Submission Guidelines

The International Journal of Role-Playing (IJRP) editorial board invites scholars of all disciplines to submit articles for publication.

The IJRP is an international, double-blind peer-reviewed scholarly journal that examines all facets of role-playing games for an audience of academics, developers, and role-players themselves. Issues appear online once or twice annually, usually with a rolling deadline for submission of new content. Content is also curated from various conferences in the field. Since its first issue in 2008, the IJRP continues to serve as a platform for documentation and analysis of role-playing games as a global cultural phenomenon that straddles the traditional and the transgressive, the analog and the digital, individual and community, as well as theory and praxis. The journal is Open Access that charges neither authors nor readers any fees. Authors retain the right to use their published articles elsewhere, given the mention of the IJRP as the original publication channel.

All publications to the IJRP must be submitted in MS WORD or RTF format, submitted electronically to the editorial board (ijrp.editor [at] gmail.com). Camera-ready manuscripts must also be submitted in MS WORD format, so that the editors can make any last-second changes.

Submissions to the IJRP consists of two parts: a cover letter and the main submission:

The Cover Letter

All submissions must be accompanied by a cover letter detailing:

1) Brief introduction to the paper’s contents
2) Author(s)
3) Contact details for the corresponding (submitting) author(s)
4) 5-7 Keywords

The Main Submission

The IJRP is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed academic journal. In the past, this publication has accepted submissions from the games industry, academia, the art world, and other areas. While we still encourage authors from a variety of fields and educational experiences to submit — including students and independent scholars — articles must conform to academic standards in terms of methodological rigor, formal tone, and extensive citation. Submissions will undergo both editorial and peer review.

All submissions must contain the items specified below:

Manuscript: The main article/text/design etc. All submissions to the IJRP must use Chicago Author-Date for citations. Tables, figures, and images must be submitted as large size, high resolution JPGs or PNGs, along with captions and thorough alt-text summaries for each image.

For information on Chicago Author-Date, see the Chicago Manual of Style website.

Authors will be responsible for producing manuscripts following the review process, within a deadline provided by the issue editor(s). Authors submitting articles should be prepared to perform at least one round of editorial  revisions if not more depending upon the results of peer review. The editors are committed to helping authors refine their papers throughout the review process.

The manuscript must be written in English (UK or US). Manuscripts that do not adhere to a strict standard of language quality will be rejected. We recommend consulting copy-editors before submission when possible.

Regular submissions should range between 5000-9000 words not including References. The editorial board may make exceptions for shorter submissions in the case of special issues containing papers from a role-play studies specific panel or conference.

Abstract: Each submission must contain an abstract that addresses the key points of the publication.  This abstract should be between 250-500 words in length and can include central concepts from the main text. Clarity of expression is encouraged. Disciplinary jargon should be avoided, explained, or re-phrased to be as accessible as possible.

Peer review process:

The International Journal of Role-Playing sends all articles through a rigorous review process. The steps of the process are as follows:

1) The editors review the document. They do one of the following:

a) Provide editorial revisions for the author to complete before peer review;

b) Send the article to be reviewed by 2-3 experts in role-playing game studies and other relevant interdisciplinary fields; or

c) Reject the article with comments for how to improve the article or recommendations for more suitable publication channels.

2) The editors facilitate multiple rounds of peer review and revisions as required. Double blind peer review is the norm for a standard issue. Some special issues have open peer review, e.g.,  issues containing articles from a conference where anonymity cannot be guaranteed.

3) If the editors and reviewers judge that the article is ready for publication, the article is published in the next issue of the journal. The IJRP strives to publish at least one issue each year.

The current acceptance rate of the journal from start to finish of the review process is around 25%. If an academic article submission to IJRP does not meet the basic requirements or is unable to pass peer review, the editors will return it to the authors with suggestions on how to improve the work for later re-submission. We aim to support scholars in the field as they develop their work as much as possible.