Authors Guidelines

WHO can submit?
Mercury welcomes submissions from undergraduate students at HKU, including HKU full-time students and exchange students. Authors may come from any discipline in the university, but submissions must fall under one of our named categories. For fresh graduates from HKU, submissions must be made within six months of the author’s graduation. For exchange students at HKU, only works written during your time at HKU will be accepted.

HOW can you submit?
All submissions should be sent to our Managing Editor at mercury.hku@gmail.com from your portal email address (xxx@hku.hk).

WHAT can you submit? 
Submissions of academic writing must follow the instruction of each issue, and your submission must be relevant to the current theme and be made for the current issue only. Submissions of creative writing are welcomed throughout the year and will be evaluated on a rolling basis. There is no submission/acceptance fee involved. For more information, please visit the webpage of relevant section on this site.

HOW is the two-way blinded reviewing processed?
Selection of manuscripts is based on quality of research and argumentation, creativity, originality, and the value/insights the articles provide to the related disciplines.

Upon receiving the manuscripts, all submissions will be numbered and distributed by our Managing Editor. The Managing Editor will then number the file, record the author’s information, and pass the submissions to the responsible associate editor(s). All future communication will be processed by referring to this file number.

The manuscripts will be reviewed and edited by a member of the editorial team who will make a decision on the manuscript. Only those that seem likely to meet the standards of Mercury are sent to reviewers (academics from the Faculty of Arts). Authors at HKU are highly recommended to seek support from CAES before they submit their manuscripts.

Selected papers are reviewed by at least one peer editor and one academic with expertise in the subject. Reviewers will be asked to evaluate each submission and recommend a course of action for the paper. The editors then make final decisions based on the advice provided by reviewers and the appropriateness of the submission for publication in Mercury.

HOW is Mercury published?
Mercury is a biannual online publication. Papers for the current issue will be published once the editing and reviewing process is finished. The Spring issue will published in March/April, and the Autumn issue in October/November.

WHEN will authors be informed of the status of their submissions?
Our associate editors will normally complete the review process and reach a decision within one month of acknowledgement of submission. If the author does not receive a decision within three months, he or she may choose to withdraw the manuscript by notifying the Managing Editor.