Submissions

This journal is not accepting submissions at this time.

Author Guidelines

When submitting to Postgraduate English, please:

There are no fees (e.g. Article Processing Charges) for submission or publication.

AI Policy

The Postgraduate English editorial team recognise that the use of AI assistance in writing and research is widespread and has numerous advantages. The regulations below are aimed at preserving our journal’s academic integrity while also adhering to copyright protection, data security, and confidentiality standards. We thank our authors and peer-reviewers for adhering to the regulations below.

We are aware that AI-related academic misconduct is impossible to prove beyond a doubt. Nevertheless, editors retain the right to reject papers based on strong suspicion of AI-related academic misconduct.

Should you have any questions, please email our editors at pgeng.submissions@durham.ac.uk.

I. AI Guidance for Guidance for Authors

  1. Author originality and human oversight over AI are mandatory.
  2. The use of assistive AI used for accessibility purposes (Live Captioning, Seeing AI, Speechify etc.) is accepted and need not be disclosed.
  3. Full disclosure of AI use is mandatory for all authors via the Author AI Disclosure Form (barring the disclosure exceptions stated in rule I.2).
  4. AI use is allowed for transcription and translation as long as it is disclosed in the Author AI Disclosure Form and everything that was AI generated has been thoroughly checked by the author (barring the disclosure exceptions stated in rule I.2).
  5. AI use for search assistance is fully allowed and need not be declared.
  6. AI should not replace original scholarly judgement. The author retains full responsibility for the accuracy of their submission and any copyright infringement. The author is responsible for the entirety of their paper/review, including all AI-generated content. All AI output must be disclosed, reviewed, fact-checked, and edited by the author (barring the disclosure exceptions stated in rule I.2).
  7. AI should not be used to hide plagiarism or fabricate fictitious references (hallucinations).
  8. If an article or review is found to contain a hallucinated reference (i.e. a paper/book that does not exist), it will likely be automatically rejected.
  9. If an article or review is found to contain any LLM prompts or similar proof of AI generation (such as ‘Please rephrase response’), it will be automatically rejected.
  10. Except where the argument or research is legitimately about AI itself, generative AI or LLMs cannot be cited as a source or regarded as an author, as their results are not reproducible or reliable.
  11. The author is responsible to ensure that any AI tool being used protects data privacy and confidentiality, adheres to intellectual property legislation, and follows high data security standards. This also applies to the manner in which the author employs any AI tool.
  12. AI-generated or AI-altered images are not permitted (unless an essential part of the research methodology, disclosed, and properly documented).
  13. AI-generated research evidence is not permitted (unless an essential part of the research methodology, disclosed, and properly documented).
  14. The editors retain the right  to investigate any suspicion of non-disclosure or misuse of AI, which are seen as cases of academic misconduct. Articles/reviews with strong suspicions of misconduct will be rejected.

II. AI Guidance for Peer-reviewers and Editors

  1. Editorial and peer-review decisions must remain human-controlled. Generative AI should not be used by peer-reviewers. Editors and peer-reviewers should never upload any of the authors’ materials to any generative AI platform to preserve confidentiality and prevent the material from being used without the author’s permission in AI training. Generative AI should not be used at any stage of the peer-review/decision process.
  2. AI software for accessibility (Live Captioning, Seeing AI, Speechify, Grammarly etc.) can be used by editors/peer-reviewers with disabilities when necessary.
  3. Reviewers should pay attention to the presence of leftover AI prompts, AI hallucinations (both as non-existent sources and non-existent facts), and the use AI-specific phrases. Regarding the latter, the reviewers should keep in mind that the presence of AI-specific phrases is not disqualifying, as confusion can arise in differentiating between AI generated content and content written by non-native speakers (see point II.4).
  4. Reviewers are not allowed to use AI detection software. AI detection software has been shown to be unreliable, and biased against neurodivergent and non-native writers. Particularly, there is growing evidence for this software’s discriminatory tendencies against non-native English speakers. Additionally, the use of such software would be in contradiction with rule II.1.
  5. If a peer-reviewer suspects undisclosed AI use or AI misuse by an author, the matter should be raised with the journal editors, who will investigate it. The editors retain the right to  investigate any suspicion of non-disclosure or misuse of AI, which is likely, on a balance of probabilities, to be a case of academic misconduct. We are aware that AI-related academic misconduct is impossible to prove beyond doubt. Editors retain the right to reject papers based on strong suspicion of AI-related academic misconduct.

Peer Review Process

An Editorial Board of around thirty established academics is in place to advise across a wide range of topics under the broader term of 'English Studies'.

Academic articles will first be considered by the journal editors. If the submission meets the basic criteria of the journal, as outlined in the first two points of the author submission checklist, it will be matched with a suitable reviewer who will provide brief feedback; articles will be double-blind peer reviewed, meaning that neither authors nor reviewers will know one another's identity. If the submission does not meet journal criteria, the editors will offer explanatory feedback as a basis for future submission.

The review process takes a variable amount of time, depending on availability of reviewers; while we cannot promise an exact turnaround time, we aim to maintain regular communication with those who submit to the journal.

Peer review feedback will fall under four categories:

  1. Reject (no feedback or further comment required).
  2. Requires substantial revision: the article may not be published in the current cycle, but may be published in future if substantially improved as per reviewer comments. Articles requiring substantial revision may be returned to the original peer reviewer to confirm appropriate changes have been made.
  3. Acceptable with minor revisions: the article will be sent back to the author with the attached comments and a request to make revisions for the current cycle. The author will then return the revised article to the editors, who will judge it against the reviewer comments and decide whether it is suitable to then accept for publication. The editors may ask for further revisions if they are necessary.
  4. Accept: the article will usually be published in this cycle. The editors will pass on any reviewer comments and request any necessary revisions be made prior to publication.

It is important to note that feedback at any stage without explicit communication of acceptance to the journal is not a guarantee of future publication. The editors have a two-fold role of collating the journal and offering guidance to authors who may not have a significant amount of experience in publishing their work. It is our hope that even those whose work is not accepted will find the process helpful.

Book reviews will be judged by the journal editors; the editors will then communicate feedback and, if the review is accepted, suggest revisions to be made prior to its publication.

Final decisions about publication will be made by the editors.

Submission Preparation Checklist

All submissions must meet the following requirements.

  1. Articles should present original insight, strength of argument and critical engagement with its field. The journal aims to publish research that contributes something new to English studies. Masters students wishing to submit work done on their course should prioritise submitting articles derived from their dissertations (or equivalent). Articles should be presented in clear and readable prose, avoiding overuse of jargon, providing translations where necessary, and maintaining consistency of formatting and spelling of names. Submissions that would require significant grammatical revisions before peer review will be asked to revise their work and resubmit for the next cycle. For examples of successful submissions, please consult prior issues of the journal.
  2. The submission should not have been previously published, or be awaiting publication in any other journal or publication.
  3. Please submit your work in a Word document.
  4. Please submit your work formatted for peer review. If your work was previously submitted as an assignment (such as a dissertation), please remove any references to course names or numbers, supervisors, and the date submitted. Please submit your work as you would have it published; if you submit work that needs obvious revisions of this kind, it is unlikely to be sent to peer review. If submitting an article, please make sure that you follow these guidelines for Ensuring a Blind Review:

    The authors of the document should delete their names from the text, with Author and year used in the references and footnotes, instead of the authors' name, article title, etc.

    With Microsoft Office documents, author identification should also be removed from the properties for the file, by clicking on the following, beginning with File on the main menu of the Microsoft application: File - Save As - Tools (or Options with a Mac) - Security - Remove personal information from file properties on save - Save
  5. Please make sure that your submission follows the MHRA Style Guide and that references are provided in the appropriate MHRA format.
  6. Book reviews should be on an academic or critical text that has been published in the last two years. Please get in touch with the editors before you submit a review with details of the book you wish to review.
  7. Articles should be between 5000 - 7000 words in length. Book reviews should be between 1000 - 2000 words in length.
  8. Please include a cover sheet in a separate document which includes the author's name, five keywords for indexing, and a 250 - 300 word abstract. Please also include institutional affiliation if you have one and ORCID iD where applicable.
  9. All submitting authors must complete the Author Submission Document, which should be emailed with the manuscript at submission. If a manuscript has multiple authors, each author must complete this form separately.
  10. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce any material for which they do not own copyright, and for ensuring that the appropriate acknowledgements are included in their submission. Where relevant, please include evidence of the clearances by email or with your cover sheet. For more information on copyright and fair use, please consult this guide.

Copyright Notice

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication
  2. Articles accepted for publication are simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 licence that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  3. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  4. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Authors may deposit the Submitted version; Accepted version (Author Accepted Manuscript); or Published version (Version of Record) in an institutional repository of the author's choice. Sharing a preprint or Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) in this way does not constitute prior publication, and will not prejudice publication in the journal.
  5. Author’s submitting a work must obtain permission to reproduce any third-party material for online publication in perpetuity. It is the author’s responsibility to include any acknowledgements requested by copyright holders. It is also the author’s responsibility to mark clearly third-party material used with permission, material that has separate licensing terms, and material used under exceptions or limitations to copyright.

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