Ex Animo uses a single blind peer review (the reviewers’ identities are not known by the author).
Upon receiving a submission, the Managing Editor will send a confirmation email to the author informing them that their submission has been received within 48 hours.
After each submission has been received, the Managing Editor will ensure that it has been prepared for blind review. If there is any identifying information in the submission, the Managing Editor will contact the author to resend the submission with all identifying information omitted.
The Managing Editor will then randomly divide the submissions into three groups (e.g., if Ex Animo receives 45 submissions, there will be three groups with 15 papers each).
The Managing Editor will then randomly assign reviewers to three editing teams and give each team its submissions to evaluate.
Each submission will be reviewed by a team made up of two Editorial Board Members and an Associate Editor (and, if the circumstances require it, the Editor-in-Chief and/or Managing Editor).
Each submission will be readin its entirety at least twice by each editor.
Papers will be judged as either ‘Accept,’ ‘Accept with Revisions,’ or ‘Reject. Papers that teams cannot make a decision on will be sent to the Editor-in-Chief, who will make the final decision. Note: Ex Animo will rarely accept a paper without making recommendations for revision.
Letters will be sent out via email regarding decisions. Typically, these will be sent by the second week of January, though this is subject to change. These letters will contain 1) whether the submission is has been judged as ‘Accept,’ ‘Accept with Revisions,’ or ‘Reject,’ and 2) recommendations for revisions.
For papers judged as ‘Accept with Revisions,’ should the author of the paper decide against making the suggested edits, the submission may be subject to rejection.
If the author agrees to most or all of the suggestions, they will have to resubmit the revised manuscript by a new deadline, which will be determined by the Managing Editor (typically, at least a month will be given to authors to make the necessary revisions).
After receiving the revised submissions, the entire editorial team will review them and make final decisions regarding which submissions will be published. Note: Making the recommended revisions is not a guarantee that the submission will be accepted for publication, though, as a rule, if the submission has been revised sufficiently, it will be published. Ex Animo aims to publish anywhere from 5-10 submissions (depending on the length of written work and not including visual art).
After the final decisions have been made, each submission will undergo multiple rounds of copyediting. Once this stage has been completed, the final copy of the submission will be sent back to the author for approval.
Once the author’s approval has been received, the journal will be organized and prepared for publication.
After the journal is published on the main site, all papers included therein will then be moved to our archiving system, Scholars’ Bank. For more information regarding our archiving system, visit our policies page or visit the Scholars’ Bank website.
