The Independent Scholar (TIS)
The Independent Scholar (TIS) is the open-access, interdisciplinary peer reviewed journal of the National Coalition of Independent Scholars (NCIS) and serves the ever-growing community of independent scholars. All members of NCIS and its affiliate organizations are eligible to submit manuscripts, which are subjected to a robust double-blind peer-review process. TIS welcomes submissions in the form of traditional essays as well as creative/artistic material, but all submissions must conform to NCIS academic standards. Manuscripts may be submitted at any time, and periodic CFPs are also issued, both directly to NCIS members and on social media. Please consult the submission guidelines before submitting material via the OJS portal. Please address any queries to the editor at tis@ncis.org.
The Independent Scholar (TIS) is entirely open access. There are no author processing charges (APC) or other administrative charges. Authors are not charged authors for publishing in TIS. The content is publicly available online on the NCIS website, with no paywall.
Eligibility to submit manuscripts to TIS
All authors of manuscripts submitted to TIS must be paid-up members of NCIS at full, associate, or life member status, or be a verified member of an NICS-affiliated partner group.
Membership status must be stated on the submission form, and will be verified by the NCIS membership officer or the president of the relevant partner group.
On submission of a manuscript, the author must confirm that the work has not already been published, or submitted to another journal for review.
Copyright
Authors of articles accepted for publication retain full copyright of their work. If they republish the article elsewhere, they must cite the original TIS publication details. However, they remain free to submit revised versions of their TIS work to specialist journals.
Authors of book reviews accepted for publication in TIS retain full copyright of their reviews. Authors of other material published in TIS (e.g., obituaries, tributes, review essays) retain full copyright of their contributions. Permission to use or reprint material from articles published in TIS must be requested from the author(s).
Peer review process
All manuscript articles are submitted via the submissions portal, and then undergo a double-blind peer-review process. Please ensure that identifying information has been deleted, including from “properties,” before submitting your manuscript.
Papers judged to be of potential scholarly merit are assigned to an associate editor, whoworks with the author to address any queries and submit revisions following peer review,using the OJS portal. The editor makes the final decision on whether the paper is accepted or declined. In the case of opposing views among reviewers, the editor may appoint an additional reviewer. Contentious cases may involve the advice of the overall Humanities or STEM editor, but the associate editor’s decision is final.
Formatting
The TIS style guide is APA 8th edition. All manuscripts accepted for publication must be formatted in APA by the author before it can be published.
Proofreading
Following acceptance, articles are copyedited and formatted in TIS style, then sent to the author for final proofreading. At this point, only proofreading and formatting are permitted. No content must be changed.
Preprints
On acceptance, each article is published online on the NCIS website as a preprint. This gives immediate exposure and avoids the long lead time between issues.
Preprints do not have page numbers and can be seen here
Book reviews
Book reviews are commissioned by the NCIS book review editor, and are submitted using the OJS portal. The book review editor works with reviewers for any needed revisions before final acceptance or rejection.
Authors of books that receive less-than-positive reviews are given the opportunity to respond. This response is published immediately following the book review, and included in the table of contents. See Book Reviews for more information. Current book reviews can be seen here.