IJFAB Submission Guidelines

IJFAB is the leading forum in bioethics for feminist thought and debate. IJFAB welcomes feminist scholarship from any discipline on ethical issues related to health, health care, and the biomedical sciences, or to the social, economic, political and environmental determinants of health. All submissions are subject to anonymous peer review. Since open access to scholarly research offers significant educational and social benefits, IJFAB supports "green" open access.

Manuscript Submissions

IJFAB publishes at least one open issue per year in addition to thematically framed special issues. See our CFP page for current calls for upcoming special issues. Please submit your manuscript in any of the categories listed below, and the Editorial Office will see that it is reviewed either for IJFAB's next open issue or for an appropriate special issue.

Manuscripts must adhere to the guidelines for manuscript preparation given below. Those that do not may be returned to the author to be brought into compliance as a condition for consideration.

IJFAB publishes submissions in several different categories. We actively encourage submissions that, while still being academically rigorous, fall outside the standard essay format.

• Essays are usually in the range of 8,000–10,000 words (roughly 32–40 manuscript pages). However, shorter essays are also welcome. Longer essays will be considered at the discretion of the Editorial Office.
• Conversations provide a forum for open dialogue on particular issues in bioethics. Scholars engaged in fruitful exchanges are encouraged to share them in the pages of IJFAB. Sometimes these grow out of debates on the IJFAB blog. Please contact the Editorial Office with any inquiries or proposals.
• Commentaries offer an opportunity for analysis of specific policy issues, legislation, court decisions, or other contemporary developments within bioethics. These are usually shorter than essays, but longer pieces on important topics will be considered.
• In a different voice is dedicated to submissions in a range of formats that shed light on aspects of health, health care, or bioethics. These can include, but are not restricted to, opinion pieces, narratives, case studies, poetry, or other creative work. Submissions for the section are usually in the range of 3,000–5,000 words, but creative work can be shorter.

All submissions are subject to double anonymous peer review. The Editorial Office aims to return an initial decision to authors within eight weeks. Authors are frequently asked to revise and resubmit based on extensive reviewer comments. The Editorial Office aims to return a decision on revised papers within four to six weeks.

Manuscripts submitted to IJFAB must not be under simultaneous consideration by any other journal, and they cannot have been published elsewhere.

Submissions should be made through Scholar One. Please contact the Editorial Office at EditorialOffice@IJFAB.org with any questions about potential submissions to the Journal.

Reviews

IJFAB's Book Reviews provide a critical introduction to recent works in or related to feminist bioethics. Reviews of a single monograph tend to range between 1,200–2,000 words but may be longer at the discretion of the Editorial Office. We also invite occasional longer Review Essays that consider two or more recent works on a single theme. Please send all suggestions for review and inquiries to the Editorial Office at EditorialOffice@IJFAB.org. Please feel free to nominate your own publication for review!

All reviews are subject to internal review by the Editorial Office or members of the Editorial Board.

Manuscript Preparation

Submissions must adhere to items 1–5 in order to be sent out for review. Those accepted must be brought into compliance with the final two items as a condition of publication, but this is not necessary for review so long as references are consistently documented according to a recognized format.

1. Manuscripts should be double-spaced (including excerpts, notes, and references), and the right margin should not be justified. Please include page numbers.


2. All submissions should be sent as .DOC or .DOCX files. Please confer with the Editorial Office if this is not possible.


3. To facilitate our anonymous review process, the author should not be identified in the text or file metadata of the submission. Please take particular care with instances of self-citation.


4. Papers should include an abstract of approximately 100 words.


5. Endnotes should be brief and placed separately at the end of the paper. Any acknowledgments should appear first and be unnumbered. These are usually added later in the process as they usually include potentially identifying information about the author.


6. We use the author/date system of citing references, as described in The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed. In the text or notes, works should be cited as (author year, page number); for example, (Card 2003, 65). The page number alone can be used if understood from the context. Works cited should be included after the notes in a list of references.


7. Authors are responsible for bringing accepted manuscripts into full compliance with the IJFAB Style Guide as a condition of publication.

Green Open Access Policy 

Since open access to scholarly research offers significant educational and social benefits, IJFAB supports "green" open access. Green OA increases the dissemination of research results, makes those results available and citable before formal publication in the pages of the journal, and increases the potential for readership and citations. Because the material is available without charge, green OA also provides access to research to those with limited financial resources.

No less than three months after its acceptance, an author may self-deposit the post-refereed but pre-copyedited and typeset version of her manuscript on her own website, her institution's website, or in an institutional or subject-based repository. Please note that archiving in a proper repository such as an institution-based one guarantees long-term preservation.

When it becomes available, the author must add the DOI of the version of the article published in IJFAB, properly attribute IJFAB as the original place of publication, and provide correct citation details. An author may not post the version of her article that has undergone copyediting, typesetting, or proof changes nor may any commercial use of the article be made.

Open Researcher and Contributor ID

In preparation for publication, we suggest that you register for ORCID, or Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID is an open and independent registry intended to be the de facto standard for author identification in academic publishing. It is an alphanumeric code that identifies academic authors and provides a persistent identity for people similar to that provided by DOIs (digital object identifiers) for content. A particular author's work can be hard to recognize electronically because personal names are not unique, they change, reflect cultural differences in name order, include inconsistent use of first name abbreviations, and employ different writing systems. An ORCID ID addresses those issues and ensures that your work is recognized as yours.

The ORCID Registry is available free of charge to authors and researchers, who may obtain ORCID identifiers, manage their records of activities, and search for others in the Registry. Organizations may become members to link their records to ORCID identifiers, update ORCID records, receive updates from ORCID, and register their employees and students for ORCID identifiers.