Starting a New Journal

Get Started

In addition to choosing your journal’s name and deciding what kind of content your journal will publish, there are a number of other decisions that you will need to make during the planning stage. Prospective student journals may wish to consult the PKP’s Student Journal Toolkit , which includes a helpful list of Things to Consider .

In general, journals should meet the following requirements before seeking support from a CSU library. If your journal meets these criteria, please fill out the following file and email it to your library publishing contact.

Request Journal Support Form
(PDF, 54.56 KB)
  • Student Journals: At least one faculty or staff member who has an ongoing affiliation with the CSU from which you are requesting support must be willing to serve as an advisor.
  • Faculty Journals: An editor or editorial board member must have an ongoing affiliation with the CSU from which you are requesting support. Note that the sponsoring library will endeavor to continue support if the journal becomes unable to meet this requirement at a later date, but support would not be guaranteed in that case.
  • Your journal must be committed to an open access publishing model, whereby the contents will be free to read and subject to minimal copyright and licensing restrictions.
  • Your journal must be prepared to formally review submissions to ensure high quality content is published.
  • You must intend to publish at least one issue per year and have a plan for sustaining the journal.
  • If your journal intends to charge author fees (also known as article processing charges), the journal will be responsible for managing them.