In print since 1971, the American Indian Culture and Research Journal (AICRJ) is an internationally renowned multidisciplinary journal designed for scholars and researchers. The premier journal in Native American and Indigenous studies, it publishes original scholarly papers and book reviews on a wide range of issues in fields ranging from history to anthropology to cultural studies to education and more. It is published three times per year by the UCLA American Indian Studies Center. All submissions are peer-reviewed.

Editor-in-Chief

David Delgado Shorter, University of California, Los Angeles

Editorial Board

Randall Akee, University of California, Los Angeles

Robin Maria Delugan, University of California, Merced

Theresa Gregor, California State University, Long Beach

Inés Hernández-Ávila, University of California, Davis

Felicia Schanche Hodge, University of California, Los Angeles

Shari M. Huhndorf, University of California, Berkeley

Andrew Jolivétte, University of California, San Diego

Paul V. Kroskrity, University of California, Los Angeles

Beth Rose Middleton Manning, University of California, Davis

Michael Connolly Miskwish, Kumeyaay Nation

Angela R. Riley, University of California, Los Angeles

Theresa Stewart-Ambo, University of California, San Diego

Aims and Scope

The AICRJ accepts scholarly essays and commentaries pertaining to the research and vitality concerning Indigenous peoples across the Americas. While most of the essays we have previously published concern the Indigenous peoples of North America, we aim to expand to include topics across the hemisphere. Please note that we do not accept fiction or poetry, although we do include in our scope the literary analysis of fiction and poetry. In our Reviews, we primarily feature reviews of scholarly books, though we also welcome reviews of films and exhibitions that feature or impact the vitality of Native peoples. 

A Note on Our Review Process

The AICRJ relies on a fully anonymous peer-review where two experts evaluate the value of the submissions to the field and whether our journal is the appropriate venue for the work. In cases of "revise and resubmit" decisions, a second round of reviews may be required that could entail the same or different reviewers. 

Once an essay is submitted, all references to the authors are redacted before sending the essay for review. The identities of our reviewers remain anonymous, unless the reviewer offers the author an explicit invitation to contact them. 

We are open to "exception lists" if authors would to prefer us not consider particular reviewers. Please note that the choice of reviewers remains the responsibility of our editorial team. 

In the case of special issues, we ask two reviewers to closely read the entire collection in the issue. This request entails between five and nine essays so that reviewers are able to discuss the essays' collective contribution and internal cohesion. For those cases in which the sum of special issue pages reaches that of a book-length manuscript or entails a combination of genres, we may offer modest compensation for reviewers' labor. These amounts will vary depending on the labor requested, ranging between $50.00 and $200.00. Any compensation will be dependent upon the fully completed review being received before the deadline established during the initial query process. The editorial team may elect to send individual articles within special issues to specialist reviewers, who would not be compensated for those individual reviews.

If you would like to be considered as a reviewer for our journal, please contact us and include a résumé/CV as well as your areas of interest. Thank you.

Our Decisions

Peer reviewers are asked to suggest that we "accept," "accept with minor revisions," "request revisions for re-submission (and possible second review round), or "reject" essay. Our editorial team takes these reviews into consideration before making final decisions. The editorial team may decide on an action that differs from reviewers. We may also decide to archive an essay at any point between submission and publications, which removes the essay from the publication pipeline without being rejected. We may choose the "archive" option for a variety of reasons, for example: due to the author no longer responding to our communications; due to concerns regarding rights, permissions, or research misconduct; due to editorial concerns regarding the health and professional standing of the journal and/or field. We reserve the right to control all aspects of our publication, most of all its content.  

Our limited staffing does not allow us to offer developmental editing suggestions or to provide details relating to our decision process. Please keep in mind that we not only consider the contents of an essay but also how an essay represents our journal, and the direction and ethics of our publication.  For further information about our journal's standards, please see "Our Ethics" in the top menu above. 

Press Release from February 2025

PRESS RELEASE

February 3, 2025 - 11:00AM PST

Homegrown UCLA Scholarly Journal Not Just Reaching Scholars

UCLA’s American Indian Culture and Research Journal finds new life with Open Access

Los Angeles— Not often does a peer-reviewed, scholarly journal “go viral” on social media. Yet, with the combination of open access publishing and an academic journal intended for a public beyond higher education, UCLA’s sponsored journal, American Indian Culture and Research Journal (AICRJ), is drawing attention for all the right reasons. 

Dr. David Delgado Shorter, the journal’s Editor-in-Chief sees a meant-to-be moment in the making: “I find it quite fitting how a scholarly journal that started in the early 1970’s as an attempt to speak to the lived-life experiences of Native people, and not just scholars’ concerns, has found its largest audience ever once we removed the paywalls.” Shorter refers here to the often expensive subscription rates that institutions and individuals pay to access many scholarly journals across the social science and humanities. 

In 2022, the journal was able to secure initial start-up funds from UCLA’s Research and Creative Activities and the University of California Library System. It takes quite a leap of faith to move a leading scholarly publication away from a subscription plus advertising model to one where the content is free. The future was a bit unknown. Within a year, over twenty educational institutions, mostly college libraries, had contributed three-to-five-year gifts to help AICRJ cover their expenses. The challenge was not just keeping the journal running with academic integrity at every step but also moving over fifty years of content into its new home with the California Digital Library. And while most of the original investments expire in 2025, the results thus far have been astonishing. 

The journal’s first open access issue featured a festschrift for one of the most impactful Indigenous scholars, Dr. Haunani-Kay Trask; and it included many Indigenous Hawai’ian authors and a virtual release event on Zoom. That issue was read, at least in some parts, by over one-thousand people within the first month. And the numbers have been increasing consistently since then. By being open access, the analytics of viewers and downloads are available in real-time. What the journal’s leadership has been seeing since then is nothing short of jaw-dropping. The academic field of Indigenous and Native Studies has amassed quite a big following. 

How big is it? In its first full year of being available on-line, the journal had over 59k (that’s “thousand”) views, and an impressive 28.5k people downloading some of its content. The results from 2024 are just in and those number have almost quadrupled: 223,500 views, and 141,000 downloads. In December of 2024 alone, over 8,500 people downloaded an item from the journal’s content. And to counter any suggestion that this public interest does little to increase the journal’s academic standing, the opposite seems to be true.

After going open access, the journal was featured as a model of open access publishing by both the Max Plank Digital Library’s OA2020 organization and Diamond OA Library and by the Global Impact of Library Publishing. Since 2022, the journal has raised its H-Index score from 16 to 21, moving it from a “good” to the “best” category in Anthropology/Humanities/Arts/Sciences journals. And its essays have received two national awards by scholarly organizations, just in the last year. The journal increased their editorial board to reflect Indigenous scholars from the region and particularly from the Tongva community, the Indigenous community whose land where UCLA sits. In Fall 2024, the journal teamed up with UCLA American Indian Studies chair, Dr. Randy Akee (Native Hawaiian) to host Indigenous scholars from across the country for a symposium devoted to engaged community research and its publishing. The journal also has initiated an early-career writing award and will host their first writing retreat this Spring for UCLA professors in Native Studies. And that’s just the beginning. The journal’s prominence internationally seems to be blossoming with the increasing vitality of UCLA’s growing Department of American Indian Studies.

“I imagine Russel Means, John Trudell, and Dennis Banks at UCLA back in the early 1970’s hoping for a place in the academic world where Indigenous people and Indigenous subjects were centered.” Dr. Shorter reflects on some of the most iconic members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) who were part of UCLA’s American Indian Studies Center’s earliest formations. “Those days led to a long line of Indigenous Editors-in-Chief, editorial board members, authors, reviewers, and now readers across the world. Both Indigenous peoples and their allies have a journal that reaches them without paywalls or their institutional affiliations. You can’t help but see how investing in open access fulfills those earliest hopes, leading to a greater societal impact by the peer-reviewed scholarship in our field.” 

The journal’s next issue comes out in March of 2025, a special issue devoted to language revitalization, reclamation, and vibrancy.