Call for Submissions and Reviewers for the Stellenbosch Socratic Journal (Volume 6, 2026)
Abigail Backman-Daniels
It is my pleasure, as editor-in-chief of the Stellenbosch Socratic Journal (SSJ) for 2026, to extend the Call for Submissions and Call for Reviewers for the sixth volume of the SSJ!
For those unfamiliar with the SSJ, I have included a brief summary of what the SSJ is:
The Stellenbosch Socratic Journal (SSJ) is a peer-reviewed publication that aims to motivate undergraduate and postgraduate critical thinkers to share their perspectives in a formal, academic setting. The journal is a student-run publication that understands the unique challenges young academics and researchers face in terms of having their voices heard. Therefore, the journal provides a platform for inter-student collaboration, where new ideas can be developed and fostered in a critical, yet supportive environment.
The team behind the Stellenbosch Socratic Journal consists of postgraduate students from a wide variety of philosophical specialisations. The duties of this board range from ensuring all submissions are reviewed timeously, to selecting papers for final publication.
Submissions
The purpose of the SSJ is to provide an opportunity for young and early-career philosophers to develop their skills and to publish in a peer-reviewed academic journal. Our review process is intended to assist you on that journey, so no prior experience with academic publishing is necessary.
Please note, we accept submissions from postgraduate and third-year philosophy students. For submissions from third-years, we require that your paper be an adaptation of an essay submitted to a Philosophy module, where it must have received a final mark of 80% or higher. (You may also submit an adaptation of a paper you wrote for a third-year module even if you are not currently a third-year. If you are currently a third-year and your paper will not be marked by the submission deadline, but you believe that it would be worthy of publishing, please contact us.) If you are lecturing third years, please do share this with them.
You can look at our previous issues of the journal to see more about the SSJ for reference.
General requirements for submissions include the following:
· Submissions should be anonymous, i.e. the paper itself must not contain any identifiable information about the author. If a paper gets accepted, typically only after some revision(s), the author should then de-anonymise the paper.
· Papers should include an abstract of 150 to 250 words.
· Papers should be submitted in MS Word format, 12pt, Times New Roman, 1.5 spaced, and justified.
· Headings should use the decimal system. Headings must be formatted correctly using the correct 'styles'. Headings may not just be indicated by increased font size, bold or underlined text, etc.
· Papers must contain a Stellenbosch Harvard style alphabetised reference list and in-text references. (That is, in-text references look like: (Author, 2022:123). References and bibliographies must additionally be uploaded as a separate document on the website.
· For more specific information on the Stellenbosch Harvard method, use Make Sense of Referencing – The Harvard, APA and Vancouver Methods and the Footnote System (Van Dyk & Coetzee, 2010).
· The SSJ allows for the use of ibid. referencing, but only in the instance that the author is referencing the same source repeatedly on a single page. The in-text reference must be written out in full the first time that it is used on a single page. Ibid. references look like: (ibid.) or (ibid.:123).
· The SSJ allows for the use of single quotation marks to introduce terms or phrases and highlight questionable terms. Double quotation marks are used as per the Harvard referencing method for direct quotations from sources. Italics may be used for emphasis, as well as for book and journal titles (as per the Harvard method).
· The paper must be the original work of the author and must not have appeared in any other journal or publication.
· The paper must address a topic that is philosophically relevant and interesting.
· The paper must be between 1500 and 5000 words long.
Articles must be submitted via the SSJ’s website. Author’s must register on the website and submit their articles there for review.
https://www.journals.ac.za/index.php/ssj/about/submissions
The deadline for submissions is 12 June 2026. Please also note that you should be available to work on your paper after two rounds of reviews: 20 July - 03 August, and 14 September - 02 October. You may also be required to make additional edits in October/November before the journal is published.
Reviewers
While the editorial team is responsible for keeping the journal running, the core of academic publishing is the contributions of peer-reviewers. Reviewers enable the SSJ to publish academically rigorous papers of high quality. Any lecturer or postgraduate student working on a master's or higher degree can volunteer as peer-reviewer for the SSJ, including those who have themselves submitted a paper for review.
The duties of reviewers are to evaluate the academic rigour of submitted papers, and to provide guidance for authors on how to improve their work. This process is in general quite different from marking an essay, but in our case they have certain similarities. We allow submissions that are not immediately ready for publishing, and guide them to publication. Reviewers evaluate and provide guidance on how to improve the authors' articles.
As we know reviewing is a thankless job, we do acknowledge reviewers in the journal if they wish to be acknowledged.
If you would like to be a reviewer for the SSJ, please fill in the form (link below). The deadline for volunteering as reviewer is 12 June. The SSJ has two rounds of reviews for reviewers, so you should be available to conduct reviews: 26 June - 10 July, 17 August - 04 September.
Stellenbosch Socratic Journal (SSJ): Call for Reviewers 2026 – Fill in formStellenbosch Socratic Journal (SSJ) Editor-in-Chief