genuine quality.