About

The MOSF Journal of Science Fiction seeks to uphold the spirit of educated inquiry and speculation through the publication of peer-reviewed, academic articles, essays, and book reviews exploring the interdisciplinary nature of science fiction. We welcome unsolicited, original submissions from academics around the world about science fiction across all forms of media (literature, film, television, video games, art, oral history, etc.). On average, the Journal produces two open themed peer-reviewed issues a year consisting of perspective essays, articles, and book reviews, and at least one special issue on a topic of interest.

Our focus and scope is relatively capacious on purpose: if you think your work fits, we want to see it. By keeping our scope broad and interdisciplinary, we're encouraging authors to send us manuscripts that open our eyes to new analyses of the science fiction genre.

Peer Review Process

Peer review is an essential tool for ensuring the quality, validity and relevance of scholarly research. All article manuscripts under consideration for publication in Journal of Science Fiction will undergo a double-blind peer review process (i.e., neither author nor reviewer names will be disclosed).

The Journal’s Editorial Team will use Open Journal Systems (OJS) to perform an initial screening of submissions and then to anonymously assign manuscripts to reviewers not employed by the journal. Editors will use OJS to request revisions by article authors when required. The final draft of the article that is published in Journal of Science Fiction will constitute the final, definitive and citable version of the manuscript.

There are no article processing charges for our journal.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Plagiarism Policy

The Journal of Science Fiction's editorial team will not tolerate plagiarism in any form. Plagiarized submissions will be rejected.

The editorial team checks for plagiarism by ensuring authors properly source their information and by performing regular spot checks of text that are presented as the authors' own original analysis.

Should the editorial team discover that, despite our best efforts, we have accidentally published plagiarized content, the piece (be it an article, review, etc.) will be immediately removed from our publication and we will notify the plagiarizing author, the plagiarized author, the Museum of Science Fiction (our sponsoring organization), and journal subscribers of the incident.

MJOSF's Creative Commons License

Content published in the MOSF Journal of Science Fiction is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND; detailed here).

This means you are welcome to share, copy, and redistribute the material published in our journal for non-commercial purposes in any format so long as you provide appropriate credit, provide a link to the CC BY-NC-ND license, and you may not transform or otherwise modify the content we have published. 

You may do so in any reasonable manner, but you must not suggest that the MOSF Journal of Science Fiction team, the Museum of Science Fiction, the University of Maryland, or the University of Maryland Libraries (our website host) endorse you or your use. 

You may not add further restrictions or legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything that our journal's license permits.

MJOSF Reviewer Guidelines

A good review will include several things, depending on the type of work being reviewed.

For fiction (including novels, shorter works, television and film):

  • A background to the text being reviewed. This could include: relevant biographical information about the author; an overview of their previously published works; and an overview of the literary context in which the author’s works may be situated, including other significant works in the subgenre, likely influences, and so on.
  • A summary of the work which provides enough information to allow the reader to get a broad understanding of the story, but without spoiling the reader’s potential enjoyment of the work.
  • A critical assessment of the positive and negative aspects of the work, examining aspects of content, theme, and style. We are looking for neither gushing praise nor withering scorn – a good review will find positive and negative aspects in any work, while providing an overall sense of whether the work ultimately succeeds as an effective piece of literature.

For non-fiction (including literary criticism, theoretical works, biographies, and histories):

  • A background to the text being reviewed. This could include: relevant biographical information about the author; an overview of their academic publications and interests; and a sense of scholarly field in which the author’s work is intervening, including recent works published by other scholars, critical lineage, and so on.
  • A critical synopsis of the work, including overall arguments, brief chapter summaries, and key ideas or theoretical frameworks.
  • A critical assessment of the positive and negative aspects of the work, examining the effectiveness of the argument, original contributions of the work, and its placement within the critical field. As with fiction, we are not looking for a totally polarised assessment here – a good review will examine positive and negative aspects of the work, while providing an overall sense of whether the work ultimately succeeds as an effective piece of scholarship.

At the beginning of the review, please also include your name, along with bibliographic information about the work in the following form:

Name of author(s)/editor(s), name of text, publisher, year of publication, hard/paperback, number of pages (including different paginations), price, ISBN.

For example:

John Cheng, Astounding Wonder: Imagining Science and Science Fiction in Interwar America, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012, pb, 400 pp, $24.95, ISBN 9780812222937.

Reviews should be around 1000 words, and are generally due around 8 weeks after the work is received (please email to acknowledge receipt). Completed review drafts should be submitted to OJS.