Hispanic Review

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A quarterly journal devoted to research in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian literatures and cultures, Hispanic Review has been edited since 1933 by the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Pennsylvania. The journal features essays and book reviews on the diverse cultural manifestations of Iberia and Latin America, from the medieval period to the present.

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Comments (33)

  1. I was obviously happy to have an article accepted by them. One reviewer required extensive changes, not all of which seemed relevant. I included most of his/her suggestions, but rejected those which I did not consider appropriate, and sent a comment to the editor as to why. It was not a problem. They are serious and professional.

  2. So far I’ve had only a brief but positive experience with the HR. I sent in a submission, they got right back to me (in less than a week) and told me that while the piece had promise it wasn’t something they could use. I sent it in to a more suitable journal (one specializing in film) and it was published. So I really appreciate the HR’s quick evaluation (with brief but encouraging feedback) and rejection, which allowed me to quickly find the piece a more suitable home.

  3. My experience with them was not good. I waited six months for a reply and received no feedback other than that they were not interested in articles dealing with this topic. It seems they should have known this right away; they did not have kept me waiting six month to tell me that. I sent the article to another well-respected peer-reviewed journal and it was accepted in a matter of weeks.

  4. I had an article accepted by them; however it took nine months to hear back from them after my initial submission. After I sent them my revised article, I heard back within a month with an acceptance. One of the most respected journals, but be prepared to wait.

  5. I had a good experience with them earlier this year; sent an article in and had it sent back (rejected) within a month. They DID include extremely helpful comments from one reviewer, and I appreciate their willingness to provide those.

  6. Mine was the second comment above. Since then I sent the Hispanic Review another article. They got back to me after a few months, with one of the reviewers asking me to clarify a couple of concepts and attend to some details, but no major changes. I revised, sent it back, and in less than a week they accepted the article. The best publishing experience I’ve had in my short, not so brilliant career. They were prompt, and more importantly, very constructive and respectful of my project.
    I say this because I had previously sent the same piece to another journal, whose reviewer insisted on major changes that seemed to reflect their own expertise but were less than relevant to what I was trying do in the article. When I resisted these in the resubmission the article was rejected, after a very long wait and with some rather pissy comments from the reviewer, who seemed to take offense at my not wanting to cede my project to their intellect. Maybe in that case things would have gone more smoothly had I explained my reasons directly to the editors.
    But back to the Hispanic Review: it is a super prestiguous journal that seems to have an excellent team of staff, editors, reviewers.

  7. Quick response and a rejection. The reader (only one) seemed to prefer more conservative readings of the text, leaning on the philological/source study type of approach. That was not my impression of HR–perhaps this is the case of a very unusual reader for the journal.

  8. Mi experiencia ha sido positiva hasta ahora. Aunque cuando envié el artículo tardaron en dar acuse de recibo, luego la comunicación con los editores has sido muy fluida y fructífera. Enviaron el dictamen crítico a tiempo, como 5 o 6 meses después y con críticas dririgidas sobre todo a mejorar la exposición del problema. Aceptaron también muy amablemente mis réplicas.

  9. My colleague eventually pulled her article after numerous attempts to elicit a response on her submission’s status. Unprofessional handling, to say the least. Part of the problem seems to be that the journal relies too much on graduate students to handle the nuts and bolts of operations, which inevitably results in inconsistent handling of submissions. Years ago I submitted an article to HR, and they were amazingly prompt in responding: within one week I received a rejection without any reader comments whatsoever. A very productive experience.

  10. I had a great experience with them. Honestly, I knew nothing of their reputation before submitting. I was surprised and almost suspicious to receive a YES, with no revisions. Everything went smoothly from there. I asked an editor friend to give my paper one last look bc I continued to be so worried. I´d never, ever received a yes with no revisions before. The copyeditor ended up suggesting many more corrections which I was happy to fix. Professional and courteous. The article came out in Spring 2011. I dont´remember the details on the timeline, but I don´t remember any significant lag at any stage.

  11. What kind of articles does this journal publish? I heard they are only interested in conservative readings and in canonical texts.

  12. that wasn’t my experience. I had something accepted on a well-known contemporary novel, read in tandem with a newer and completely unknown novel. the piece involved newer critical theory. this was my experience…i’m sure many others will be able to contradict me

  13. I waited for 6 months and got a brief email saying that the article is interesting but the topic does not match their editorial interests. They could have checked a bit earlier…

  14. It was not a useful experience for me. My article was rejected in a matter of weeks with no feedback whatsoever. At least I did not have to wait as some of the previous reviewers did. However, I did ask for written comments that could help me improve the article; after two weeks I received another brief email from the general editor saying that since he was the one thinking that the article was not sufficiently oriented to the average reader of the journal, he had not even sent it to external readers, so no comments to share. I found it a little bit unprofessional to say the least. No comments from the Board, no comments from external reviewers, and no comments from him. What’s the point in having a peer reviewed journal that does not actually give you any feedback? Prestigious journals like this tend to forget that the reason why they are well-considered is not only because of the quality of their articles, but also because of the importance they have in helping improve our outcome through a peer-reviewed process. I would not sent anything to them. In the future, I will make sure that before I send an article, I ask the general editor what is the usual process and what kind of response I can expect from them in any given scenario.

  15. They lost my submission despite me emailing them a few times asking for confirmation. After four months, they finally sent me a receipt confirmation and they took two other months to reject my article with no feedback whatsoever. They obviously don’t follow a peer-review process unless they are interested in the article or the author is their friend. This journal is very poorly managed. The editors who do all the work are lecturers.

  16. Reading some of the comments above, and recalling my own experience about 10 years ago submitting an article to this journal, it is clear that there is a lack of professionalism and quality in the editorship’s approach. The management has for years relied on the mystique of its “hallowed reputation” to behave seemingly as it pleases without any regard to the collegial service that a respectable peer-review journal should provide. Approx. 10 years ago, I submitted an article for consideration, and within a week I received a rejection with no feedback whatsoever… echoing some of the experiences above. When I prodded for some explanation, I was told that the topic did not fit within the scope of the journal. What “scope”? A mystery, for certain. The reality that HR does not “get” is that active Hispanists recognize this “fall from grace,” and few colleagues of mine–who are very active scholars by the way–will even consider submitting to HR. I myself resolved after that first experience NEVER to submit to HR again. A shame, but as one stated correctly above in this string, too much reliance on unsupervised graduate students is largely to blame. In fact, I have a friend who years ago was one of those very grad students, and he/she conceded that as long as a the designated grad student deemed the article to be well written, then it would likely be published regardless of content. Sounds as if the lunatics still run the HR asylum… Unprofessional and irresponsible editors are to blame, and they are becoming more pervasive. Just read some of the postings for some of these other pubs on this blog, and HR is sadly not alone. On principle alone, I discourage ANY colleague from submitting to this journal.

  17. I published here as a nobody with no scholarly record or connection to the editorial board, so charges of exclusivity or in-house favoritism are false. The anonymous reviewer was rigorous, helpful, and not-entirely positive, but the editor saw enough merit to allow me to improve the article and was reasonable when I held my ground against some of the demands of the reviewer. The staff was a pleasure to work with and very professional.

    • The staff, who are lecturers, do not answer the emails. They take a month to acknowledge receipt of your manuscript if you are lucky, because in my case, they lost my manuscript and I was waiting for 4 months for an answer despite me sending them several emails

  18. I have published there twice, about 10 years apart. Each experience was positive. The first time the piece was accepted with no revisions; the second time it was accepted with minor revisions requested (mostly in terms of reducing the total words). This last one was the fastest submission-to-publication turnaround I have ever experienced–about 9 or 10 months! Their managing editor is superb. Personally, I would never submit anything there that was not cutting edge. Send them only your best work, keeping in mind that their rejection rate is around 90%. I greatly respect that they are not afraid to publish research that pushes things farther than many other journals have the backbone or open-mindedness to publish.

  19. I completely agree with what Anonymous posted on March 26, 2014. My experience was virtually identical to hers/his. It is an excellent journal with a superb managing editor. I greatly appreciate that they are unafraid to publish material that pushes the envelope–they make a tremendous contribution to the field.

    You can determine the acceptance rate by looking up the articles accepted/submitted ratio for the journal in the MLA Directory of Periodicals, although they are not always up to date. To be sure of current rejection rates, you might write to the journal editor to inquire.

  20. I agree with some of the comments above. HR publishes really good quality articles. At the same time, not all the submitted articles might receive a fair evaluation. The journal receives a great amount of submissions and they need to rely on their graduate students to be able to give a timely response. Those graduate students make a first assessment of the articles, based on which the editors decide whether to send them to more qualified and specialized reviewers. Make sure that your article is extremely well written and organized before you send it. You might even consider discussing your paper in a graduate seminar to see what the reaction of less specialized readers might be. First impressions really matter in this journal.

    • This is completely false. Graduate students have nothing to do with editorial decisions. I do not know where you got the information, but it is not true. There is only one graduate student working there in charge of the reviews, but that is it. The pre-reading is done by members of the editorial board with help of the managing editor.

  21. The Hispanic Review is a well-regarded journal, but the review process is not very serious for a top-tier journal. The pre-reviews are indeed conducted by non-specialist graduate students who determine whether or not the work should go off to specialists (often members of the Department of Spanish at the Univ. of Pennsylvania). If you make it beyond the pre-review phase, your work is sent off to just one person, which demonstrates a lack of rigor and professionalism. I understand that the journal receives a great number of submissions, but any serious academic publication should rely on the expert opinion of two outside readers who can offer independent evaluations. The HR is very lucky that it receives so many submissions or it would not be able to publish very good work, especially given how little care the essays get once they are processed.

    • I am a graduate student at this program, and I have never heard of any of my peers pre-reading for Hispanic Review. As far as I know, this work is done by the editorial board.

  22. I’m afraid that the editor didn’t even send my article to the board members. He himself decided that it’s not a good fit. This political correctness can be so ridiculous sometimes.. It’s seems that they want “ready-made” manuscripts that need just some editing. The concept of collaboration doesn’t apply to so called top journals.

  23. Mi experiencia con esta revista es nefasta. Remití un artículo y no recibí acuse de recibo alguno. Tras insistir al respecto pasados seis meses me dijeron que el artículo se les había quedado “perdido” en el buzón y que volviera a remitirlo. Tras hacerlo lo rechazaron al cambio de cinco días considerando que “no realizaba aportes relevantes al campo”. No deja de ser curioso que el artículo se publicara más tarde en otra revista tras ser aceptado sin cambios… Yo no recomendaría a nadie que se moleste en mandar algo a una revista así.

  24. My experience was similar to the last Anónimo comment (21 Nov. 2017). Sent an article…nothing. Emailed 6 months later, “Oh, we lost it. Sorry. We’ll get to it.” Emailed six months later. “Article? What article? Send it again and we’ll get to it.” After a year of limbo while those jackwagons piddled around, I learned my lesson and submitted the article elsewhere. All this happened while the tenure clock was ticking. Unbelievable!

  25. Submitted an article and had a response less than 6 months later. It was rejected, but the feedback was incredibly helpful.

  26. My experience with this journal has been fantastic. It took about 4 months to hear back from the reviewer, who gave me a long list of detailed critiques and suggestions—all of which were helpful and clear. In fact, I only decided to leave out one change because it would have caused me to reorganize the whole narrative of the paper. I stated as much in my response, they agreed, and then gave me a definite, imminent publication date within a month of sending in the revisions.

    Throughout the whole process, the support staff and editorial board were professional and efficient. When I needed a firm date for the publication to include in my CV while on the job market, they accepted my “nudge” graciously. Within two weeks, I had my answer.

    Overall, a good experience with a great journal.

  27. I was able to improve my article very much thanks to the reviewer’s careful suggestions. The journal boasts a professional team and the response took around 6 months.

  28. This past year I submitted an article that was ultimately rejected, but the experience wasn’t as negative as some on this post. Perhaps the online submission system is helping with the communication and clarity of the process. The two reviewers seemed quite knowledgeable about the primary texts which were not canonical and provided fairly detailed feedback. One reviewer was particularly helpful. The tone of the other reviewer was pretty snarky, but working in Academia for years I’ve grown accustomed to occasionally having to deal with the type. I’ll take some of the helpful feedback and submit elsewhere. Entire process took about 6 months. I would submit to them again.

  29. De acuerdo con el sistema, recibieron los comentarios de los revisores hace dos meses. Hasta ahora no se han comunicado. ¿Podría alguien decirme cuánto tardaron después de recibir las recomendaciones?

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