Editorial Policy

Middle Grades Review (MGR) provides a provocative forum for debate within the field of middle grades education. Inviting a critical perspective, MGR is a peer-reviewed, diamond open access, multi-media venue for scholars and practitioners who wish to broaden the discourse of middle grades education by challenging conventional wisdom.

MGR seeks pieces that explore three themes: 

  • Democratic Education,
  • Innovation, and
  • Social Justice,

in relation to middle grades education and young adolescents.

Each submission undergoes editorial review. If found suitable, manuscripts are then peer-reviewed by university faculty, middle level education researchers, and/or middle grades teachers.

Submission Types

MGR publishes submissions in these categories:

  1. Essays (under 3,000 words, excluding references)
    Essays posing opinion, positing or discussing theory, and/or offering critique

  2. Research and Inquiry (under 7,500 words, excluding references)
    Research reports of original research that represent any paradigm or methodology. MGR prioritizes inquiry that involves middle grades students in at least one of the following ways: as participants, consultants or co-researchers.
  3. Practitioner Perspectives (under 3,000 words, excluding references)
    Accounts of teacher and/or student practice
  4. Responses (under 2,000 words, excluding references; longer responses should be submitted as an Essay)
    Brief responses to previous articles in any of the above categories. Responses should stimulate debate in the middle grades community by extending the original manuscript’s content, or by presenting an opposing interpretation or perspective.

Because MGR is an online forum, authors are encouraged to include any digital media that support the manuscript. These include links to other sites, embedded audio and/or visual, and visual representations of student work or other data. Submissions must not have not been previously published, nor should they be under review elsewhere.

MGR is open to submissions according to its call for manuscripts. It publishes articles on a rolling basis.

MGR is published by Middle Grades Collaborative in partnership with the University of Vermont Press. All articles in MGR are free to access immediately from the data of publication. There are no article processing or submission charges. All content, unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license (CC-BY-NC-ND), which permits unrestricted noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that it is properly attributed.

This journal is abstracted/indexed in Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and Cabell’s.