About Oral Tradition
History of the journal
OT was founded in 1986 to serve as an international and interdisciplinary forum for discussion of worldwide oral traditions and related forms. Since that time, and through the end of 2006, it has been published by Slavica Publishers, with an additional online edition through Project Muse from 2003 onward.
New, Universal Access
With the advent of eOT, the free, open-access electronic version of the journal based here, we aspire to remove many of the natural barriers created by print-based and subscription media. Since we believe that academic contributions should be as democratically available as possible, we are from this point onward offering the journal as a pro bono, gratis contribution to the field. Anyone with a connection to the internet will be able to read and redistribute its contents – not only the current issue, but also the entire 22 years and 10,000 pages of back issues.
In addition to reaching a much larger and more diverse readership, we hope that eOT will encourage submissions from scholars whose voices are not customarily heard in western print media because of the difficulties involved with currency exchange and distribution networks. Let me take this opportunity to offer a special invitation to non-western scholars to join the discussion by sending contributions for possible publication in this newly expanded forum for scholarly exchange. All materials should be transmitted electronically to John Miles Foley, Editor.
Publication details
We post OT on this website as a series of pdf (Adobe Acrobat) files in order to preserve formatting and diacritics accurately. If the computer you are using does not have Adobe Acrobat installed, you can download the free reader here. Files can be opened and read online, and can also be printed to produce hard copy. Additionally, you may redistribute any or all contents as you wish, with the sole condition that the original publication source is accurately cited. See the citation policy on this page.
The entire OT archve is searchable online by keyword and by author, so that readers seeking information on specific traditions or concepts can easily locate pertinent research. eCompanions, which contain photographs, audio, video, and other multimedia support for articles, are linked from within the individual article texts.
OT will continue to be a fully refereed academic journal, with all manuscripts reviewed by a specialist and a generalist before a decision is reached. Although the medium of publication has shifted, nothing in the process of evaluation will change. As before, we will attempt to have a decision within 90 days of receiving the manuscript.
For information on submitting a manuscript to OT, see Prospective Authors.
Citation policy
For the sake of accuracy and to help spread awareness of the electronic edition of the journal as widely as possible, we ask authors who quote or cite contents from OT to acknowledge the internet source via URL. A sample citation might read as follows: Burton Raffel, “The Manner of Boyan: Translating Oral Literature,” Oral Tradition, 1 (1986): 11-29 [eOT =
http://journal.oraltradition.org/issues/1i/Raffel]
http://journal.oraltradition.org/about
