Submission Preflight (jaar-submission)

The last check before submitting through ScholarOne / Manuscript Central (mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jaarel). The two most common avoidable failures at JAAR are a subfield-only framing (returned before review) and an under-anonymized document (it is double-blind). Verify volatile specifics on the official page first.

When to trigger

• "Submitting tomorrow" — last pass before upload
• Unsure which files Manuscript Central expects (anonymized main document + title page)
• Confirming framing, length, abstract, citation style, and anonymity are in order

Process facts (verify volatile items on the official page)

• Owner / publisher: American Academy of Religion (AAR) / Oxford University Press.
• Portal: ScholarOne / Manuscript Central, mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jaarel. Upload uses a Main Document (anonymous) designation plus a separate Title Page (and Figure/Table/ Supplementary as needed).
• Review: double-blind (double-anonymous). Average time to a first decision ≈ 106 days (as of 2022); a final decision can take up to ~6 months. Rejection rate ≈ 90% (~8 articles per issue, ~32/year) — the broad-significance gate is the first hurdle.
• Length: roughly 8,000–12,000 words including references and footnotes (待核实 exact range).
• Abstract: ≤ 150 words.
• Framing: the article must address a question of broad and fundamental interest to the study of religion and reach beyond its subfield, or it is returned for reframing before review.
• Citations: in-text author-date, NOT footnote citations; footnotes for substance only; alphabetized year-keyed reference list. For issues the JAAR style sheet does not cover, consult the Chicago Manual of Style (the sheet has cited the 15th ed.; confirm the current edition — 待核实) (see jaar-citation-and-style).
• House conventions: gender-neutral language, serial comma, italicized foreign terms, consistent transliteration.
• Fees / open access: no submission fee (verified 2026-06-22); an optional open-access license carries an OA charge alongside the standard license, and OUP Read & Publish agreements may cover it. OUP sets the exact APC on its live charges page — confirm there.

Preflight checklist

Framing & fit

• Introduction states broad, field-level significance (passes the reframing gate)
• The essay "has a point" — a contestable thesis, not description

Length & abstract

• Within ~8,000–12,000 words including references and footnotes
• Abstract ≤ 150 words

Anonymity (double-blind)

• Anonymized main document — no author name/affiliation; self-citations neutralized ("a prior study," not "my prior study")
• Separate title page with author info prepared as its own file
• Identifying file metadata stripped (document properties)
• Acknowledgments/funding moved off the anonymized document

Style & files

• In-text author-date citations; footnotes substantive only; reference list keyed and alphabetized
• Gender-neutral language, serial comma, foreign terms italicized, consistent transliteration
• Images (if any) with permissions; high-resolution where reproduced

Ethics

• Original work; not under review elsewhere
• Fieldwork consent/positionality handled (see jaar-sources-and-evidence)

Anti-patterns

• A subfield-only introduction (triggers the pre-review reframing return)
• Author identifiers left in the main document or its metadata (breaks double-blind)
• Footnote citations instead of in-text author-date
• Abstract over 150 words; manuscript over the length range with bloated notes
• Planning a book-review submission — JAAR does not accept unsolicited reviews and does not publish reviews from graduate students; reviews are commissioned via the Book Review Editor

Output format

【Framing】broad field-level significance + a "point"? [Y/N]
【Length/abstract】within ~8,000-12,000 incl. notes/refs; abstract ≤150? [Y/N]
【Anonymized】main doc + self-cites + metadata clean; separate title page? [Y/N]
【Citations】in-text author-date; footnotes substantive only? [Y/N]
【House conventions】gender-neutral + serial comma + foreign-term italics? [Y/N]
【Next】await decision → jaar-revision-and-response

Desk-return ledger: why JAAR submissions bounce before review

The editorial office of the AAR/Oxford University Press flagship returns manuscripts at upload or pre-review for a recurring set of reasons. Clear all of these before you press submit.

Worked vignette: a clean preflight on a comparative essay

The comparative-offerings article is ready. The author runs the two-file check that ScholarOne / Manuscript Central expects for double-anonymous review:

• Main Document (anonymous). "In my 2019 study" becomes "in a prior study"; the acknowledgments and a grant line are removed to the title page; document properties are cleared so no author name rides along in the metadata.
• Separate Title Page. Author name, affiliation, contact, acknowledgments, and funding live here, as their own file.
• Framing line. The first paragraph names what the comparison teaches the study of religion (the transactional-devotion analytic), so the office does not bounce it to reframe.
• Style sweep. In-text author-date throughout; serial commas; dargah and ex voto italicized and glossed; one transliteration system; abstract trimmed to the cap.

Hedged calibration: the portal (ScholarOne / Manuscript Central at mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jaarel), the AAR/Oxford University Press ownership, and the double-anonymous model are stable anchors; the exact word range, the abstract cap, file-designation labels, and ethics/data statements are volatile — verify each on the journal's current submission guidelines before this final pass, as the prompt requires.

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/external_tools.md — reference managers and study-of-religion research tools
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — official JAAR URLs behind every fact in this pack