By invitation — please pass it only to colleagues who fit

Journal of Indian Social Transformation

Historical and Contemporary Studies · Founding Editorial Board

Dhammacakka Research Center and Chetana Education Society are establishing a new peer-reviewed, open-access journal on India. We are assembling its founding Editorial Board, and this page asks one thing of you: tell us what you can competently judge, so we can see what the Board still lacks.

Go to the form

What this page is not

A seat on the Board: Not yet
A request for money: No
Anything to print or post: No

The form ends with the terms and one box to tick. Ticking it is your consent to serve if the journal appoints you; it is not an appointment, and your name is published only after we write to say you have one.

Aims and scope

The journal publishes research on India — its society, environment, economy, education, history, texts and heritage — in any period, from the earliest evidence to the present day.

What we mean by India. The map belongs to the period under study. Before the partitions of the twentieth century the modern borders did not exist, so for any period before 1947 India means the subcontinent as it then was — Gandhāra, Sindh, Punjab, Bengal and the rest are within scope wherever that ground falls today, and a paper is placed by the territory its evidence comes from, never by the passport that territory now carries. From 1947 the subject is the Republic of India, and work on Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal or Sri Lanka after that date belongs here when it bears on India — a partitioned district, a shared river, a migration, a comparison that settles something on the Indian side.

What we are particularly interested in. Work that begins with a question about India today and looks for its answer in the historical record. Why vegetarian diet is so widespread here, and what in the evidence actually accounts for it; why a district's water is governed the way it is; why a community sends its daughters to school and its neighbour does not. Papers of that kind are read first and lead each issue.

What we also publish. Rigorous work at either end on its own — how society changed in an earlier period, or what a present-day policy did. It does not have to reach across time to be welcome here. It has to be about India, it has to be about society, and it has to be sound. Texts, ideas and excavated sites belong here for what they tell us about the people behind them.

What we do not publish. Work with no Indian material in it. Description that asks no question. Work that stays inside a text, a doctrine or a site and never reaches the people behind it. Anything already published elsewhere, including in conference proceedings.

How it is run

Open access, online only. No charge to authors and no charge to readers — no article processing fee, no submission fee, nothing at any stage. Double-anonymous peer review, two independent external reviewers for every manuscript. Editorial work is unpaid, for everyone, ourselves included.

How often it appears. At least two issues a year and at most twelve. An issue is published when five or more accepted articles are ready and the volume is of a sensible length — not on a calendar date with whatever happens to be in hand.

The journal holds no ISSN and no indexing yet, and we claim none. We apply for an ISSN once the first issue is out, which is the earliest the ISSN National Centre of India will consider an online journal, and to DOAJ after ten articles.

Cover of the first issue, showing the Ganges at Varanasi at dusk — **Volume 1, Number 1** — in preparation. No issue has been published yet.

Who is publishing it

Chetana Education Society
Wardha, Maharashtra. Registered under the Societies Registration Act in April 1973. Fifty-three years of schools and education programmes in rural Maharashtra. Secretary: Dr. Chetana Sawai.

Dhammacakka Research Center
The academic unit of Dhammacakka Foundation Trust, Sarnath, Varanasi; 12A and 80G recognised. Publisher of the first complete English translation of the Pali commentaries — 47 volumes, 118,640 paragraphs, free to read and cite — reviewed by its Academic Review Board. See the work.

If you would rather ask a person

Any question at all is best put to Dr. Chetana Sawai, who suggested your name.
chetana@jistjournal.org

What the role involves

Twice a year, an Editorial Board member handles one or two manuscripts: reads each, decides whether it should go out for review, finds and invites the reviewers, reads their reports, and writes the decision. Around three to five hours per manuscript, spread over ten weeks.

We also ask each member for an opening list of five colleagues who could be invited to review, and for ninety minutes at one online Board meeting a year. You are not asked to write for the journal, to review manuscripts yourself, or to raise money.

What happens after this form

We read the answers and see which fields the Board covers and which it still does not.
You receive the Information Sheet by email, with one link to confirm that the address is yours.
If your fields are among those the Board still needs, we write to offer you a seat. Your name appears nowhere before that letter.

The form

Everything marked with a star is needed. Everything else helps and may be left blank.

1 · Who you are

Full name, with title *

Present designation *

Department or school

Institution *

Institutional email *

Country *

ORCID iD, if you have one

Why an institutional address. The ISSN National Centre of India asks that editorial boards be listed with official institutional email addresses rather than personal ones. If your institution does not issue them, say so at the end and we will record the position openly.

2 · What you can judge *

Type a word to find your fields, then click to move them across. Choose as many as genuinely apply — there is no advantage in being modest, and none in over-claiming. The list is wide because the Board must be; nothing on it has been decided.

Education and learning

Society, community and welfare

Health and wellbeing

Governance, economy and livelihoods

Politics, law and the state

Culture, media and the arts

Environment and natural resources

Languages and textual traditions

History, archaeology and heritage

Your areas 0

Nothing chosen yet. Find your fields on the left and click each one to bring it here.

Not on the list? Add your own

3 · How you work *

Choose at least one method you are competent to assess. A manuscript is sent to the reviewer whose method matches it, not only the one whose subject matches it, so this is what makes the list above usable.

Your methods 0

Choose at least one from the left.

Not on the list? Add your own

4 · Does your work cross between past and present? *

The journal is particularly interested in work that answers a present-day question from the historical record, but it publishes work at either end as well, so long as it is about society. We are asking so that we know how much of the Board can do the first kind. Please answer as it really is, not as you think we would like.

Choose the one that fits best

I already use historical evidence to explain present-day conditions I work on the past only, but would willingly review work that reaches forward to the present I work on the present only, but would willingly review work that reaches back into history I would rather stay at my own end. Crossing over is not what I do

5 · Your strongest area *

Name the one field — from your list above or from the box — in which you would be willing to take final editorial responsibility for a manuscript.

Principal field *

6 · In your own words

Two or three specific problems you actually work on. This carries more weight than the list: the headings above are broad, and what makes a board useful is the particular question each member can settle. For example — “rural water governance and village-level committees”, “Ashokan inscriptions in the Deccan”, “teacher retention in tribal-district schools”.

Specific problems you work on

7 · Three questions, all optional

Any previous editorial or peer-review experience

Would you be open to being considered as Editor-in-Chief?

Anything else we should know

6 · The terms, and your consent *

There is nothing to print, sign or post. Please read these six lines; they are the whole of what is being asked.

Term. Three years, renewable by agreement. You may resign at any time by writing to us, and your name comes off the website within seven days.
Unpaid. No Board member, reviewer or editor is paid anything, and the publishers take no income from the journal.
The work. One or two manuscripts an issue, twice a year; an opening list of five possible reviewers; ninety minutes at one online meeting a year.
What is published about you. Your name, designation, institution and area of expertise on the journal website — and nothing else. Your email address is not published.
Editorial independence. Decisions on manuscripts rest with the Editor-in-Chief and the Board. The publishers do not intervene.
No seat is offered by this form. We may not be able to appoint you, and we would rather say so now.

Your consent * I have read the terms above. If the Journal of Indian Social Transformation appoints me to its founding Editorial Board, I agree to serve on those terms, and I agree that my name, designation, institution and area of expertise may be listed on the journal website from that point.

We record the date and time of this tick as your consent. To confirm that this email address is really yours, the letter we send next contains one link to click. Nothing is listed in your name before both are done and before we have written to offer you a seat.

Your answers go to Dhammacakka Research Center and to Chetana Education Society, and are used only to complete the Editorial Board. They are not published, not passed to anyone else, and not added to any mailing list. Ask either of us to delete them at any time and we will.
Questions of any kind: Dr. Chetana Sawai.