Submissions

The Arrow Journal welcomes original papers on the application of contemplative wisdom to addressing pressing social, political, and environmental challenges. We encourage dialogue on wisdom and knowledge arising from methods of contemplative inquiry, ways of embodied knowing, and intellectual disciplines. The following instructions will help you provide our editorial team with everything we need for a smooth review and publication process. Please read and follow them when submitting your paper.

We welcome pitches and manuscripts on a rolling basis. We also frequently post calls for submissions for special issues. Check current calls on our call for submissions page.

Types of Submissions

Articles

Manuscripts submitted as articles should be 5000 – 8000 words (excluding footnotes). Submissions should follow standards for rigorous scholarly work, including a well-researched argument, engagement with relevant literature, and thorough citations.

Essays

At 2000 – 5000 words, essays provide a substantial discussion or argument on a single topic or a few closely related topics. Essays may include more personal narrative, engage in more reflective or speculative inquiry, rely less on specific bodies of literature, or offer more opinion-oriented arguments than article submissions (see above).

Short Essays

Under 2000 words, short essays offer a concise argument or brief comment on a single topic.

Book Reviews – New!

Under 2000 words, book reviews may review one to two books. We’re most interested in reviews of books that bring the spiritual and political into meaningful conversation. Reviews of recently published books are always welcome. Reviews of classic works should offer a fresh perspective that sheds new light on the work. If you’d like to submit a book review, please read more about what we look for in book reviews here.

General Submission Guidelines

All submissions receive double anonymous peer review, and we ask authors to submit two versions of their manuscript—a copy with full identifying information and an anonymized copy with all identifying information removed.

The primary manuscript document should be submitted as a Microsoft Word file with the following information:

  • Manuscript title
  • Author name(s)
  • Primary author contact information
  • 100-150-word abstract (may be shorter for short essays; not required for book reviews)
  • 3-6 keywords
  • Manuscript text
  • Complete references in Chicago Style footnotes. (Please include references only as in-document footnotes, using the Chicago Style footnote format. The Arrow does not publish a separate alphabetized reference list. Visit the Purdue Online Writing Lab for a comprehensive reference for Chicago Style.)

Tips for a successful submission:

  • Please read the journal. This is the best guide to what we look for in submissions.
  • Being able to distill the main points of your piece into one sentence is a good barometer of the clarity of your argument or narrative.
  • Submissions should balance intellectual sophistication and accessibility to a broad audience, including people who may not be experts in the author’s field.
  • We strongly encourage authors to integrate awareness of their own positionality in submissions. We prefer scholarship and argument that situate the author’s standpoint within the material discussed, rather than abstract theory.

An illustration accompanies most articles and essays as a complementary artistic contribution to the journal. If you would like to explore possible illustration content for a piece, please contact the editors at the time of submission. We also welcome photography or illustrations by authors.

Submissions may be sent via email as an attached Microsoft Word Document to editor@arrow-journal.org.

Thank you for your interest in The Arrow.

Style Guide

Formatting and Organization

  • File Title: Include first initial, period, last name, abbreviated title, and the word “Draft.” (e.g., “G.Dayley, Economic Utility, Draft”)
  • Text: Times New Roman, 12pt, single spaced, indent new paragraphs
  • Layout: 1” page margins, page numbers bottom center
  • Headings: Number all headings and subheadings (these will be removed in publication). Examples: (section 1), 1.1 (section 1, subsection 1), 1.2.1 (section 1, subsection 2, part 1)
  • Web links: Web links may be included as in-text hyperlinks for online publications. E-books and print publications may transpose web links to footnotes.

Citations

  • Please cite all references to others’ writing, ideas, inventions, research, and spoken material using numbered, superscript footnotes.
  • Include full author and publication information in footnotes, using Chicago style footnotes. Please visit the Purdue Online Writing Lab for a comprehensive reference for Chicago Style.
  • For multiple quotations from the same source, give the full citation the first time and an abbreviated citation thereafter.
    • Full citation: Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2013), 146.
    • Abbreviated citation:  Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 146.
    • Consecutive citations of the same work, after giving the full or abbreviated citation, may be denoted: Ibid., 255.
  • Be sure to cite using Chicago style for footnotes, not for a bibliographic entry.
    • Like this: Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics (Berkeley: Evolver Editions, 2012).
    • Not this: Eisenstein, Charles. Sacred Economics. Berkeley: Evolver Editions, 2012.
  • Include page numbers for direct quotes from written materials. Page numbers should appear in the footnote citation.
  • Superscript numbers for footnote appear after punctuation.

Spelling and Grammar

Proofing language: American English

Foreign language terminology:

  • Use English translations of non-English words when possible to make concepts accessible to widest audience. Example: “emptiness” rather than śūnyatā
  • When using non-English terms, use appropriate language symbols (diacritics) to indicate pronunciation. Example: jñāna
  • When introducing a new non-English term, use italics for the first use and provide the English translation in parentheses or in an explanatory sentence.
    • Example: This school of Buddhism is known as Mahāyāna (“Great Vehicle”). Mahāyāna practices include…
    • Exceptions: Common borrowed words (Buddha, Buddhist, etc.) need not be italicized on the first usage.