Submission Guidelines

Afkar welcomes three kinds of submissions: research articles, short essays, and book reviews. The specific requirements for each category is as follows:

Research papers: Research papers should be based on original research with a careful analysis of relevant primary-source material. They should be between 4,000-8,000 words and not exceed 30 double-spaced pages. All research articles should include an abstract of maximum 300 words. The abstract should explain your research question, methods, and general findings.

Book reviews: Book reviews should provide close and critical readings of new publications by scholars in Middle East studies. They should evaluate the strength and weaknesses of the author’s argument, and situate the work within the larger literature of the subject in question. They should be between 700-1,500 words.

Moreover, all manuscripts should fulfil the following requirements:

Eligibility: Authors should either 1) currently be enrolled in an undergraduate program, 2) submit a manuscript that was composed during the author’s undergraduate studies, or 3) submit a manuscript for which research was conducted during the author’s undergraduate studies. Afkar reviews submissions only with the understanding that these have not been published elsewhere. Co-authored papers are accepted.

Citations and footnotes: All submissions should be formatted in Chicago style (notes ­- bibliography), with notes grouped together as endnotes following the text. Footnotes and in-text citations are not permitted, nor are bibliographies. Papers without citations and references will not be reviewed. Acknowledgements may be included as an introductory note.

Language: All submissions should be written in English. Translations are required for all foreign-language terms and phrases that appear in the main body of the article, but the author can decide whether they wish to provide translations of foreign-language terms and phrases that appear in the endnotes. Afkar follows the transliteration guidelines provided by IJMES (https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-file-manager/file/57d83390f6ea5a022234b400/TransChart.pdf).

Title page: All submissions should include a title page at the beginning of the manuscript. This page should mention the title of manuscript, the date, and the author’s name, institutional affiliation, and contact information. If the manuscript contains an abstract, this should be included on a separate page following the title page.

Format: All submissions should be written in 12 pt Times New Roman font. They should be double-spaced, paginated (bottom right corner), and have standard margins (top 1 in, bottom 1 inch, left 1 inch, right 1 inch). The manuscript should be submitted in Word .docx format.

Submissions should be emailed to afkarjournal.submissions@gmail.com

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Once the editorial board has received a a submission, we will strive to notify the author within 7 working days whether the article conforms to the journal’s guidelines. Manuscripts that conform to the journal’s guidelines will be anonymously reviewed by members of the editorial board, and authors are normally notified of a manuscripts’ acceptance or rejection within 3-4 weeks of receipt. Articles recommended for publication might be subject to a revision process during which the author is asked to make amendments to the original submission.