Author Guidelines

Potential authors are invited to submit manuscripts online via the DSQ website by clicking "Make a Submission" on the sidebar.

The editors invite submission of article-length manuscripts (suggested length 8,000-12,000 words) as well as shorter works of creative writing. DSQ is a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and international journal of interest to social scientists, scholars in the humanities, disability rights advocates, creative writers, and others concerned with the issues of people with disabilities. It represents the full range of methods, epistemologies, perspectives, and content that the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary field of disability studies embraces. We thus invite smart, interesting, and ground-breaking submissions engaged in developing theoretical and practical knowledge about disability and promoting the full and equal participation of persons with disabilities in society.

The DSQ Editors do not make preliminary courtesy decisions about the fit of a potential submission for DSQ. Authors considering DSQ as a potential publication venue should take the critical time and care to peruse the journal for themselves and determine the suitability of their work for DSQ. Reviewing a few recent issues from the journal would be useful. Also use the SEARCH bar and use key terms to find what the journal has already published that relates to your work.

DSQ does not consider manuscripts under review elsewhere or that have been previously published. We also do not accept unsolicited book reviews. All articles and pieces of creative writing published in DSQ are peer reviewed. 

We ask that all authors submitting manuscripts to DSQ:

• State all sources of funding for research and include this information in either the acknowledgments (if appropriate) or as a footnote/endnote.
• State in the manuscript, if appropriate, that the research protocol employed was approved by the relevant institutional review boards (IRB) or ethics committees for human or animal experiments and that all human subjects provided appropriate informed consent. Again, this information might appear in the acknowledgments (if appropriate) or as a footnote/endnote.

All submissions must be formatted in Microsoft Word (.docx).  We do not accept pdf files. Documents should be submitted as a single file, including appendices.

Remember that you are writing for an interdisciplinary audience. Assume your reader has a general understanding of disability studies but is not from your discipline. Usually it is best to avoid a separate "literature review" section in the beginning of the article--better to weave that analysis into your paper and not make the reader wait too long before understanding the most significant and original points you are making. (Obviously that does not apply to all submissions, such as literature review essays).

If submissions include images or tables, authors should insert such materials in the body of the articles at the appropriate point. All images must be accompanied by a text description. To comply with the terms of the publisher's Crossref membership, Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) must be included with references when they are available. To check for DOIs, you can use the Free DOI Lookup form on the Crossref website.

Alternative text, also called "alt text" must be included for all images, charts, graphs, and figures. Alt text should be limited to 150 characters, and can be added to Word documents easily. Alt text should:

• Be descriptive and concise: Describe the image clearly but keep it brief. A few words to a short sentence for a simple image or illustration is ideal, and one to two sentences is appropriate for more detailed graphs and charts. See examples below.
• Add context: Include information that conveys the image's purpose and relevance within the article. Avoid simply describing what the image looks like.
• Avoid redundancy: Do not start with phrases like "image of" or "picture of." Avoid repeating any information that is used in the figure caption or text. Screen readers will announce the figure as an image, then read the alt text, and then read the figure caption, and the user will ideally be able to gather the information of the whole image from all three elements.
• Include relevant information: If the image contains relevant text, include it in the alt text.

Examples: We have included two generic cases in which an author would need to provide alt-text.

• Photograph/illustration: Describe what is shown. (Examples: A woman smiling with short brown hair and glasses from the shoulders up. OR A dog sits on the foreground with a sign that reads “No loitering” with a forest in the background.)
• Graph/diagram: Say what kind of graph or diagram is being shown (if applicable) and describe what is being measured/compared. Reminder, if the details of the graph/diagram are already described in the figure caption, it doesn’t necessarily have to be repeated in the alt-text. (Examples: A bar graph titled “Average cats per city” comparing the number of cats per household on the y-axis and the names of different cities on the x-axis. The cities include Columbus, Phoenix, Toronto, and Sacramento.)

Peer Review Process

All articles and creative works are reviewed by peers who have the appropriate knowledge and expertise. When we receive a new submission at DSQ we read it first, as editors, and then determine 2-4 peer reviewers for each submission.  We contact those reviewers and begin by requesting a review back in 4 weeks time.  Reviewers don't always respond quickly (or even agree to do the review) and thus, additional reviewers, or nudges for initial reviewers, must often follow.  It is not uncommon for the peer review process to take up to 6 months although we do our best to move a new submission through the process as quickly as possible.  

If you have not heard anything back from the DSQ editors on the status of your submission in 8-12 weeks time, you should always feel free to contact us and we will update you regarding the review process for your submission.

Once we have reviews back, we read those reviews and the original submission once again; we make careful consideration in our regular editorial meetings about the next steps forward. A DSQ Editorial Decision Letter then goes back to the author/s. If it is a Revise & Resubmit, we indicate the extent of those revisions (and include the original peer reviewer comments). We generally ask for a revision in 3 month's time; we also ask that such revisions also include a cover letter from the author/s that details the revisions that were made.

Final publication decisions are made by the Editor/s based on information gathered from the peer reviews and the success and extent of the revision that is re-submitted.

DSQ Special Issue Proposal Guidelines

The editors of Disability Studies Quarterly are happy to consider proposals for a special issue.  Proposals should include: 

1. A five hundred-word abstract outlining your topic, current research and issues in the field, and the gaps in research your issue hopes to address. You may add additional length to highlight your experience as editors and describe your approach to editing and working with authors and manuscripts.
2. A short CV for the special issue editor(s). This should also highlight your editing accomplishments.
3. A one-page Call for Papers.
4. A plan for soliciting and collecting scholarship from a wide range of academics, activists (if appropriate), and independent scholars.
5. A plan for soliciting participants in the peer review process. Normally we expect Guest Editors to use DSQ's Online Journal System (OJS) to manage their editorial workflow. 
6. A narrative project timeline with realistic completion dates for all phases of the project.

It is the responsibility of Guest Editors, once selected, to solicit submissions, arrange for peer reviews, referee the peer review process, make appropriate selections of quality pieces, copyedit selected articles, and work within the DSQ database to manage the editorial workflow and submit publication-ready materials. Please submit full contact details for all contributors.  Guest Editors are expected to update DSQ editors regularly on the progress and process of the special issue.  

Interested parties should send materials to the journal editors' email at: dsqeditors@disstudies.org.