Submissions

Author Guidelines

Thank you for choosing to submit your work to The February Journal. Please follow the author guidelines below in order to prepare your manuscript for submission (manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned). Our submission preparation checklist (placed above) will help you make sure that your manuscript is ready to be submitted.

Manuscripts must be submitted through The February Journal’s online submission system: following the following links, you can make a new submission or view your pending submissions. To upload your manuscript, you will need to create a personal account (or, if you already have one, log into it) and then follow the instructions. If you encounter any problems with the online submission system, please contact the editors using this e-mail address: info@thefebruaryjournal.org.

1. Aims & Scope

The February Journal is an independent interdisciplinary academic publication that is peer-reviewed and available in diamond open access. It presents empirical, theoretical, and speculative research that uses decentering, queer, feminist, decolonial, and autotheoretical methodologies to address urgent cultural, social, and political questions. The journal understands knowledge holistically and seeks to integrate artistic and activist work into academic practice. Open to professionals of all career levels, it puts special effort into helping less experienced authors publish their research. The journal also welcomes work in a variety of genres, celebrating innovative ways of presentation. It is a venue for scholars and students of humanities and social sciences, visual arts, and crossovers from the natural sciences.

2. ORCID

As part of the submission process, the corresponding (main, principal) author will be asked to provide their ORCID. The ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a code that uniquely identifies academic authors. It is used to resolve the problem of the ambiguity of an author’s name in scholarly communication. Even if two or more authors share the same name, ORCID allows to distinguish between them and ensure that their work is properly attributed. If you do not already have an ORCID number, please follow this link to create one. More details about the ORCID system can be found here.

If a contributor prefers (for instance, out of safety concerns) to publish a contribution under a pseudonym, a separate ORCID should be created under that pseudonym.

3. Authorship Policies

All those who have made substantive contributions to the paper should be identified as authors. The principal (main, corresponding) author and the order of the co-authors should be determined based on said persons’ contributions to the submission, irrespective of their status in the academic hierarchy.

If a contributor’s input does not qualify for authorship, said contributor should be listed in the Acknowledgements section of the article. Acknowledgements appear at the end of the article, after the Endnotes and prior to the Disclosure Statement, Funding, and Bibliography.

4. Manuscript Types

We accept the following types of contributions:

1. research articles (between 7,000 and 8,000 words, including notes and bibliography. Longer pieces can be considered);
2. theoretical essays (between 3,000 and 4,000 words, including notes and bibliography);
3. reflexive essays (between 3,000 and 4,000 words, including notes and bibliography);
4. visual essays (between 2,000 and 3,000 words, including notes and bibliography, and 10–12 visualizations);
5. research data sets and visualizations;
6. discussion (between 3,000 and 5,000 words, including notes and bibliography);
7. archive materials (between 2,000 and 3,000 words of commentary and analysis, including 5-10 images of archival objects);
8. book reviews (between 700 and 1,000 words, including notes and bibliography).

You can find more information about each type here. 

We are constantly expanding the list of modes of presenting research findings, welcoming innovative ways of presentation. To discuss the possibility (including technical possibility) of contributions in formats and genres not listed above, please contact the editors at info@thefebruaryjournal.org.

5. Book Reviews

We do not accept unsolicited book reviews. If you would like to review a book, please contact the editors at info@thefebruaryjournal.org before submitting your manuscript to the journal.

The book review is a discursive form that enables and enhances debates within a discipline or a research field. The book review has a variety of manifestations and purposes; promotion for commercial purposes is not one of them. The primary purpose of publishing book reviews in The February Journal is to inform the public about new publications in the field by providing an analytical assessment of the book. We do not publish reviews that contain personal views on the book or its author(s), or uninformed criticism, or a discussion that distracts the reader from getting an understanding of the purpose and scope of the reviewed publication. Reviewers are asked to provide essential information about the book, situate it critically within a particular context (for example, a scientific school, a discipline, current debates, etc.), and make a recommendation in terms of potential readership (for example, researchers, curators, students, etc.).

Book reviews submitted to The February Journal should be in English. They should not exceed 1,000 words, including notes and bibliography. Each submitted review must be accompanied with the author’s bio / authors’ bios, including their affiliations and e-mail addresses (100–120 words).

Copies of books for review should be sent to info@thefebruaryjournal.org (with a note ‘Book for review’). If you would like to send a paper copy, please e-mail the editors first to obtain the postal address.

6. Manuscript Requirements

The February Journal has a long-term objective of publishing all submissions in the original language plus their translation into English. For the time being, however, the journal publishes submissions only in English. Still, publications in other languages can be possible by way of exception: please contact the editors to discuss this possibility.

When uploading your manuscript through the online submission system you will be asked to provide the following information:

1. an abstract (150–250 words / 750–1200 characters with spaces);
2. the author’s bio (if more than one author, please provide a bio for each author), including their affiliations and e-mail addresses (100–120 words / 500–600 characters with spaces);
3. 5–10 key words.

You will also be asked to upload two versions of the manuscript: one with full author information and one anonymized. The anonymized version will be used to carry out peer review. See for details of the peer review process.

• use American English;
• use Calibri or Times New Romаn font 12, aligned to the left, single spaced;
• use as little formatting as possible;
• for comments and additional information, use endnotes, not footnotes;
• use italics for subheading;
• use single citation marks: Smith identifies music as ‘ordered chaos’;
• use double marks for citations inside citations: Smith writes that ‘music can be likened to “ordered chaos” and is therefore…’;
• spell out centuries: e.g., ‘in the nineteenth century’;
• use this format for dates: on the 12th of October 2012; in June 1995;
• at first mention, provide full names of artists, authors and researchers; refer to them using their surname in all other instances: …as Ivan Jackson (2013) claims, art is in crisis; 
• at first mention, provide full titles of artworks, films, pieces of music and so forth. Identify the principal author in the text and place information about other relevant authors such as film producers in an endnote. Use square brackets to indicate the original title of the artwork. For example: In Anna Suverina’s Fourth Element [Chetvertyi element, 1997], the main character is a woman;
• submit your manuscript as a Word document in.doc or .docx.

7. In-Text References

The February Journal's complete reference guide is available here. 

For references within the text, please use the author-date system: (Ivanov 2017a: 12); (Smith and Smith 2005: 13–65); (Ivanov, Petrova et al. 2003).

Do not use a comma between the name of the author and the publication year of the quoted work. Use a colon before the page numbers.

Works with one or two authors should always be referenced fully: (Ivanov 2017); (Ivanov and Petrov 2005: 295). Use ‘and’ rather than ‘&’ between the names of two authors.

Works with three authors should be referenced fully at first mention (Ivanova, Petrova and Sidorova 2010); for further mentions, use the name of the first author and ‘et al.’: (Ivanova et al. 2010).

When referencing for the first time works with more than three authors, please provide the names of the first author and ‘et al.’. For further mentions, use the name of the first author and ‘et al.’: (Ivanova et al. 2019).

Do not italicize ‘et al.’

For sources where the authors cannot be identified, use the first two-three words of the title of the cited publication. In the bibliography, you will be able to provide full information on the cited publication: It has been proven that dogs make art (‘New trends…’ 2001).

8. Bibliography

The February Journal’s complete reference guide is available here. Manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.

Place the bibliography at the end of the submission, after the endnotes, acknowledgments, disclosure statement, and funding information.

List all references in the alphabetical order. List only sources cited in the submission. Transliterate and, in square brackets, translate non-Latin script references. 

• Ivanova M (2015) Art and no-art. In: Ivanova M and Petrov P (eds), Essays on Contemporary Art. London, Routledge: 12–29.
• Ivanov I (ed) (2017a) Film and Art. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Ivanov I (2017b) When art stops being art. Studies in Art, 8(3): 2016–2028.
• Ivanova M (2003, 12 January) Kakoe kino? [What cinema?]. Kinoglobus, www.kinoglobus.ru/13wgfwwkf (12/06/2014).

For sources where the authors cannot be identified, use the title of the work in the place of the author: New trends in art and culture (2001, 1 June) The Guard, www.tg.com/art (12/05/2015).

9. Transliteration

Authors should provide references in the original language using established transliteration systems when necessary. Use the U.S. Library of Congress transliteration system for words and terms in Cyrillic and other non-Latin alphabets (styd, parol’, pod’’ezd, inversiia, pryshch), except for terms and names such as Tolstoy and Yeltsin. Use square brackets to identify transliterations within the text: e.g., [blat].

In the bibliography list, it is advisable that the authors use square brackets for translations: Abramov R (2019) Grani neformal’noi muzeefikatsii ‘real’nogo sotsializma’: materializatsiia nostal’gicheskogo affekta [Dimensions of informal museumification of ‘real socialism’: Materialization of nostalgic affect]. In: Zavadski A, Sklez V and Suverina K (eds), Politika affekta: muzei kak prostranstvo publichnoi istorii [Politics of Affect: Museum as a Public History Space]. Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie: 274–298.

 
10. Images and Figures

(Please see the ‘Copyright Notice’ section for copyright information.)

We encourage the use of images and figures. In the text, label all images and figures as follows: (see Figure 1) or (Figure 1) or ‘Figure 1 shows how…’, etc.

Place all figures in the text where they are supposed to appear. Place figures after a paragraph, not inside a paragraph.

Use short descriptions or analytical statements as captions. Supply copyright information in the form of an acknowledgement as in the following examples: 

• Figure 1. A screenshot of a website showing a review of an exhibition (www.artform.org/12/56, 04.07.2019).
• Figure 2. Apollo 17 view of Earth. © NASA, all rights reserved, used with permission.
• Figure 3. From Liz Johnson Artur, Black Balloon Archive, 1970–present. © Liz Johnson Artur, all rights reserved, used with permission.
• Figure 4. Pasha Tretyakova, Homework—Hopework, 2025. © All rights reserved, courtesy of the author.

All figures should be of sufficient quality, with a resolution of at least 300 DPI (dots per inch).

As part of the submission process, you can provide a ‘Lead Figure’ (an image that will accompany the title page of your contribution upon its publication). If you would like to suggest a particular image for the purpose, please ensure that it meets all the requirements listed above, including copyright clearance, appropriate quality, caption, etc. Please also name the file accordingly (‘Lead_image’).

11. Peer Review

All contributions submitted to The February Journal, with the exception of book reviews, are peer-reviewed. Reviewers are selected by The February Journal’s editors, members of the journal's Advisory Board, and guest editors. We have a transparent system of assessing contributions for publication, and do our best to carry out reviews of submitted work in a polite, unbiased, constructive, and professional way.

Most submissions undergo the process of double blind peer review, meaning that the manuscript is assessed by (at least) two specialists in the relevant research field who do not know the identity of the author(s), and vice versa. In this case, manuscripts are sent to reviewers in an anonymized form. This implies that no personal data of the author(s)—their name and surname, affiliation, etc.—are made available. To prepare the anonymized manuscript, please remove all references to the authors from the submission. Self-references should also be anonymized (e.g., Author 2019). Moreover, please check the settings on your computer to make sure your name does not appear in the file name and/or history. In case the reviewer recognizes the identity of the author(s) whose manuscript they are reviewing, they are asked not to proceed with the review. A new reviewer is then appointed by the editors.

Because The February Journal aims at expanding the boundaries of academic practice by integrating artistic and activist work into it, we have developed a separate approach to peer-reviewing artist’s and activist’s essays and other similar works. We call it ‘friendly peer review.’  Works created by artists and activists can be harder or even impossible to anonymize. Moreover, without proper contextualization, they can be difficult to evaluate using rigid academic standards. What we have come to call ‘friendly peer review’ seeks to contextualize the piece by an artist or activist to potential reviewers. The review form for such pieces that The February Journal has developed expands what is understood by ‘academic knowledge’ without compromising academic rigor. 

Once received by the editorial team, reviews are discussed in an editorial meeting. As a result of this meeting, the editors make their final decision regarding the publication of the manuscript. 

Reviewers assess the quality of the submitted contributions including their compliance to the international scholarly and ethical research standards. Important aspects of a review are originality and novelty of the author’s approach to the subject. Based on the reviewers’ recommendation, The February Journal’s editors will:

• accept the manuscript for publication without any revisions;
• accept the manuscript but ask the author(s) to make revisions. The February Journal’s editors will assess the quality of the revisions. If they are not satisfied with the revisions, the editors may reject the manuscript or invite a re-submission (see 3 and 4);
• recommend that the author(s) re-work the manuscript and make a re-submission to the journal. This means that the re-worked version of the manuscript will undergo a new round of blind peer reviews; and
• reject the manuscript.

As a result of the review, the author(s) are most likely to be asked to use reviewers’ feedback to revise their contribution. The purpose of revisions is not to ‘penalize’ the authors, but to improve the quality of the submission. Reviewers’ feedback and advice on revisions will be provided. The author(s) may ask the editors to clarify some recommendations, but generally it is expected that the author(s) are able to work with the recommendations on their own. The author(s) can either revise the manuscript as per recommendations, so that it is published in The February Journal, or they can withdraw the manuscript from publication altogether.

The author(s) cannot re-submit a manuscript if it has been accepted for publication with revisions. ‘Making a re-submission’ means that the author(s) are encouraged to significantly re-work the manuscript in accordance with the reviewers’ recommendations, after which they can submit the paper to the journal again. Once re-submitted, the manuscript will go through another round of peer review.

In case of disagreement, The February Journal’s editors will assign a team of assessors consisting of members of the Advisory Board. They will provide an independent, unbiased assessment of the situation and put forward a recommendation for action. Their decision is final and cannot be contested.

As part of the submission process, the authors are welcome to provide the names of two or more peers who could be invited to review the manuscript. Recommended reviewers should be experts in the relevant field and should be able to assess the manuscript objectively. Please be aware of any conflicts of interest when recommending reviewers. The reviewer should have no prior knowledge of the submission, should not have recently collaborated with any of the authors, and should not be affiliated with the same institution as any of the authors. The editors will consider inviting proposed candidates to review the submission, but are not obliged to do so.

12. Ethical Research

The February Journal is strongly committed to maintaining international ethical standards of academic conduct. It is required that the authors should not use offensive language or show disrespect to any individuals, communities, and social groups. All materials submitted to The February Journal will be examined according to the ethical standards of academic conduct.

Disclosure Statement 
The February Journal encourages its authors to include a declaration of any conflicting interests.

Funding 
The February Journal requires its authors to indicate grants or any other financial support that funded the submitted work.

Plagiarism 
The February Journal takes issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of ethical academic practice very seriously. We seek to protect both authors’ rights and the journal’s reputation and will not tolerate any unethical and/or illegal behavior with regard to the intellectual property of others. Submitted articles may be run through plagiarism-checking software. By submitting work to The February Journal, the authors automatically confirm that their contribution can be checked for plagiarism and self-plagiarism.

Prior Publication and Self-Plagiarism 
The February Journal publishes original, previously unpublished research only. As part of the submission process, you will be required to warrant that this work has not been published and is not being considered for publication elsewhere. However, in exceptional cases, we may consider republishing work that previously appeared in another publication; for such cases, please contact the editors at info@thefebruaryjournal.org.