Aims and Scope
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race (DBR) is an innovative periodical that presents and analyzes the best cutting-edge research on race from the social sciences. It provides a forum for discussion and increased understanding of race and society from a range of disciplines, including but not limited to economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, law, communications, public policy, psychology, and history. Each issue of DBR opens with remarks from the editors concerning the three subsequent and substantive sections: State of the Discipline, where broad-gauge essays and provocative think-pieces appear; State of the Art, dedicated to observations and analyses of empirical research; State of the Discourse, featuring expansive book reviews, special feature essays, and occasionally, debates.
Manuscript Originality
The Du Bois Review publishes only original, previously unpublished (whether hard copy or electronic) work. Submitted manuscripts may not be under review for publication elsewhere while under consideration at DBR. Papers with multiple authors are reviewed under the assumption that all authors have approved the submitted manuscript and concur with its submission to the DBR.
The Du Bois Review only accepts submissions written in English. To be considered for publication in either State of the Art or State of the Discipline, please create the following documents in MSWord format:
- Main Document: Please include the full article title and an Abstract (up to 300 words) followed by five to eight Keywords. All author identifying information must be removed from this document. Failure to do so will result in the manuscript being returned to you, causing a delay in your submission and review process. For manuscripts offered revision or acceptance decisions, authors will be asked to format the document according to the DBR style guide. See below for more detail about manuscript preparation.
- Title Page: Please state the full title of the manuscript, the full names and affiliations of all authors, a detailed corresponding author address with telephone number and e-mail address, and a competing interest statement for all authors (see below). Please also provide a shortened title for the running head (up to thirty characters).
In State of the Discourse, the Du Bois Review publishes substantive (5-10,000 word) review essays of multiple (three or four) thematically related books. Proposals for review essays should be directed to the Managing Editor for review by the Editors in advance of submission.
Competing Interests
All authors must include a competing interest declaration in their title page. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and may be published in the article.
Competing interests are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the content or publication of an author’s work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations.
If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting must include competing interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors.
Example wording for a declaration is as follows: “Competing interests: Author 1 is employed at organisation A, Author 2 is on the Board of company B and is a member of organisation C. Author 3 has received grants from company D.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none”.
Manuscript Preparations and Style
Final manuscripts must be prepared in accordance with the DBR style sheet (found here) and the Chicago Manual of Style. Authors will be expected to complete this formatting on revised/accepted manuscripts before it can move to the production phase. Submitted Manuscripts should be prepared as MSWord documents with captions, figures, graphs, illustrations, and tables (all in shades of black and white). Electronic copies of figures are to be provided, with the graphics appearing in TIFF, EPS, or PDF formats. The entire manuscript should be double-spaced throughout.
Figures, figure captions, and Tables should appear on separate pages. Appendices up to 4 pages in length can be included in the Main Document. Longer appendices should appear in a separate MSWord document. Appendices longer than 4 pages will be published online only as supplementary materials and they will not be copyedited or formatted by DBR. Authors are encouraged to follow DBR style when formatting these extra materials. For more information please see Supplementary Materials.
Appropriate headings and subheadings should be used according to DBR style. Acknowledgments are positioned at the end of the text before the Reference section. DBR prints no footnotes, and only contentful endnotes. Online resources should be listed in the Reference section, not in endnotes, per DBR style guide. Unpublished archival sources may be cited in endnotes. All citations to texts are made in the body of the text and appear in parentheses in alphabetical order. Please verify that all in-text citations correspond to a Reference entry and that only those works explicitly cited in the body of the text are listed in the Reference section.
Seeking permissions for copyrighted material
If your article contains any material in which you do not own copyright, including figures, charts, tables, photographs or excerpts of text, you must obtain permission from the copyright holder to reuse that material. Guidance on how to do that can be found here.
Optimising Your Article for Search Engines
We offer here just a few pieces of advice which you might want to consider when writing your title and abstract and choosing your keywords. Given the increase in published research and the importance of search engines as a research tool, these tips will help you to give your article the best chance of being read and cited.
- Make sure your title describes your article. The most important function of the article title is to accurately and succinctly describe what your article does. Try to include the most important key words or phrases in your title and try to include the search terms you think that other researchers are likely to use to find your article. Keep in mind, in some online spaces the portion of the title following the colon may not be visible.
- Repeat key phrases in the abstract. Search engines typically only search the title and abstract of an article so make sure that key phrases which describe the article topic also feature prominently in your abstract. Remember to make sure that your abstract still reads naturally as it also introduces your article to other researchers and readers.
- Be specific when choosing keywords. Remember keywords do not have to be single words and can include short phrases. It is important that keywords again match your article topic but it is also helpful to be specific as this is most helpful to researchers. Phrases which you’ve used frequently in the article are a good place to start in selecting keywords. Try to use words or phrases that you think would be likely search terms for a researcher interested in the topic.
How to prepare your materials for anonymous peer review
To ensure a fair and anonymous peer review process, authors should not allude to themselves as the authors of their article in any part of the text. This includes citing their own previous work in the references section in such a way that identifies them as the authors of the current work.
Please refer to our general guidelines on how to anonymize your manuscript prior to submission.
Manuscripts that are not thus prepared for anonymous review upon submission will be returned to the lead author for anonymizing before the manuscript will be considered.
Supplementary materials
Material that is not essential to understanding or supporting a manuscript, but which may nonetheless be relevant or interesting to readers, may be submitted as supplementary material. Supplementary material will be published online alongside your article, but will not be published in the pages of the journal. Types of supplementary material may include, but are not limited to, appendices, additional tables or figures, datasets, videos, and sound files.
Supplementary materials will not be typeset or copyedited, so should be supplied exactly as they are to appear online. Please see our general guidance on supplementary materials for further information.
Where relevant we encourage authors to publish additional qualitative or quantitative research outputs in an appropriate repository, and cite these in manuscripts.
English language editing services
Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, may wish to have their English-language manuscripts checked by a native speaker before submission. This step is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the Editor and any reviewers.
In order to help prospective authors to prepare for submission and to reach their publication goals, Cambridge University Press offers a range of high-quality manuscript preparation services – including language editing – delivered in partnership with American Journal Experts. You can find out more on our Language Services page.
Please note that the use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge-published journal.
Publication ethics
Du Bois Review is published by Cambridge University Press, which is a member of the Committee for Publication ETHICS (COPE), whose core practices may be found here: https://publicationethics.org/core-practices. Cambridge’s policy on publication ethics is available here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/about/ethical-standards.
Authorship and contributorship
All authors listed on any papers submitted to this journal must be in agreement that the authors listed would all be considered authors according to disciplinary norms, and that no authors who would reasonably be considered an author have been excluded. For further details on this journal’s authorship policy, please see this journal's publishing ethics policies.
Author affiliations
Author affiliations should represent the institution(s) at which the research presented was conducted and/or supported and/or approved. For non-research content, any affiliations should represent the institution(s) with which each author is currently affiliated.
For more information, please see our author affiliation policy and author affiliation FAQs.