Submission Guidelines and Policies

Submissions are welcome any time and will be reviewed on a rolling basis. To be considered for publication in the Fall 2024 issue of Waves, please send your project and accompanying writer’s memo in a single .docx file to waves.uj@gmail.com by Monday, October 21, 2024. Alternative media projects such as podcasts and video essays can be sent in a suitable format for your project (e.g., .mp3 or .mp4 files, YouTube links, etc.).

1) Submissions

The Manuscript: We accept single- or multi-authored academic, creative, and public-facing submissions by all undergraduate students. We accept anything from essays and reviews to multimedia pieces (videos, images, games) and creative writing (poetry, fiction). Text-based submissions must not exceed 5,000 words, and we welcome submissions that are shorter and/or multimodal. Submissions can also be adapted from longer projects (e.g., an undergraduate thesis), but before submitting, be sure to revise the adaptation to be a standalone piece.  

To be considered for publication, submissions must have a humanistic dimension: What does your project teach us about language, identity, or cultural values? Who is impacted? Whose voice needs to be heard? How do we look to the past to make a better future? What can individuals do to rebuild the systems around us? How can we innovate to address social problems and possibilities? 


The Writer’s Memo: To be eligible for publication, please also send a writer’s memo of 200-300 words about the creation of your work. This can be personal - a first-person account of how and why you created this project - and should address the following: 

  • The context in which you created this project

  • Your intended audience and goals

  • For creative or public-facing submissions, an explanation of your choice of genre and/or medium

If your work is accepted for publication, you will be asked to send an abstract (for academic work), list of keywords, and short bio. 


2) Submission Eligibility

We welcome work by any and all undergraduate students. Undergraduate students are eligible if they have not yet graduated (or have graduated within the last twelve months). All submissions will be reviewed based on their originality, creativity, and rigor without regard for age, gender, race/ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, country of origin, or the ideological views of the authors.


By submitting here, you are affirming that your piece has not been or will not be submitted or published elsewhere, and it is not under review at another journal. If authors wish to submit their work to another journal after publication, they will be required to submit a request in writing. 


3) Formatting Guidelines

Since Waves publishes work across disciplines, we accept several citation styles. Citation style for each piece should reflect the discipline and/or genre of the work. Please use APA for science and social science, MLA for humanities, or IEEE for technology and engineering. For help with citations, please reference Purdue Owl. If you have additional questions about style or citations, please email our editors.Text-based articles must be submitted using Word .doc or .docx only. If your work contains graphics, including images, figures, and tables should appear within the manuscript rather than at the end. All graphics, including figures and tables must be in JPEG format; 300 DPI; maximum 1000 pixels wide x 2600 pixels high. Captions with credits must be included for each figure, and all tables labeled.All citations must be complete in text and in the bibliography.


4) Review Process

All submissions will be peer reviewed by reviewers whose expertise best aligns with your submission. You will receive one of the following notifications about your draft: 

  • Accept

  • Revise and resubmit 

  • Reject

If your submission receives a “revise and resubmit,” our editors will return your draft with revision suggestions from our peer reviewers. Our editors will be happy to work with you to ensure your revisions meet our expectations for publication. 


5) Information on Submission Types

Waves publishes undergraduate work, including longer articles, shorter pieces, creative works, and digital projects. All submissions should have a humanistic focus or application, and we accept a variety of genres, including:

  • Humanities research articles

  • Science and social science research articles

  • Reviews (systematic reviews, meta-analyses, medical reviews)

  • Public-facing and/or community-engaged projects

  • Digital projects (video or photo essays, podcasts, archival projects)

  • Creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry

  • Photography, visual art, graphic design, computer-aided design

  • Games or code experiments

  • Apps or programs


6) Author and Journal Rights

Waves requires First North American Serial Rights (FNASR) from authors who choose to publish with us. Waves has the right to be the first publisher in North America to publish the author’s piece. After publication, all copyright to that published work reverts back to the author. This means that after the author’s piece is first published in Waves, the author has the right to publish their piece again elsewhere. We do this to protect authors’ intellectual property rights and encourage critical discourse.

7) Accessibility

As an open access journal, Waves allows free distribution and use of articles we publish, ensuring the widest possible audience for your work. We use the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license for our journal. You retain the copyright, and grant Waves and our readers rights to use, quote from, print, and redistribute your work, providing you are credited. Furthermore, this license allows the production of derivative works, as long as you are credited, and as long as producers similarly allow their derivative works to be shared. We welcome your questions about our use of Creative Commons licensing.


In addition, we work to make sure all work is accessible through multiple platforms and programs. 

  • All images should have captions and alt tags to ensure readability

  • All submissions that include audio or video multimedia files must also include transcripts.