Pausing New Articles Unrelated to COVID-19 Pandemic-Related Issues

2020-05-01

UPDATE MARCH 2021: While ACME is accepting new papers, we are no longer seeking Covid-specific materials. A full update is forthcoming.

Dear community of geographers,  

ACME has decided that it is best for us to establish a rolling pause on all new submissions not related to issues amplified by, adjacent to, or instigated by COVID-19, and submissions not by junior authors who need papers to go through at this time. Given the unprecedented situation of COVID-19, we are also unsure when, exactly, we will be able to receive new work. The severity of the ongoing pandemic is immense and we, as a Collective and journal, feel like a full slowdown is needed, not only to support our editorial Collective but also to support our reviewers, who tend to reflect the disproportionately marginalized people we study. 

On May Day, it is especially a time for ACME to rethink our priorities and identity, to take care in all aspects of our life and of those we love, and to enact our best way forward in support of the reproductive labor of journal work. By work that is “amplified by, adjacent to, or instigated by COVID-19,” we recognize that authors have research manuscripts that already speak to the violence and disparities seen during this pandemic. 

At the same time, we recognize that we have to write and review differently right now. Some formats must continue as usual because we need structure. We also need new structures of support and dialogue. To that end, ACME asks that all work related to COVID-19 issues that is submitted be no longer than 5,000 words per author, with a maximum of 8,000 words for more than one author (for more detail please visit our updated submission guidelines). While we know there is urgency in publishing much of this material, we will solicit reviewers with longer review times, have extended existing review dates, and anticipate that it may take longer to find available reviewers.

We are also accepting new formats so that our work can reach not only greater numbers via our open access platform, but also a larger public audience. Beyond traditional papers, these new formats could include, for example: roundtables, interviews, speculative fiction, letters, and remembrances. ACME will continue to accept materials in the formats of research papers, editorials, literature reviews, debates, pictorial essays, poetry, mini-collections on specific topics, and interventions. 

Our rolling pause means we will update our social media and website on July 1st to communicate if this pause is continuing in order to offer us all flexibility in this unstable situation. We will continue to publish our backlog of articles, and to drastically extend deadlines for papers already under review. Our Collective will continue to work to support one another, and our authors, reviewers, and special issue editors through this turmoil.

Listed below are some of the possible relevant topics that can be placed in conversation with COVID-19 for the journal:

  • Geographic methods for research during a pandemic
  • Rent/mortgage strikes, labor strikes
  • Occupation and claiming of Indigenous lands
  • Discussions of and debates around “productivity”
  • Pandemic prisons and policing 
  • Decolonizing and/or queering kinship models 
  • Social reproduction
  • Digital geographies of ed tech
  • Digital geographies of the “digital divide”
  • Suspension of law
  • Invasions of privacy, cybersecurity
  • Militarization
  • Revolution
  • Multispecies wellbeing
  • Food in/security
  • Methods of organizing and activism
  • Racial inequalities
  • Migration, borders, asylum, refugees, migrant workers
  • Precarity/uncertainty
  • Racial and gendered health geographies
  • New thinking around im/moblities and moorings
  • Disability geographies
  • Geographies of care (mutual aid, etc.)
  • Spaces of trauma, healing, and mindfulness
  • Pandemic spacetime, i.e., geographies of “distance” and so on
  • Geographies of the “essential”
  • The new housing question
  • Stuckness
  • Comparative health urban, regional, and state geographies
  • Relational geographies
  • Supply chains
  • Networks and topologies
  • Multispecies reckonings
  • Minor theory

We hope this announcement finds you safe and well connected to those in your life. We appreciate the acknowledgments of support as our Collective adjusts to the continued, uncertain circumstances related to the spread of this virus. 

Sincerely,

The ACME Editorial Collective