FAQ

From Vol. 17, Issue 1 (February 2026) onwards, The Criterion exclusively publishes peer-reviewed research articles. We no longer accept poetry, short fiction, book reviews, or author interviews.

Research articles must be original, unpublished, and not under consideration elsewhere. Minimum length: 3,000 words.

All research articles are submitted exclusively through our Google Form submission portal. Email submissions are not accepted for research articles.

→ Open Submission Form

Upload a single anonymized .doc/.docx file with no author names or affiliations inside the document. Provide your personal details in the Form fields only. See the full Submission Guidelines before submitting.

Yes. We publish six issues annually. Each issue has a deadline:

• February issue — 31 January
• April issue — 31 March
• June issue — 31 May
• August issue — 31 July
• October issue — 30 September
• December issue — 30 November

Submissions received after a deadline are automatically considered for the next issue.

No. All submissions must be original and unpublished work that is not under consideration anywhere else. Submitting previously published or simultaneously submitted work is a violation of our publication ethics policy and may result in rejection and blacklisting.

No — not from Vol. 17 (February 2026) onwards. The Criterion now exclusively publishes peer-reviewed research articles.

Our archive (Vol. 1–16) retains all previously published poetry, fiction, book reviews, and author interviews, including conversations with Anita Nair, Mahesh Dattani, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, and others — freely accessible at the-criterion.com/archive.

Yes. Email editor@the-criterion.com with your manuscript ID before publication is finalised. Withdrawal after acceptance may affect future submission eligibility.

Minimum 3,000 words. The typical range is 3,000–10,000 words. There is no strict upper limit, but submissions should be as concise as the scholarship requires.

Use MLA 9th Edition throughout — for in-text citations, endnotes, and the Works Cited list. Use endnotes only (not footnotes), placed before the Works Cited section.

• Title: Times New Roman 14 pt Bold — no ALL CAPS
• Body: Times New Roman 12 pt, justified, single-line spacing
• Abstract: 100–150 words + 4–6 keywords
• Language: English only — translate all non-English quotations inline
• File: Anonymized .doc/.docx — no author names or affiliations inside the document
• Filename: PaperTitle_Anonymized.docx

Formatting and typographical issues may result in rejection without review.

Yes. Include an abstract of 100–150 words followed by 4–6 keywords at the beginning of your manuscript, after the title and before the body text.

Any use of generative AI tools must be transparently declared in the submission form — including the tool name, extent of use, and any limitations. Submissions that are fully or substantially AI-written will not be accepted.

Double-blind peer review — the identities of both the author and the reviewers are concealed from each other throughout the process. Every research article is evaluated by three independent expert reviewers.

Review begins as soon as a manuscript is received; it does not wait for the issue deadline. Final decisions are sent by the 25th of the issue month, and accepted papers are published on the last day of that month. Authors asked to revise must return the revised manuscript within the time stated in the decision letter (usually one to two weeks); late revisions are considered for the next issue. Add editor@the-criterion.com to your contacts to avoid missing notifications.

The acceptance rate was 47.3% in 2025 and 42.4% in 2026.

• Accept — manuscript meets the journal’s standards as submitted
• Revise — changes are required; the revised manuscript is re-evaluated before the final decision
• Reject — manuscript does not meet the journal’s scholarly standards

Revision timelines and instructions are clearly communicated with the decision email.

Yes. All submissions are screened for plagiarism during the initial editorial check before entering peer review. Manuscripts with unacceptable similarity scores are returned or rejected without review.

Yes. Every accepted research article published from Vol. 17, Issue 1 (February 2026) onwards receives a permanent Crossref DOI — the globally recognised standard for scholarly identification.

DOIs follow the format: https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v{VOL}.n{ISSUE}.{SEQ}

The DOI is displayed on your article page and can be used in all citations and CVs permanently.

Yes. The Criterion is fully open access — all published articles are freely available to read, download, and share worldwide without paywalls or registration. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence.

The Criterion is an official Crossref member journal. When your article’s DOI is registered, its metadata becomes openly available through Crossref to discovery services, library catalogues and reference managers.

Yes — after informing the Editor-in-Chief and giving proper credit to The Criterion as the original publisher, including the DOI or the article’s URL. Email editor@the-criterion.com before republishing.

Effective from Vol. 17 (2026), the APC is a single flat rate — no distinction between single-author and multi-author papers:

• Indian authors: ₹2,595
• International authors: $125

This charge covers Crossref membership costs, per-article DOI registration, three-reviewer double-blind peer review, copyediting and formatting, language report, PDF publication certificate, and permanent open-access hosting.

APC payment is invoiced only after your paper has passed peer review and been formally accepted. Any payment solicited before acceptance is not from The Criterion. Authors from Research4Life-eligible countries may request a waiver: see our APC Waiver Policy.

Yes. From Vol. 17 onwards there is one flat rate regardless of the number of co-authors — ₹2,595 for Indian authors, $125 for international authors. There are no additional per-author charges.

• Crossref DOI registration — permanent, globally recognised identifier
• Crossref membership infrastructure — automatic metadata propagation across the ecosystem
• Three-reviewer double-blind peer review
• Professional copyediting and formatting to journal standards
• Language and readability report, sent once the APC payment is confirmed
• Official PDF publication certificate
• Permanent open-access hosting — no paywalls, ever

No. Submission and peer review are completely free. The APC applies only to accepted papers and is invoiced after the editorial decision — never at the submission stage.

• Acceptance confirmation email with APC payment instructions
• Language report sent once the APC payment is confirmed — detailed readability and grammar analysis
• Final corrected manuscript submitted by the author, using the language report
• Crossref DOI assigned and displayed on the article page
• Publication notification with live article link
• Official PDF publication certificate issued alongside the publication announcement

All accepted manuscripts are given a language check before final publication. The detailed report — covering readability, grammar, clarity, and style — is sent to the author once the APC payment is confirmed, giving you the opportunity to make final refinements before the article goes live.

The Criterion is a fully digital open-access journal — no print edition is produced. Your published article remains permanently accessible online with its Crossref DOI and can be cited, shared, and linked indefinitely.

Yes. Authors retain full copyright. The Criterion receives only non-exclusive rights to publish, reproduce, and archive the work online. All articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence — free to share and adapt with attribution.

Yes. Under CC BY 4.0, you are free to share your published article on any platform. We ask that you include the full citation and the Crossref DOI link so readers can locate the original published version.

The Criterion is indexed in Google Scholar, OpenAlex and Semantic Scholar; listed in the MLA Directory of Periodicals and ROAD; and catalogued in WorldCat, the Library of Congress, ZDB, EZB and Sudoc.

As an official Crossref member (DOI prefix 10.66376), every article from Vol. 17 onwards has a registered DOI with openly available metadata. View the complete indexing list →

Google Scholar typically indexes new articles within a few weeks of publication. The Crossref DOI also makes the article easier to find and cite in services that use Crossref data.