2012 Guidelines for Submission and Selection

Whether you have already submitted or are interested in submitting an article, you are invited to submit your work for publication in volume 2 of The People, Ideas, and Things (PIT) Journal at UNC-Chapel Hill in July 2011.

We accept submissions on a rolling basis, but the sooner you submit, the sooner reviewers will be able to read, rate, and comment on your work. One key aspect of submitting to the PIT Journal (as opposed to journals that use a more traditional publishing paradigm) is that we expect authors to interact with the readers who will comment on your draft to help you strengthen it.

A second key aspect to our publishing model, which we call "peersourcing" is that the editors aren't the only ones responsible for deciding which articles to publish. We depend heavily on the comments and ratings readers make on submissions to guide our thinking.

Our goal is to publish a group of articles that reflect the interdisciplinary nature of the PIT Journal. Therefore, we encourage submissions that will appeal to university community readers of varied backgrounds and interests. The PIT Journal’s online format allows us to accept submissions incorporating new media including photography, video, and audio.

Guidelines for Article Selection

- Every submission should be:

  • Approximately between 8 and 15 pages in length
  • Display original thought, in response to existing scholarship in the chosen field
  • Well-researched
  • Well-written and clearly communicated for a UNC community audience
  • Relevant to a broad university audience with diverse interests and backgrounds

- Submitters should display interaction in the PIT Journal community by reading and reviewing the work of other writers.

- Participants in the PIT Journal process should be responsive to feedback given by peer reviewers.

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peersourcing traditions

"Educated men lay down broad general principles; uneducated men argue from common knowledge and draw obvious conclusions. We must not, therefore, start from any and every accepted opinion, but only from those we have defined - those accepted by our judges [evaluators] or by those whose authority they recognize" (225).

— Aristotle

The Rhetoric excerpted in The Rhetorical Tradition

peersourcing strategies

Your role as a peersourcer is to help the writer strengthen his/her submission.

During the early stages of the review process, when a writer has marked a submission with "just thinking" or "drafting," your goal is to provide global feedback on the writer's topic or angle. Try to help the writer understand whether his/her topic is interesting to an audience of UNC undergraduates and make recommendations about what might make the submission more compelling to this audience.

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As you read, rate, and review submissions you are engaging in composing as a social practice, helping the writer understand how an audience is actually responding to the piece.

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As a writer, try to use the readers reactions to your work to help you understand whether your current composing strategies are effective for this audience and to help you find ways to make your revisions more effective.