This report on Iranian Studies was delivered at the 2026 Fifteenth Biennial Conference of Iranian Studies in Utrecht. I provide it here for those who were not able to attend the conference.
Our journal continues to serve as a vital, multifaceted platform for scholarship across our discipline. In addition to original research articles, we have enriched our published output through roundtables, review essays, archival reports, book reviews, and short reviews.
The international breadth of our contributing community remains one of our greatest strengths. Over three years, we received submissions from corresponding authors across thirty-eight countries. A large majority of these submissions originated from scholars in Iran, followed by strong representation from the United States, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Germany.
Over the past three years, our operational metrics reflect both strong demand and a rigorous, efficient editorial process:
• Submission volume: We received an average of 258 submissions per year over the three-year period.
• Acceptance rate: We maintained high standards of scholarly selectivity, with an average acceptance rate of 24 percent.
• Peer review efficiency: Thanks to the dedication of our reviewer pool and editorial office, our turnaround time from initial submission to a final peer-review decision averaged forty-four days.
In partnership with Cambridge University Press, we continue to enhance the visibility, reach, and accessibility of our authors’ work.
• Through Cambridge’s expanding network of transformative agreements—now covering over 2,500 institutions worldwide—and equitable open research initiatives, an increasing proportion of our articles are published with open access, driving significant full-text engagement and downloads globally on Cambridge Core.
Although Iran accounts for the largest share of our total submissions globally, a closer look at geographical outcomes reveals a stark disparity. In 2025 alone, we received 111 submissions from corresponding authors based in Iran, yet only six of those manuscripts were ultimately accepted for publication—yielding an acceptance rate of just 5.4 percent, well below our global average of 24 percent.
This gap highlights not a lack of rigorous research or engagement with current research among scholars in Iran, but rather the structural hurdles and disparities in navigating international publication standards, rhetorical conventions, and peer review expectations.
To directly address this gap, we launched the Iranian Studies Writing Workshop in spring 2025, an initiative Farshad Sonboldel, the deputy editor, designed and directed. This program provides hands-on mentorship to early-career Iranian researchers, guiding them through the mechanics of academic writing, structural organization, and global peer review processes.
The impact of this program is already evident:
• We are offering the workshop series for the third time in fall 2026, and the demand remains overwhelming. As of early September, nearly two weeks before the September 15 application deadline, we had already received 98 applications, underscoring the strong need for structured academic writing support among emerging scholars.
These figures confirm that structured academic mentorship is not merely supplementary; it is a critical necessity for fostering equitable representation and elevating early-career scholarship from the region.
