This journal is no longer published. Founded in 1987 by Dr. Mary S. Vásquez, the last issue was published in 2010.
Letras Peninsulares
Our address
- Address:
- Davidson, North Carolina
- GPS:
- 35.4993031, -80.84868460000001
Hispanic Studies Journals & Academic Presses
A very well managed journal that provides generous reader feedback to authors, prompt communication and hard copy offprints to published authors. However, to date the journal still does not allow electronic submissions, which is surprising given our technological era.
Letras P. is a very solid journal, turn around time in within 6-8 months. Very well managed.
I don’t know if everyone else got the email, but Davidson is no longer able to house the journal, so Letras peninsulares might be “going out of business” if they are not able to up their subscriptions. Please pass this information along so that we can keep this journal around!
I unfortunately did not receive this news, but I believe there is a simple solution to LP’s financial hurdles: go digital. The _Colorado Hispanic Review_ recently announced their plans to convert to an open-access e-journal, and I believe that other journals will follow this trend given the current economic state of higher ed. LP needs to take this step as well and thereby eliminate the need to sell subscriptions to survive. The e-format, I believe, will be the unavoidable future for many academic journals that wish to survive.
Después de un año de espera me escribió la editora de LP para anunciarme que debido a factores económicos, no se podía publicar mi artículo. Un año de espera y ni siquiera un comentario sobre mi artículo.
Estoy totalmente de acuerdo con Santiago, por cierto.
Ya somos dos.
6 meses de espera y ni un comentario sobre mi articulo.
Bueno, si, una raya roja (tenue y vacilante) en el margen de mi “thesis statement” y una alusion en la carta de a directora diciendo que mi articulo es “intriguing.”
“Intriguing”…Lo voy a re-estructurar de arriba a abajo…
Publiqué un artículo en esta revista hace algunos años y mi experiencia fue muy buena. Una respuesta rápida y una comunicación muy buena con la editora.
Does anybody know for certain if the journal is still active? I was contacted by somebody from there not long ago regarding a submission and they said nothing about this.
Letras Peninsulares is currently publishing its last issues and is no longer accepting more submissions. Sad to see it go.
A colleague of mine recently submitted an article to confirm the truth that all active Peninsular scholars have been denying: Mary Vasquez has opted to fold the journal instead of searching very feasible options such as an electronic conversion. My colleague’s article was returned to with an official missive declaring that the journal is indeed publishing its last issue. This sad ending could have been avoided if the editorship truly wanted to maintain this excellent journal, but one gets the impression that Mary Vasquez was/is tired, unwilling to explore an electronic option (the journal’s avoidance of allowing electronic submissions supports this), and wanting to end the journal under her directorship. The only thing this decision accomplished was reinforce the legacy of a fine journal that was abandoned. I doubt anyone will ever understand or make sense of this very poor decision and damaging outcome. Can you imagine this happening with _Hispanic Review_? I doubt UPENN would allow it…
I was told sometime in 2010 that my article would be published in summer 2011. My library has holdings of LP only until 2009. I have received no response from LP to verify that they are still publishing. According to the posts here it sounds like I should submit the article to a different journal. Should I officially rescind my submission to LP? What’s professional protocol in an instance like mine?
As LP is indeed defunct, you should simply submit the article in question to a different journal of choice.
It would be nice if MV updated the website for LP, and if she told authors immediately that the journal was defunct. Not only did I have to contact her a month after I submitted my manuscript, when she replied to inform me about LP going under, she snarkily added that anyway, I had only included one copy of the manuscript instead of two. I have never met her in person, but that was fairly petty, considering she held my ms for a whole month before telling me that it would never even be read!
It´s very dispiriting to hear of the demise of such a fine journal. I´d like to make a suggestion. Could another university buy the rights to this journal and host it? As I´ve never been involved in editorship, I don´t know whether this solution would be feasible or not. However, it is certainly very wasteful to not somehow capitalise on the journal´s contribution to Hispanic studies scholarship, and reputation.
“Anonymous” acknowledges that s/he sent an article to an academic journal that did not follow the submission guidelines and had to wait all of a month (?) to hear from the editor of the journal? Please show a bit more respect for the contributions of this publication that for more than twenty years was run with little to no funding. Letras Peninsulares was NOT the Hispanic Review [see 1/21 post]. Precisely. It was its own unique forum with its own unique and very personal vision of what an academic journal in our field could be. Mary Vásquez knew and knows what she is doing with the journal that she created.
Susan, I was “anonymous” and I had followed the guidelines that were outlined in the journal itself. When she replied, she quoted different guidelines, which was the same thing that happened to someone below mine.
As far as “respect” goes, I do not think it is disrespectful to a) follow the guidelines detailed in the printed journal and b) to expect an acknowledgment that the editor received the submission. I am glad I did write her to confirm she received my submission, considering the fact that other people waited a year just to hear that the journal was folding (read the comments below mine). Had I not written so “disrespectfully” I would not have had the time to submit it to another journal, where it was accepted, before I applied for tenure. People have tenure and promotion decisions riding on publication acceptances and I think that editors of journals should have “respect” for the authors as well.
I fail to see how my comment was disrespectful; if anything, I think it is disrespectful to hold someone’s manuscript if one has no intention of ever publishing it in his/her journal.
Yes, I understand that MV ran the the journal with little or no funding, but I am also dismayed by the way she not only responded to me, but how she let the journal go under without contacting colleagues to try and save it. I know of more than one person who contacted her repeatedly to ask if they could help save the journal by helping it go digital, and they got no response.