About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Past Imperfect is the journal of the History, Classics, and Religion Graduate Students' Association (HCRGSA) at the University of Alberta. It is an annual publication edited by students and funded by the HCRGSA and the Department of History, Classics, and Religion. Past Imperfect welcomes original research articles and book reviews covering a broad range of themes, time periods, and geographic areas. Articles appearing in Past Imperfect are abstracted in America: History and Life and Historical Abstracts.

Frequency

Annual publication.

Review Process

Submissions are gathered by the journal editor who presents them anonymously before the editorial board. This board conducts an initial review that will evaluate submissions for completeness, and whether they fall within the journal’s scope and are of sufficient quality to proceed to peer review.

Submissions that pass the initial review will then undergo an anonymous review process by two to three reviewers (including at least one faculty member). The editor asks the reviewers to decide whether the submission should be 1) Accepted; 2) Accepted with minor revisions; 3) Accepted with major revisions; 4) Revise and resubmit; 5) Rejected. If the first two peer reviewers are found to disagree significantly on the submission, a third reviewer will be consulted.

Open Access Policy

Past Imperfect provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports greater global exchange of knowledge. Authors will never be charged to submit or publish a manuscript through Past Imperfect, and all articles will be published under an International Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), as indicated in the Copyright Policy of the Submission Guidelines.

Self-Archiving Policy

Authors are encouraged to deposit the published version in an institutional / disciplinary repository immediately on publication. Pre-print versions posted online should include a citation and link to the final published version in Past Imperfect as soon as the issue is available; post-print versions (including the final publisher's PDF) should include a citation and link to the journal's website.

Digital Archiving Policy

This journal is archived with the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) Preservation Network and Scholars Portal Journals. These programs offer a decentralized and distributed preservation, perpetual access, and preservation of the authentic original version of the content.

Publications Ethics Statement

The editors of Past Imperfect are committed to academic integrity and will take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others. In the event that the editors are made aware of any allegation of research misconduct relating to a published article in their journal, the editor shall follow the Committee on Publication Ethics guidelines in dealing with allegations.