Submission Guidelines

Submission Guidelines

As part of the submission process, authors must follow the following guidelines. All articles should be submitted in the latest MLA citation style and format.

Manuscripts for Research Articles
Book Reviews and Dissertation Reviews
Essays, Overviews, and Other Texts
Further Instructions on Format

Manuscripts for Research Articles

Please follow this checklist:

  1. Submissions should be neither previously published nor under consideration by another journal.
  2. Manuscripts should be written in English or any Nordic language, running between 20,000 and 40,000 characters in length (including spaces), and they should be written as accessibly as possible. Fafnir’s resources for language-checking are limited. Unless your proficency in the language of your submission is native-level, you should have your text proofread by a professional. We recommend doing this before submitting as it will likely improve your chances of clearing the peer reviews.
  3. Articles must follow the latest Modern Language Association (MLA) citation style and format. Please refer to further instructions on format below, including our style sheet.
  4. Order the manuscript as follows: title, abstract (max. 1,000 characters with spaces), 3–6 suggested keywords, text, acknowledgements (if any), and works cited.
  5. To facilitate peer review, remove all identifying information from the manuscript. Also, delete all identifying metadata from the file (such as author name) before submission.
  6. Fafnir strongly prefers files in either .doc or .docx format. An .rtf file is also acceptable.
  7. Include in your email a brief biographical statement with your current institutional affiliations and contact information in a separate document .
  8. Send your submission to submissions (at) finfar.org as an email attachment. Please introduce the attached submission briefly in the accompanying email.

Fafnir will never charge authors a fee for submission or publication.

Book Reviews and Dissertation Reviews

Fafnir welcomes book and dissertation reviews on current science-fiction and fantasy scholarship – particularly work on SFF literature, but also including work on audiovisual art, games, and fan culture. Book reviews should run between 9,000 and 11,000 characters. Longer reviews dealing with multiple books should be agreed upon beforehand with the reviews editor. For more information on what we expect from reviews, please consult our reviewer guidelines. Please complete reviews within three months.

We highly encourage academics at all stages of their career to contact us if interested in reviewing – please consult our available books for review, which is frequently updated. Additionally, we advertise available books on the IAFA discussion list.

Dissertation reviews run slightly shorter at 300 to 600 words. Authors are encouraged to propose dissertations to review; they may even recommend their own dissertations for review, and may be asked to review a dissertation in return. Please direct queries to the reviews editor at reviews(at)finfar.org.

Essays, Overviews, and Other Texts

In addition to reviews, Fafnir also publishes essays, overviews, interviews, conference reports, lectiones praecursoriae, snapshots, and other documents on matters of interest to SFF scholars. The length of such texts should be agreed upon prior to submission. Contact the editors for details and queries.

Further Instructions on Format

Fafnir follows the latest Modern Language Association (MLA) citation and format style; consult Purdue OWL MLA Formatting Guide for detailed instructions.

Please also follow the Fafnir house style outlined in our style sheet. Conforming to our house style is merely suggested during initial submission, but it is required before official acceptance.