Editorial policy

The International Review of Social History (IRSH) is one of the leading journals in its field. While covering all areas of social history, it has a particular focus on Global Labour History. This includes the history of work and labour relations, defined in the broadest possible sense, the history of workers, as well as the history of their struggles, organizations, and associated social, cultural, and political movements, both in the modern and all pre-modern periods and across periods. IRSH aims to be truly global in scope and emphasizes the need for a comparative perspective that acknowledges the interrelationship of historical change and the phenomena and factors underlying that change, both comparisons and the analysis of circulations and connections. We welcome submissions from all over the world that deal with the social history of work, workers, and labour relations, explored on a local, regional, national, or transnational level, but always with an eye to how they contribute to a better understanding of what constitutes global labour history.

The journal is issued by the International Institute of Social History (IISH), and published by Cambridge University Press. Per year, three regular issues appear, in April, August, and December, while an additional Special Issue of commissioned essays on a current topic is also published annually, in April. IRSH aims to publish some twenty-five articles each year in its four issues and to cover important new titles published in the field of social and labour history in its book reviews section.

Approximately one submitted article in three or four is accepted for publication. The editorial committee endeavours to reach a decision on submitted articles within six months, and to publish accepted contributions within a year. All articles are refereed before acceptance. The EC retains the rights to accept or reject an article; the decision is not only the outcome of the external reviewing process. See Cambridge University Press's publishing ethics guidelines and the IRSH's Editorial Statute for more information. On acceptance, the executive editor gives an approximate date of publication but reserves the right to change that date at short notice, owing to space constraints and the need to achieve an appropriate balance of content in each issue. The online version of IRSH has the FirstView feature, which means articles are published online – and are available to all readers – until they are allotted to an issue. For authors who cannot publish in OA, this has the advantage that their article remains available to all for a longer period of time. IRSH also has the option to publish your article in open access, to meet funders’ mandates. Click here and here for more information on open access in IRSH. See also under Manuscript Submission in this document.

Article types

International Review of Social History accepts the following types of article:

• Research Article*
• Book Review
• Review Article*
• Review Essay*
• Review Symposium*
• Survey*
• Comment*
• Suggestion*