Reading the Archive

About the Journal

Reading the Archive is an open-access, bi-lingual, double-blind, peer reviewed online journal committed to fostering innovative research and dialogue across diverse disciplines, with history at its core. It seeks to explore the multifaceted interpretations of archival materials across disciplines. The journal is designed to allow graduate students and early-career researchers to explore and articulate their unique perspectives on archives.

The journal seeks to create an inclusive and accessible scholarly platform where emerging scholars can engage deeply with archival materials. It is particularly interested in how students perceive archives—both as physical and conceptual spaces—and what “reading” an archive means to them. Through this exploration, the journal showcases how students interact with, reinterpret, and reimagine archival content, and how these interactions influence their understanding of history and contemporary issues.

The journal encourages submissions dedicated to archives. However, the concept of the archive is not limited to colonial or state archives but includes a variety of sources, such as print, official, oral, popular, literary, visual, business, film, digital, and sonic archives held in private, institutional, public, and memory archives.

Submissions may include research articles, translations of critical historical writings, photo-essays, interviews, book reviews, review essays, critiques of films, museums, blogs, websites, seminars, podcasts, etc. Engagement with archives should be central to all submissions.

Publisher: Society for the Study of Archives

Language: English, Hindi

Article processing charges: There is no publication/ processing fee

Publication Frequency: Bi-annual (Winter and Monsoon issues published in June and December respectively)

Starting Year: 2025

Format of publication: Online

Website: https://readingarchive.janastu.org/ria/index

Submission guidelines: https://readingarchive.janastu.org/ria/author-guidelines

Editorial Policy: https://readingarchive.janastu.org/ria/editorial-policy

Review Policy: Double-blind peer review

ISSN number (online): 3107-7552

Subject Coverage: History and its allied disciplines

Copyright: Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en. Authors will hold copyright over articles published in the journal.

Archiving Policy: The journal is currently archived on the Internet Archive [Society for the Study of Archives].

Repository policy: Authors can deposit versions of their work in an institutional or other repository of their choice.