Submissions

Login or Register to make a submission.

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The submission file is in Microsoft Word (.docx) or RTF (.rtf) document file format.
  • The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end. Videos or other audio-visual media should be linked rather than embedded, unless arrangements have been made with the editors to host that content.
  • The document uses Chicago citation style with in-text citations and endnotes at the end of the article.
  • Where available, DOI urls for all cited references have been provided in the references list.
  • The text adheres to all other requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines below.

Author Guidelines

Unbound welcomes submissions from scholars and professionals at all stages of professional development in all fields. We encourage work that explores the interstices of digital scholarship, broadly conceived, with an emphasis on digital cultural studies; critical digital humanities; libraries, archives, and museums; the interpretive social sciences; and socially engaged computational or quantitative methods.

Special Issues

If you are interested in editing a special issue of Unbound, please submit to admin@dcsco-op.org the following in one PDF document:

    A 1,000 word abstract for the special issue addressing how this topic is timely and urgent to the broad field of digital scholarship.
    250-word bios and 2-page CVs for all editors. While we welcome graduate students who are interested in the experience of editing a special issue, we encourage students to include a faculty or professional co-editor.
    500 word abstracts for two cornerstone essays with author bios. These should not be essays by the co-editors.
    A proposed timeline for publication, factoring in a call for proposals, peer review, and editorial processes.

If you have questions about submitting a special issue, please email unbound@digital-frontiers.org. Proposals for special issues will be reviewed by the editorial board.

Proceedings

Unbound is currently home to the proceedings from select conferences sponsored by the Digital Cultural Studies Cooperative. At this time, we are not able to accommodate proceedings from non-affiliated events.

Individual Submissions

Authors may submit works in the following categories. Please submit completed works, do not submit abstracts.

Articles

Submit complete papers or essays of 3,000 to 5,000 words. Papers should address an interdisciplinary audience, minimizing or clarifying discipline-specific terminology or jargon for a broad readership. Use Chicago citation style with in-text citations. This submission category will undergo double peer review and will be published on a rollling basis. Articles that will incorporate multimodal content should include links or other means to access this content as part of the review process.

Reviews

Submit complete reviews of 1,000-2,500 words. We encourage reviews of books, conferences and cons, games, exhibits and events, performances, etc. Reviews should be timely and address topics of interest to the Unbound readership and the Digital Frontiers community. Reviews engaging in ad hominem attacks will not be published, and assertions should be substantiated with citations. Use Chicago citation style with in-text citations. This submission category will undergo editorial review to ensure timely publication, and will be published on a rolling basis. Longer, state-of-the-field reviews should follow the guidelines for Articles. If you're not sure if your review will fit with Unbound, please email unbound@digital-frontiers.org to inquire prior to submission.

Notes

Submit completed notes of no more than 2,000 words. We define our Notes category as brief, blog-style updates on pedagogy, projects, and praxis. Essentially, something that you'd submit as a poster to a conference - works in progress, single-institution case studies, etc. Use Chicago citation style with in-text citations. This submission category will undergo editorial review to ensure timely publication, and will be published on a rolling basis.

Portfolios

We are interested in new media art, music, and performance portfolios that incorporate culture jamming and critical contexts for culture work. To initiate the process of submitting art to Unbound, please submit a 500 word abstract describing the art and the type of media to be considered for publication. Proposals that will incorporate multimodal content should include links or other means to access this content as part of the review process. The editorial board will work with artists to determine if our platform can accommodate the multimodal content. In written materials and interpretive text, use Chicago citation style with in-text citations. This submission category will undergo double peer review and will be published on a rollling basis.

Copyright Notice

  • Unless otherwise specified by the author/s (because the work contains components to which the author/s do not hold copyright, e.g. licensed music/artwork), works are published using the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) license. Authors may also elect to license their works under more permissive terms at their discretion.
  • Authors retain copyright and publishing rights of their work without restriction. We ask as a courtesy that republished works acknowledge Unbound as a previous venue of publication.

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.