Have a job opening you'd like posted? Have an announcement to make? Want to submit articles for publication? Contact us at editors@against-the-grain.com

2026 Article Submission Deadlines: 

See submission guidelines below for additional details.

Submission Guidelines:

1) There are two options for submitting articles for ATG. If you use Google Drive, please share your document with charlestonhub@gmail.com. Alternately, you can email the document as a MS Word file to charlestonhub@gmail.com and copy Toni Nix justwrite@lowcountry.com.

2) Please save your file name as the issue and your column title. For example, "April 2024 Back Talk" or "v36-2 Back Talk." If there are separate graphics or images, please save with the same title plus photo 1, photo 2, etc. For example, "April 2024 Back Talk Photo 1.jpg" or "v36-2 Back Talk Figure 1.jpg." Minimum of 200 dpi for charts and graphs and 300 dpi for photos.

3) Within the document itself, please include your column title, the submission/article title, and your byline/author info at the top. We use Turabian - Chicago Style manual format.

4) Our editors will review submissions and be in touch with any requested changes or with questions, and a PDF proof will be sent for approval prior to publication.

Vendor-Neutral Submission Policy

Against the Grain welcomes contributions from across the scholarly communication community, including authors employed by publishers, vendors, or service providers. To maintain trust and balance for our readers, we ask that submissions from industry professionals follow these guidelines:

• Be transparent: Clearly disclose your current affiliation(s) and any relevant financial interests. A disclosure statement will be published with your article.

• Stay vendor-neutral: Articles and op-eds should focus on sector-wide issues, trends, and ideas, not on promoting specific products, platforms, or services. Comparative discussion is welcome but should be balanced and evidence-based.

• Collaboration with Librarians and Other Stakeholders: When feasible, ATG encourages co-authorship between vendor/publisher representatives and library or researcher partners to enrich perspectives and reinforce neutrality.

• Avoid promotion: Refrain from including promotional links, excessive self-citations, or marketing-oriented references to products, platforms, or services.

• Respect editorial independence: ATG editors may request revisions to ensure neutrality, clarity, and broad relevance to our readership.

We encourage thoughtful, analytical, and forward-looking pieces that advance the conversation in scholarly communication.

Use of AI:

• Articles: Authors may use GenAI in brainstorming or idea generation, or to make minor sentence-level adjustments (for example, to correct a grammar error, format a citation, or brainstorm a word choice). AI may not be used to draft article text.
• Image Generation: If you use AI tools (e.g., DALL·E, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Adobe Firefly) to create, alter, or enhance images for your submission, please disclose this clearly. State the name of the tool and its role in the image’s creation either in the caption or in a note at the end of your article. Example: Image generated using DALL·E (OpenAI), prompt supplied by the author; minor edits in Adobe Photoshop. Please do not present AI-generated images as photographs or historical documents, or mimic the style of living artists without permission. All AI-generated visuals are subject to ATG’s editorial review and approval.