Submissions

Author Guidelines

Policies

Who Can Submit: Graduate and undergraduate students, as well as recent alumni up to a year past graduation, can submit papers and other projects for possible publication in ACCESS*.

Acceptable Genres: ACCESS* accepts submissions of student work in a variety of genres, including personal narratives, original case-studies, research papers, field notes, thesis chapters or capstone papers. However, with UW Tacoma’s Tahoma West literary journal already focused on such writing, we do not accept papers written for creative writing courses.

Submission Deadline: This year’s submission deadline is Sunday, June 21, 2026 at 11:59 PM PST. Works received after the deadline will not be considered for the current issue, but will be held for future consideration. Students who submit work to ACCESS* for possible publication must be reachable by email and available over the summer to work on necessary revisions.

Submission Criteria: ACCESS* publishes scholarship that persuasively extends or revises the existing research in its subject area. Successful papers clearly articulate their arguments and support those arguments with evidence. A successful paper will also situate its topic for a more general audience than it may have been originally intended for and situate its topic within a larger academic context. ACCESS* will not publish previously published material, but will accept new material from previously published authors. All submitters should be aware that revisions will likely be required and must agree to take part in the revision process that will take place during the summer months. Any papers not revised as requested by reviewers will be denied publication.

Submission Format: Submissions must include—on the first page, separate from the body of the paper—a 150-250 word abstract, followed by five keywords on a separate line. Longer papers, such as a dissertation or thesis, should be edited for both length and content prior to submission. If you'd like to discuss how to best edit for length, please contact the UWT Writing Center for an appointment with one of our editors.

• All submissions should use their discipline’s standard citation conventions (e.g. APA, MLA, Chicago) and any endnotes must be converted to footnotes.
• Manuscripts MUST be submitted as a Microsoft Word document, pdfs cannot be accepted by the system. All papers must be double-spaced using 12-point Arial font, and include separate reference page(s). Please include page numbers, centered in the footer. PDFs will not be reviewed, but may be resubmitted as a Word document.
• Finally, all parts of the submission (e.g. abstract, works cited page(s), etc.) should be included in a single document. li>
• PLEASE REMOVE ALL PERSONALLY IDENTIFYING INFORMATION, INCLUDING TITLE PAGES, including title; the system will create title pages for each published paper. Use the paper’s title as file name. Do not include your name anywhere in the paper or in the file name.
• Finally, please do not include any content in your submission which you do not have rights to use, and always give proper attribution. ACCESS* takes plagiarism very seriously.

How to Submit: Submission information should include the author’s name, email, submission title, and the discipline written for, making sure that only the title appears on the submission itself. PLEASE REMOVE YOUR NAME FROM THE DOCUMENT. If you wish to submit multiple works, please submit each separately.

Multiple Submissions: Although ACCESS* will only publish one submission per author in each of its editions, authors may submit up to three papers each submission cycle.

Review Process: All submissions will be considered on the condition that the author agrees to revisions proposed by reviewers. Papers will be subject to a double blind review process by the ACCESS* review board. There are two review cycles: the initial review usually takes about two weeks, after which authors are notified of their paper's status via e-mail. Each submission will receive one of the following decisions: Accept with minor revisions, Major revisions required for Acceptance, Revise and Resubmit, or Reject. After this initial review, authors will have approximately two weeks to revise according to reviewers' comments, before a second round of reviews begins. A final decision will be given on completion of that second round. The Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to request additional information from authors and to make textual changes as necessary, including authors in this process as much as possible. Final proofreading and editing will be done by the ACCESS* editor-in-chief and assistant editor(s), with a final version sent for authors' approval before publication, typically during the first few weeks of fall quarter.

Republishing: Any work published in ACCESS* may be reprinted later in another publication, provided that ACCESS* is properly recognized as first publisher.