Journal Impact

Canadian Literature publishes 24 articles annually in English and French; all articles are blind peer-reviewed by two arm’s-length expert reviewers. Revised submissions are sent to at least one new reviewer. Our advisory board members regularly review articles. Some peer-reviewed interviews are also published. The journal also publishes poems, book reviews, notes, opinions, and documents. For the past 5 years the acceptance rate has been between 18 and 25%.

As a prestigious scholarly publication, operated out of The University of British Columbia, Canadian Literature is the leading scholarly journal for studies focused on literary and cultural objects produced in or about the lands known as Canada. 

The journal appeals to a wide readership, including scholars of Canadian literature and cultural studies, transnational literatures, and Indigenous literatures, high school students and teachers, undergraduate and graduate students, librarians, and creative writers. We also have non-academic readers who are interested in the timely forums, book reviews, poetry, and the literary texts on which we publish. 

Canadian Literature has a vibrant Canadian and international readership. Between 1 June 2019 and 31 May 2021, 158,344 users from 197 countries accessed our journal content. While readers have downloaded full issues (issues #238-#243) 297 times since 2019 from our website, the majority of our content is accessed through our aggregators. Articles from these issues were downloaded 6,763 times from EBSCO, 2,462 times from ProQuest (#238-#241), and 2,174 times from GALE (#238-#241), for a combined total of 11,399. From 2019-2021, our content (including articles, editorials, forum essays, and opinions and notes) was downloaded 150,603 times from over 23,000 institutions worldwide. As our readers also include active scholars, our content has been cited in a number of leading scholarly publications such as the European Journal of English Studies, Novel: A Forum on Fiction, and International Journal of English Studies. 

The journal ranks first in the field of Canadian literary studies. In the European Reference Index for the Humanities it is listed in the international category (INT), based on two criteria: influence and scope, and then in INT1: International publications with high visibility and influence among researchers in the various research domains in different countries, regularly cited all over the world.

Full-text articles are distributed by EBSCO, Gale, and ProQuest to university libraries and other electronic subscribers. Our website hosts issues #1–243 for free download.

Our canlit.ca website generates between 4,500- and 8,200-page views per month and an average of 70,000 new user views per year. Since 2018, over 46,000 visitors clicked on our new book reviews (pre-print publication) page. Our main page is updated regularly with news, special events, and issue highlights. With every issue, we work to spotlight our awesome authors and their work, from articles, to poetry, to our editorials! Our twitter following boasts over 6,300 followers with our numbers growing every day, while our Facebook page has over 2k likes and followers.