Submission Guidelines & Process

AGITATE Now!

AGITATE Now! compliments and extends AGITATE!’s annual and biennial volumes by offering a dynamic home for ongoing conversations, emerging meditations, and creative agitations. Because volumes are imagined around particular themes and are published annually or biennially, AGITATE Now! is a vital space for fostering ongoing discussions that fall outside of volume themes but reflect our political commitments and communities. We aim to publish one piece each month. While we prioritize original pieces, we also intermittently republish existing work to advance certain actions, interventions, or conversations among our readers, communities, and ourselves.

AGITATE Now! features work that responds to and reflects on the current moment with a sense of urgency, providing space for agitations that deepen and challenge the key themes at the heart of AGITATE!’s work. These themes include (but are not limited to): questions of solidarity and justice; politics of translation; politics of location; living and learning through multiple languages, genres, and mediums (including visual arts); unsettling dominant modes of knowledge production and valuation; and fostering visions and practices whereby collective learning and growth are prioritized over ‘getting things done.’ Featured work has included essays, statements and commentaries, translations, poems, videos, interviews, and artwork. The decision to accept submissions for AGITATE Now! is made collectively by the AGITATE! Editorial Collective.

AGITATE Now! publishes on a more frequent basis than the journal volumes and is often where more urgent, time-sensitive submissions find a home. If you are interested in publishing on AGITATE Now!, please indicate this as part of your submission.

You will receive a confirmation of your AGITATE Now! submission within two weeks of submission. After that point, two reviewers will be assigned for your submission. The iterative review process will vary depending on the needs of the piece and generally takes two to ten weeks. Contributors are notified about the status of their submissions via email by members of the editorial collective.

AGITATE! Volumes

Volumes will showcase work that upholds, builds on, and challenges AGITATE!’s mission. Volumes include pieces submitted (a) directly to the editorial collective through a rolling review process; (b) recruited through open calls, and (c) pieces commissioned directly from agitators by the editorial collective.

AGITATE! invites work that challenges prevailing generic boundaries–academic, literary, artistic, visual, musical, and so on. AGITATE! encourages submissions from activists, artists, scholars, writers, and other contributors regardless of their formal status in or affiliation with formal institutions. In particular, multi-lingual submissions or submissions in languages other than English are highly encouraged.

AGITATE! publishes annual or biennial volumes featuring significant works in a range of genres on issues that unsettle hegemonic knowledges and modes of telling. The volumes are organized around a particular theme determined by the members of the editorial collective based on their translocal and transnational collaborations with issues and struggles in multiple sites. Sometimes, themes are developed in advance to build off existing energies and conversations;  at others, themes emerge when a collection of submissions coalesces around a given topic. Works in AGITATE! volumes are published by invitation. If you are interested in publishing with AGITATE!, we encourage you to reach out to the EC to discuss your idea. Kindly note that received submissions might not fit into existing ongoing editorial themes. If that is the case for your submission, a member of the editorial collective will contact you in a timely manner and discuss alternative options for publication, including with AGITATE Now!

You will receive a confirmation email within two weeks of submission. After that point, two reviewers will be assigned for your submission. The iterative review process will vary depending on the needs of the piece and generally takes four to twelve weeks. Contributors are notified about the status of their submissions via email by members of the editorial collective.

Once we accept a submission for publication, we are committed to finding a home for the work. Due to our annual publication schedule and the rolling nature of our review process, time to publication takes anywhere from six to twelve months for journal volumes.

Peer-Review Process

AGITATE! is a peer-reviewed journal invested in building relationships with contributors and is committed to a collaborative and transparent review process that supports mutual nourishment and defies traditional models of academic reviews. Multiple reviewers confer over each submission. Assigned reviewers may be recruited from the editorial collective, editorial board, and members of the broader AGITATE! community.

Our review process is not anonymous. While the pervasiveness of anonymity in dominant publishing norms might be perceived as a measure to neutralize bias, it does not serve our purpose. We value the connection between the piece and the contributor’s identity, location, and political struggles. This is because the editorial collective is committed to building relationships and expanding our community of agitators. The review process is a key site where this work takes place.

The review process is intended to be an open conversation of co-learning between contributors and reviewers. Accordingly, the form and style of review for each individual submission varies. The review process will account for the specificity of different genres such as artistic work, creative writing, and traditional articles, and will reflect the subjectivities and experiences of both contributors and reviewers.

Our reviewers use the following peer-review heuristic to review submissions:

• What does the piece agitate, and how?
• What is the most important intervention that the submission makes?
• Does the submission support our commitment to fostering collaborations across multiple genres and languages? If so, how?
• Does the submission include marginalized or less heard voices that are not professionally trained in academia, arts, or activism, but whose commitments align with and advance match the vision of AGITATE!? If so, how?
• Does the submission commit to building relationships with other organizations that unsettle dominant knowledge practices and develop accessible resources that amplify collective knowledge production in search of justice? If so, how?
• Does this submission help blur the imposed compartmentalization of academia, activism, and the arts? If so, how?

 

Copyright and Licensing

Contributors retain copyrights for any and all published material and can distribute and reprint their work as they wish. When contributors publish with AGITATE!, the journal is given the non-exclusive right to publish the work. If you are seeking permission to re-use the work of a contributor(s), please contact the editorial collective. We can help you get in touch with the contributor(s).

All work on AGITATE! is distributed with a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC 4.0). This license allows reusers to share (copy and/or redistribute the material in any medium or format) or adapt (remix, transform, and/or build upon the material) the article, as long as the original author and source are cited, and the use is for noncommercial purposes. Permission is not needed for these noncommercial uses. More information about this license can be found here.

Additional Information

As an open-access journal, AGITATE! does not have article processing or submission costs. There are no costs associated with publishing with AGITATE!. AGITATE! does not charge a subscription fee and is freely available for all readers.

By submitting to AGITATE!, you will automatically be added to receive notifications about the journal’s future publications and posts. Names and emails will not be made available for any other purposes.

Any requests for updated names, bios, or content removal will be addressed on a case-by-case basis. Requests can be submitted to our email.

If you have any questions about the publishing process, in general, or your submission, specifically, please contact us at agitatejournal@umn.edu.