Policies

Who Can Submit

The Undergraduate Historical Journal at UC Merced generally publishes materials related to history – historiography, theory, and interdisciplinary studies – written primarily by UC Merced undergraduates. The editors reserve the right to determine the suitability of submissions. For additional information, please contact hmalsbury@ucmerced.edu.

The Peer Review Process

Our review process involves several steps. (1) After the editorial board has received a submission, our editors read it and come to a consensus on whether it will be accepted or rejected. (2) After a submission has been accepted, three editors will review the submission closely. When all three reviews are completed, the author will receive them via an email message. During this phase, authors are also encouraged to produce or seek professor reviews on their papers with publishing in mind. (3) When the editorial board receives a newly revised version of the submission, the original three editors will once again review the submission in accordance with their comments and expectations. (4) After content and structure are finalized, the submission is reviewed again for any remaining mechanical errors. (5) Finally, when a submission is fully reviewed, it is reviewed by the journal's faculty advisor who gives final approval. After final approval, the submission becomes a published article in the journal's next issue.

This is a brief outline of the process, for more information contact the Chief Editor.

Removal

Once posted to a repository, a paper cannot generally be revised or removed. We feel it is important to provide perpetual access to materials published within eScholarship whenever possible and appropriate. However, we will remove publications under special circumstances, including in the case of submission errors, rights violations, or inappropriate content. Please be aware, however, that even after the removal of a text, a citation to the paper will remain in our system, along with a URL.

If you would like your work removed from eScholarship, please contact the Chief Editor.

Revising Work

Once published, we are generally unable to revise manuscripts. If a significant error or omission is discovered, contact the Chief Editor.

Author Review

Authors are asked to review PDFs created from their papers within 5 days of being sent the PDF. At this stage, we're unable to make any changes beyond the rare error that occurs in PDF conversion.

Rights and Permissions

Before submitting a paper to the repository, please be sure that all necessary permissions have been cleared. You retain the copyright to your paper and grant us the nonexclusive right to publish this material, meaning that you may also publish it elsewhere. All submissions to the repository are subject to the standard author agreement, an example of which may be found here.