Journal Policies

Editorial Oversight 

At present the87press has selected an initial group of three Associate Editors to work alongside the Founding Director and the Editor-in-Chief in developing the journal and commissioning as part of the Editorial Board. In the future, we hope to open guest editorial and editorial positions to the public, and each candidate will be assessed on their own merit of publication and pedagogical experience. In most cases the Editor-in-Chief or Founding Director will be the Handling Editor for an issue and will anonymise or divide up submissions for double-anonymous or open peer review with the remaining Editorial Board members. 
 
The Editor-in-Chief manages the Editorial Board and manages the commissioning and submission procedure of each of the journal's volumes. The Commissioning Editor invites writers to submit to the journal via both direct solicitation and open-call. 
 
The journal's Editor-in-Chief supervises the editorial processes, outlined in our ‘Peer Review Process’ section below, and ensures that all deadlines are met, as well as managing Editorial Board Members (Poetry, Cultural Reviews, and Poetry and Essays Editors). 
 
Each role has a minimum term of three years, renewable on a rolling basis. The Editor-in-Chief and Founding Director will remain in their positions according to their respective positions with the87press.  
 
Each creative submission will be subject to open review screening and may be accepted based on the outcome of the review process. An additional reviewer may be necessary where further oversight is required. Conditional acceptance may be offered for works the editors judge as requiring revisions. 
 
Critical submissions that pass through double-anonymous peer review will receive acceptance with major or minor corrections and/or a rejection letter.  
 
An Editorial Board meeting for each review will entail curating each issue and if any disagreement between the editors over a submission surfaces, those submissions will be given final acceptance via an internal for/against vote where the majority carries. 
 
This journal makes use of the governance structures in place at the87press with a seven-person Advisory Board and an Editorial Board of five members inclusive of the Editor-in-Chief and the Founding Director. All boards referred to contain members from across different ethnicities, academic institutions, genders, sexualities, and neurologies and abilities. Our equality/equity, diversity and inclusion is very much a practice-based policy and informs decisions made with regards to any additions in person brought on to any board. 

Peer Review Process 

Once a poem or creative work is submitted using the journal's online system, and the submissions window has closed, the Handling Editor for that issue divides up the creative submissions between the members of the Editorial Board to ensure one reviewer at least will attend to each submission. It is the journal's policy that there is a reading period of three months during which a total of 10 submissions are selected for potential publication. Desk-rejected submissions are not provided with feedback as that is beyond the remit of the journal. Following an Editorial Board meeting for the issue, the editors discuss their selections and reach agreement on offering an acceptance or conditional acceptance. An acceptance means that there are no required changes and that the work is fit for publication as it was received. Conditional acceptance requires an openness to receiving and implementing editorial feedback, should an author be given a conditional acceptance and then refuse to work in good faith with an editor, the editors reserve the right to issue a rejection. Should an author's submission be deemed publishable with conditional acceptance, authors are contacted with their feedback and instructed, where relevant, to make revisions. Following this process, their revised and/or accepted work is then prepared for publication via copyediting, typesetting, and prepublication checks, with the Editorial Board ensuring the curation of each issue. Editorial statements and interviews are not subject to internal peer review from the editors and are instead worked on collaboratively. 
 
A critical review/research essay of between 1500 and 3000 words, once submitted, is reviewed by double-anonymous peer review, in which the Handling Editor anonymises the submission and the feedback from peer reviewers. Writers will receive either an acceptance with 'Major' or 'Minor Revisions', or a 'Rejection Letter' through the submissions portal. 
 
As the journal takes 10 creative works and 5 critical works to publication per issue, Authors may be offered publication in a later issue via conditional acceptance.   
 
The Hythe Review draws upon the expertise of its Editorial Board for the review process of submissions. Members of the Board are asked to undertake peer review of submissions to the journal. 

The Hythe Review  does not allow for authors to suggest peer reviewers, nor will the journal use peer reviewer suggestions offered by the author as this is considered a manipulation of the peer review process. 
 
Each peer reviewer is to be supplied with the journal's 'Reviewer Guidelines', and should be familiar with our ​submissions rules. Critical research essays should be anonymised for double-anonymous review according to the publisher's guidance. Creative submissions, such as poetry, are not to be anonymised as they will undergo open review. The Hythe Review does not publish peer review reports alongside published work, as the journal feels this distracts from the creative and critical writing it publishes, which is itself meant to have a public context in re-energising the critical landscape of independent publishing and writing outside of the mainstream. As editors, we do our best to provide a nurturing environment for the writing that we publish. No author of critical work will be told who their reviewers are as this is double-anonymous peer review; they will be contacted by the Handling Editor(s) for all communications and feedback relayed accordingly. The Editorial Team will send peer review reports for creative submissions that contain the rationale for publication/acceptance/conditional acceptance and any feedback for revisions. 

The Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) 

This journal follows the publisher's guidance on the use of generative AI for submissions and in the journal's publishing workflow. 
 
Authors should read the publisher's AI policy in full and adhere to it before submitting their research to this journal, paying particular attention to acceptable and unacceptable uses of generative AI and advice on whether it is necessary for an 'AI Declaration Statement' to be made with their submission. 

Organization and Governance 

The Hythe Review is owned and managed by the87press, a literary non-profit and independent publisher founded in 2018. Established on principles of equity, (late) modernism, anti-colonialism, anti-racism, environmentalism, and social justice, the87press quickly became the South London home for countercultural, hybrid, and experimental works of poetry, prose, and non-fiction from racialised, neurodivergent, LGBTQ+, and working class authors, initially and in particular, from communities extending the work and ambitions of the British Poetry Revival. 
  
The87press’ Founding Director and Founding Editor are responsible for the appointment of this journal’s editorial team and the ongoing management of the journal. 

Business Practices 

Advertising 

This journal only displays advertisements that are of relevance to its scope and will be of interest to the readership. This may include such items as literary events, creative writing courses, and cultural events which focus on literary publications. The editor and publisher have the right to decline or withdraw adverts at any point. Adverts will include a text heading to make it clear that they are adverts. If you wish to propose a potential advert then please contact the journal's editorial team. All advert images will have to be provided to the publisher. 
 
Decisions on whether to display adverts are taken collectively as an editorial team. the87press will monitor submissions for adverts and relay them to the board. 
 
Adverts on the journal's site are, depending on the number of adverts accepted for display by the journal at any one time, displayed at random. 
 
Any advertisements this journal allows on its site do not affect the editorial decisions of the journal in any way. 

Direct Marketing 

This journal undertakes direct marketing to boost its readership. The87press, as sponsor and co-publisher of this journal, will utilise its own publicity and marketing resources to ensure the promotion of the journal via the press' social media and newsletters. 
 
All direct marketing will be done in an appropriate, well-targeted and unobtrusive manner making use of newsletters and social media accounts already associated with the87press. All information provided about the journal in such marketing will be truthful and not misleading to readers or authors. All direct marketing this journal undertakes does not affect the editorial decisions of the journal in any way. 
 
The partner publisher, the Open Library of Humanities (OLH) employs a Community Outreach Manager who undertakes general marketing activities for the publisher including the promotion of its journals. The Community Outreach Manager does not, however, engage in direct marketing for any OLH journals and this does not affect the editorial decisions of OLH journals in any way. 

Other Revenue 

This journal's long-term publishing and hosting costs are funded by OLH’s Library Membership Model and the87press. The journal also accepts Voluntary Author Contributions(VACs) for articles. The Hythe Review is not a financial asset of the87press. 
 
The journal may occasionally obtain some revenue from accepting advertisements for display on the journal's website for supplementing journal running and editorial costs. 
 
These streams of revenue do not affect the editorial decisions of the journal in any way.