Editorial Policies

Focus and Scope

Timely Interventions is a peer reviewed, online journal that contributes to public policy argument by translating knowledge produced from the academic debate community into widely accessible scholarship. The journal publishes individually- and jointly-submitted research papers of exceptional quality from any disciplinary background.

The following categories of submissions will be considered for inclusion in Timely Interventions:

  • Advocacy essays advancing timely and policy-relevant arguments generated from intercollegiate debate research (e.g. affirmative case, disadvantage, critical objection). Recommended length: 2,500 - 6,000 words.
  • Controversy review essays reporting on a salient point of topical clash in academic debate, explaining why the controversy warrants extended study, and showing how research generated through contest round debating deepens public understanding of a related public policy controversy. Recommended length: 2,500 - 6,000 words.
  • Source review essays documenting how published work is being cited as evidence in academic debate competition, and reflecting on how the debate process contributes to understanding of source credibility in public argument. Recommended length: 1,500 - 4,000 words.
  • Forum exchanges featuring topic area experts debating interactively in print to explore pressing public policy issues. Recommended length: variable.

 

Section Policies

Essays

Checked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed

Front Matter

Unchecked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Unchecked Peer Reviewed

Forum Exchanges

Checked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed

Rear Matter

Checked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Unchecked Peer Reviewed
 

Peer Review Process

The journal's editorial staff makes initial determinations of manuscript suitability, as well as final decisions regarding acceptance, rejection, or revision. Manuscripts are evaluated on the basis of salience, timeliness, research quality, originality, and most critically, success in rendering technical academic debate terminology understandable to a general, educated reading audience. Independent, double-blind reviews are conducted by at least two members of the Editorial Board or invited topic area experts. As a high-velocity journal, Timely Interventions publishes accepted articles serially, on an "as ready" basis, and strives to maintain an accelerated review timeline typically ranging from three to eight weeks from receipt of the electronic manuscript to final decision. 

 

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content. Our publisher, the University Library System at the University of Pittsburgh, abides by the Budapest Open Access Initiative definition of Open Access:

 

“By “open access” to [peer-reviewed research literature], we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.”

 

Researchers engage in discovery for the public good, yet because of cost barriers or use restrictions imposed by other publishers, research results are not available to the full community of potential users. It is our mission to support a greater global exchange of knowledge by making the research published in this journal open to the public and reusable under the terms of a Creative Commons CC-BY license.

 

Furthermore, we encourage authors to post their pre-publication manuscript in institutional repositories or on their Web sites prior to and during the submission process, and to post the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version after publication. These practices benefit authors with productive exchanges as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.


There are no article processing charges, submissions fees, or any other costs required of authors to submit articles to this journal.

 

Archiving

This journal utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. More...