THE ONE OVER RULE & OTHER THOUGHTS ON SUBMITTING TO THE

JOURNAL OF ASIAN STUDIES

Jeffrey Wasserstrom

Editing the JAS is an exciting job but also a daunting job. It is exciting because so
many fascinating pieces get sent in for consideration, but it is daunting because so
few of these can be published. There is no magic formula used to determine which 25
or so of the well over 300 submissions we get in any given year end up being
accepted, but over the course of my four years as Editor, I have come up with some
rules of thumb. Since the Journals Managing Editor Jennifer Munger and I are often
asked questions by authors trying to assess their chances of having their article
accepted, it seems worth spelling out some of these:

1) There are more pieces that qualify as the very best articles on Asia than we have room
to publish. Our goal, therefore, is to select articles that are of very high quality
and that, when taken together, make for individual issues and yearly volumes
that seem likely to strike our readers as interesting and attractively varied.

2) The One Over Rule. In an ideal world, every JAS article would be accessible
and appealing to all members of the Association for Asian Studies, the group
that remains our primary target readership. More realistically, I am
determined that nothing run under my watch will only be of interest to
scholars working in a single discipline and on a single period or locale, and
that nothing will only make sense to a small segment of the AAS
membership, due to the terminology or formulae used. A lot of excellent
articles are highly specialized and intended simply for others who are expert
in an area, but there are many good journals where such work can be
published. The JAS, by contrast, is an interdisciplinary general journal. To
work for us, an article has to, at the very least, be something that scholars in
two or three different disciplines will be able to understand easily and that will
have the potential at least to interest readers working on neighboring
countries, related topics, and on adjacent periods. Articles do not need to be
comparative or interdisciplinary. They do need to have a broad as opposed to
narrow aspect to them. Hence, the one over rule, which means an ability to
speak to someone in a field close to the authors own. An article by, say, an
anthropologist working on Laos need not have any obvious appeal to a
literary critic specializing in the study of Korea, but if this piece would have
no chance of drawing the interest of a sociologist whose focus is Cambodia,
we have a problem. Similarly, while that imagined Korean literature specialist
does not have to write a piece that is certain to draw in an economist
primarily concerned with India, theres a problem if Japanese studies scholars
working in cultural studies do not think it speaks in any way to them. The
same kind of thinking applies to periods as to places and disciplines.

3) We dont have a quota system (for specific parts of the region, for specific disciplines, for
specific periods), but we do strive for diversity. If we have recently run a number of
pieces on a particular place or topic, that doesnt mean we wont run another
one. Nevertheless, all other things being equal, well be more interested in
something that is on a place or topic that has recently been underserved.

4) Not all places that have a good claim to be thought of as belonging in Asia are part of
the Asia of the Association for Asian Studies and the Journal of Asian Studies. One
important theme in recent writing on all sorts of geographically defined
entities, from countries and continents to smaller units, is the contested and
constructed nature of boundaries and borders. With that in mind, the
definition of what counts as belonging in Asia for the purposes of the AAS
and the JAS is bound to change over timeand, indeed, it recently did
change, with Afghanistan being incorporated into South Asia. For now,
however, the parts of the continent we cover are those traditionally
considered under the umbrella of the South Asia Council, the Southeast Asia
Council, the China and Inner Asia Council, and the Northeast Asia Council.
That means, as there is no Southwest Asia Council in the AAS and there are
separate area studies organizations that deal with the Middle East, JAS does
not generally consider submissions on and publish material primarily about
countries such as Iran, Turkey, and the Gulf States. This does not mean that
work that deals with those places, yet has ties to other parts of Asia, wont be
considered. Similarly, while we do not generally focus on ethnically or
historically Asian populations living outside of Asia, this does not preclude
consideration of work on diasporas, as long as it is done in a fashion that is
likely to engage scholars of Asia who do not focus on issues of migration.

5) Word limits, style, and framing all mattera lot. The best way to proceed in
submitting to any periodical is to pay attention to what has been published
there before and the guidelines for submission. This may seem obvious, but
many things are sent to the JAS that seem to have been written by people who
have never looked at an issue of it or by people who have no ideaor are
determined to disregardstipulations about length. We do not, for example,
publish work that is about Europe or African cases studies but has been
written by scholars based in Asia, but we get submissions of that kind. We
state that our maximum word limit is 10,000 words (inclusive of notes and
bibliography), but we routinely get submissions that are more than 50%
longer than that. And so on.

6) Journal editors loveor at least this journal editor lovesoffering a sense that a
periodical is a place that fosters scholarly conversations that continue to unfold over
time. What this means is simple. If you can find a logical way to present your
submission as building on something thats been discussed in the JAS before,
yet takes it in a striking new direction, Ill like it. I wont necessarily accept it
(the odds are too long for any submission to guarantee that), but it will ensure
I read it with a smile.
Last updated: 07 August 2012