For Authors

Note: Submit art, poetry, and personal essays at byustudies.byu.edu/contests.

BYU Studies publishes academic articles, personal essays, poetry, art, and historical documents that are aligned with the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and the mission of Brigham Young University. Submissions are invited from all authors who seek truth “by study and also by faith” (D&C 88:118), discern the harmony between revelation and research, value both academic and spiritual inquiry, and recognize that knowledge without charity is nothing (1 Cor. 13:2).

Contributions from all disciplines are invited. Suitability for academic articles is based on the following priorities and standards:

Priorities and Standards

Rigorous scholarship aligned with the restored gospel

Pursues careful, evidence-based inquiry and clear argumentation.
Aligned with the restored gospel of Jesus Christ while welcoming complexity, acknowledging ambiguity, and following the evidence with intellectual integrity rather than predetermined conclusions.
Treats sources, interlocutors, and contested questions with fairness and charity, avoiding polemics or caricature.

Originality and contribution

Advances understanding through new evidence, a new argument, a fresh interpretive framework, an important correction, or a genuinely needed review/synthesis.

Fit and relevance to BYU Studies’ mission and readership

Addresses subjects of interest to Latter-day Saints and to scholars studying The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Strong grounding in scholarship, sources, and method

Builds on and accurately represents the best existing scholarship in the relevant fields.
Makes methodology clear and works within disciplinary norms.
For historical and humanities work: demonstrates clear provenance of sources, responsible contextualization, and explicit reasoning from evidence to interpretation.
For empirical work: demonstrates clear design, appropriate statistics, transparent measures, and warranted causal language.

Clarity, structure, and accessibility

The writing should be accessible to educated but non-specialist readers.
Written for an interdisciplinary readership: clear thesis, coherent organization, and definitions for specialized terms.
Appropriate tone for scholarly religious work—precise, fair, and readable.
References to the name of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should adhere to the style guide at https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/style-guide.

Process

Submissions are considered by the editor in chief, associate editor, and staff editors, who often involve one or more members of the editorial board, which is composed of leading scholars from a wide range of disciplines. Together they determine whether the submission merits peer review. If so, well-informed and responsive scholars provide reviews on which acceptance or rejection is based. The average number of days from submission to a decision is currently 68.

Submission should follow these formatting guidelines:

Authors must recommend at least two potential reviewers
Microsoft Word format
10,000 words or less
Title page without author information
1.5 linespacing
12pt, Times New Roman font
One inch margins
Include page numbers
Conform to the Chicago Manual of Style
It is the author’s responsibility to obtain all necessary permissions for any images included. If the article is accepted, high resolution files (300dpi) of all images will be required.

Once a submission is accepted for publication, the author is expected to supply BYU Studies with copies of (or links to) all cited sources. Editing and publication wait until this is done.

Previously published work
We welcome submissions that are variations on high-quality work published elsewhere but repurposed for BYU Studies readers. However, we rarely consider submissions that have been previously published (including on the Internet), or that may be the property of another publisher. We do not accept submission that are being considered for publication elsewhere.