Indiana University Press (IU Press) is the scholarly publishing arm of Indiana University, founded in 1950 in Bloomington, Indiana. It is a mid-sized, non-profit university press with an outsized reputation in specific humanities fields: African studies, Jewish and Holocaust studies, folklore and ethnomusicology, film and media, philosophy, and religion. The press publishes roughly 38 scholarly journals - its journals program has been running since 1987 - alongside about 70 new books a year and a backlist of around 2,000 titles.

If you work in the humanities or area studies, IU Press journals such as Africa Today, Victorian Studies, Journal of Modern Literature, or the Journal of Folklore Research are long-established venues with careful editorial standards. This guide covers what the press publishes, how access and fees work, what peer review looks like, and how to submit.

IU Press journals are field journals: each serves a specific scholarly community, often in partnership with a learned society. Use the table below to match your manuscript to the right cluster.

Each journal has its own editorial board, scope statement, and submission instructions, so always read the individual journal's call for papers before submitting.

• Scholarly journals (~38 titles) - quarterly and biannual peer-reviewed journals in the humanities and social sciences, many published on behalf of scholarly societies. Current issues are available through major scholarly platforms, and back content is widely held in digital archives such as JSTOR and Project MUSE - check each journal's page for its exact hosting arrangement.
• Scholarly monographs and edited volumes (~70 new books/year) - the core book program in African, Asian, Jewish, and Holocaust studies, anthropology, film, folklore, history, music, philosophy, and religion.
• Open-access books - the press runs an open-access publishing platform for selected book titles, expanding free-to-read access to IU scholarship.

IU Press journals follow the traditional university-press model rather than the APC-funded model common in the sciences:

Because fee arrangements are journal-specific and can change, always confirm current terms with the journal office rather than relying on a general price list.

• Model: double-anonymized peer review is the norm across the IU Press journal list, consistent with humanities practice - reviewers do not see author names and vice versa.
• Reviewers: manuscripts are typically read by two or more external specialists plus the journal editor.
• Turnaround: humanities review cycles are slower than STM; first decisions commonly take two to four months, and some journals longer. Individual journal pages give better estimates.
• Revisions: revise-and-resubmit outcomes are common and are a normal part of humanities publishing, not a rejection signal.

1. Pick the journal. Match your paper's field and method to the journal's scope statement - IU Press journals are community-specific, and out-of-scope submissions are desk-rejected.
2. Read the journal's submission guidelines. Each journal maintains its own instructions for length, formatting, and where to send the manuscript; there is no single press-wide submission portal, so follow the journal page's directions.
3. Format in Chicago style. IU Press journals generally follow the Chicago Manual of Style; you can format your manuscript with the Indiana University Press templates on SciSpace.
4. Anonymize your manuscript. Because review is double-anonymized, remove self-identifying references before submission.
5. Submit and track. Submission routes vary by journal - some use online systems, others managed editorial email workflows. The editorial office confirms receipt and manages review.

For books, IU Press asks prospective authors to send a proposal to the acquisitions editor for the relevant subject area - see the press website for the current editor list.

Indiana University Press is a member of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics), and its journals handle allegations of plagiarism, duplicate publication, and authorship disputes following COPE guidance. Copyright arrangements vary by journal - many titles publish under a traditional copyright-transfer or license-to-publish agreement, with self-archiving rights defined per title. As a university press owned by Indiana University, the press operates on a non-profit, mission-driven basis, and its journals carry none of the predatory-publishing risk signals: editorial boards are public, society affiliations are verifiable, and fees are not charged for acceptance.