We publish on a rolling basis throughout the year, so please submit and we can't wait to read your work!
ABOUT: The Journal is an open-access, scholarly publication focused on pre-collegiate writing in the humanities, and specifically justice, law, policy and society. The Journal publishes on a rolling basis through each calendar period and follows a refereed process in which our advisory board reviews and selects outstanding essays that show high scholarly promise. Our mission is to provide a venue to recognize excellence in pre-collegiate writing to help motivate and launch the next-generation of scholars who seek to pursue the humanities at the undergraduate and possibly even the graduate and professional level in the future.
SELECTIVITY: The Journal receives a large volume of submissions including via our pro bono fee waiver outreach program and accordingly publishes a limited number of submissions from an outstanding pool. Selected authors may be invited to apply for certain Honors and Engagement opportunities. We are gratified when students undertake bona fide contributions to humanities scholarship and when our authors are admitted to highly selective colleges and universities, many of which have made humanities-focused candidates an institutional priority in their admissions process. Please do not consider our selectivity to be a bar to your participation. Outstanding work that does not immediately progress to publication may be noticed and waitlisted for future publication space permitting.
WE DO PUBLISH: Research-based and critical essays in the humanities that explore some aspect of justice, law, policy, society and culture, and where the purpose of the essay is to advance an argument in order to inform or persuade the reader, or to explore a research question and possible analyses of the topic by putting different texts in a curated conversation with each other. These may include legal articles (modeled after law review notes and comments), English, history or other expository or research essays, including for example AP Research, AP Seminar and IB essays. Occasionally, a submission that doesn't quite fit our categories will be published on an exceptions basis to acknowledge its quality and merit in advancing scholarly discourse in the humanities at the pre-collegiate level.
SUBMISSION CATEGORIES:
CATEGORY 0: Fee Waiver Request. This category is to submit your work with a fee waiver request. Ability to pay is not a factor in the selection process. We will just ask you and your teacher or counselor to confirm that you are in need of a fee waiver. We won't ask for personal financial information. This goes for works in all of the categories below. Or you can simply request your fee waiver by emailing editor@paloaltoscholar.com.
CATEGORY 1: Longer Research-Based Essay. Longer legal analysis paper and research-based essays on a humanities topic relating to society, culture, justice, law or policy. Word count not including footnotes: 4000-6000+ words, which is around 16-25 pages double spaced with 3750 word minimum. Maximum not to exceed 25 pages and 6250 words excluding footnotes.
CATEGORY 2: Medium Research-Based Essay. Medium-length legal analysis paper or research-based essays on a humanities topic relating to society, culture, justice, law or policy. Word count not including footnotes: 2250 minimum, 2500-3750 words, which is around 10-15 pages double-spaced. Maximum not to exceed 15 pages or 3750 words excluding footnotes.
CATEGORY 3: Shorter Research-Based Essay. Commentary on legal topic or short research-based essays on a humanities topic relating to society, culture, justice, law or policy. Word count not including footnotes: 1500 minimum, 1750-2250 words, which is around 7-9 pages double spaced. Maximum not to exceed 9 pages or 2250 words.
CATEGORY 4: Critical Essay. Critical essay in the nature of a shorter law commentary, book/media review or opinion essay relating to society, culture, justice, law or policy. Word count not including footnotes: 750 minimum, 1000-1500 words, which is around 4-6 pages double-spaced. Maximum not to exceed 6 pages or 1500 words.
GENERAL REQUIREMENTS:
ALL SUBMITTED/PUBLISHED WORKS MUST MEET THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA:
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Original work of the author, except for cited quotations/references.
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Not created with a co-author or other third party.
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Not published elsewhere (other than personal website or school-level publication) at the time of submission AND publication
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Meets the category word count
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May contain charts, photos, graphs or other graphics but not required
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Cited quotations, cited images etc. must comply with fair use law.
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Meets category and logistical requirements set forth herein
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Author/parent/guardian has paid submission fee or requested and received fee waiver or reduction
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If selected for publication (SFP), author/parent/guardian has paid APC fee for the applicable category, or requested and received fee waiver or reduction.
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If SFP, author/parent/guardian has submitted the non-exclusive license and name/image release form
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If SFP, author/parent/guardian has provided any additional confirmations as reasonably requested, which may include by are not limited to TurnitIn.com anti-plagiarism results, teacher/guidance counselor project endorsement, etc.
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If SFP, such other criteria as may be communicated from time-to-time if deemed reasonable and necessary to safeguard the reputation and quality of the Journal, including but not limited, timely response to email communications, as well as participation in and cooperation with the final editing process.
LOGISTICAL REQUIREMENTS:
ESSAYS AND TEXTS :All text-based works must be submitted as an editable Word/Docx document in MLA format and 12 point, Times New Roman format. All works must be written in English and any use of foreign languages must include either a parenthetical or footnote with English translation. Legal articles and commentary must follow the Blue Book Uniform System of Citations. Citation generator here and explainer here. These links are for informational purposes only and are not endorsed by or affiliated with us.
Image citations within the document should follow MLA format. An easy way to do this is to create a single column table in Google Docs, insert your image, type the MLA citation underneath (e.g., Fig. 1, ___________) and then take a screenshot of these to insert in your paper.
Header must use MLA format with Name, Date submitted, and instead of supervisor/course, "The Palo Alto Scholar / Journal of Law, Policy & Society". Instead of due date, put submission date and if accepted it will state your publication date.
Example:
Sean A. Jackson
The Palo Alto Scholar
Journal of Law, Policy & Society
30 June, 2028
FEE WAIVERS: There are fee waivers/reductions available, so please do not allow fees that you can't afford to be an obstacle in this process. Submit your work in Category 0 on the Submit Here page or send with your fee waiver request directly to editor@paloaltoscholar.com. Ability to pay is not a factor in the selection process.
WE DO NOT PUBLISH: Creative writing, whether poetry, prose, scripts, literary non-fiction or otherwise. We value creative writing but this is outside our scope. We also don't publish scientific or technical research papers, though you are free to submit a critical essay about creative writing or the sciences from the perspective of a humanities scholar. We also encourage STEM students to explore the law and policy aspects of STEM topics. We do not publish humanities research papers on topics outside the scope of law, policy, culture and society, although we will construe our topic areas broadly if you have a solid nexus to our themes.
OPEN-ACCESS: The scholarly academic community is in a period of transition from subscription to open-access journals because the public interest in making scholarship widely available has put pressure on academic publishing interests to change their traditional subscription=based business models. In this spirit, the Institute does not believe in putting your work behind a pay-wall subsidized by subscription access. Instead we hope that you will include links to your work in your online CV and that other scholars will read your work and as appropriate reference and cite your work, as a first step in developing your scholarly relevance and reputation. Therefore, we use the open-access business model for academic publishing in which your work is made publicly available to read under copyright license and our costs are subsidized by a submission fee to ensure you are sending us your very best work for our initial review and by an APC (Article Processing Cost) if your article is selected for article processing status to continue to the final article editing and preparation for publication. The APC fee subsidizes our costs in preparing, publishing and hosting your article as part of the Journal as well as the fee waivers for other article submissions and publications. There are fee waivers/reductions available, so please do not allow fees that you can't afford to be an obstacle in this process. Submit your work in Category 0 on the Submit Here page or send with your fee waiver request directly to editor@paloaltoscholar.com. Ability to pay is not a factor in the selection process. To read about APC fees, which are standard in the academic publishing industry for open-access journals, see for example the APC policies of PLOS and Wiley. Our APC are substantially lower than standard APC fees; we also subsidize our costs by offering ancillary products and services apart from the Journal; these are separate and do not influence the article selection process.