Curieux Academic Journal has closed to new submissions — its own site states no new papers will be published there. Work has moved to The Curieux Review. The old journal charged $200 seasonal or $250 fast-track on acceptance, reviewed via two of its own editors, and showed no evidence of assigning DOIs.
If a programme, counsellor or guide has told you to submit to Curieux Academic Journal, that advice is out of date. The journal has stopped publishing new work.
This matters because a student can lose a whole cycle preparing a submission for a venue that no longer accepts one.
Has Curieux Academic Journal closed?
To new submissions, yes. Its own site states that no new papers will be published there going forward, and work has moved to a successor publication, The Curieux Review.
The archive of previously published papers remains. If you published there, your paper has not disappeared. But the submissions route is closed.
Almost nothing written about student publishing reflects this yet. Curieux appears on most "where can high schoolers publish" lists, and those lists are now wrong. This is a general hazard in this sector: the venues change faster than the guides do, and the guides are mostly copied from each other.
What did Curieux charge, and why does the structure matter?
Nothing to submit. $200 on acceptance for the seasonal edition, or $250 for fast-track. Financial aid was available on request by email.
The timing of a fee changes what it does.
| Journal | At submission | On acceptance | What the structure rewards |
|---|---|---|---|
| Journal of Emerging Investigators | $49 | — | Screening out unserious submissions |
| Journal of Student Research | $50 | $299 (+$300 fast track) | Both |
| Curieux Academic Journal | — | $200, or $250 fast-track | Saying yes |
A fee charged only on acceptance means the journal earns nothing when it rejects a paper. That is not an accusation about any particular decision — it is a description of the incentive, and it is the arrangement the industry standards bodies are most concerned about. The joint COPE, DOAJ, OASPA and WAME principles state at Principle 13 that "author fees or waiver status should not influence editorial decision making."
Adding a paid fast-track on top compounds it.
Who reviewed the papers?
Two of the journal's own editors, checking for "academic integrity, factual certitude, and grammatical correctness."
That description is worth reading carefully, because it is candid and it is not peer review in the ordinary sense. Checking integrity, factual plausibility and grammar is editing. Subject peer review means an independent expert in your field assessing whether your method supports your conclusion.
Think.Check.Submit. asks authors to establish whether review involves "independent/external reviewers, how many reviewers per paper." Curieux answered the second question — two — and its answer to the first was that they were its own editors. The DOAJ requires "at least two independent reviewers" for inclusion, and independence is the operative word.
Turnaround was two to five weeks, which is fast for any review process and consistent with an editorial check rather than external refereeing.
Was it indexed? Did it assign DOIs?
We found no evidence of either. It held an ISSN under an earlier title, and made no indexing claim on the pages we could reach.
The DOI question is the practical one. A DOI is a permanent identifier that lets you cite your own paper years later and lets anyone retrieve it. Without one, a publication is a page on a website that may or may not still exist when you need it.
For comparison, the Journal of Emerging Investigators assigns DOIs and states plainly that "JEI articles are not indexed" — candour that Iowa State's predatory-publishing guidance implicitly rewards, since it lists false indexing claims as a warning sign. The Journal of Student Research assigns DOIs through Crossref under prefix 10.47611, which we verified on a live article.
What should you do instead?
If you have original data or a novel analysis: submit to the Journal of Emerging Investigators. $49 at submission, nothing on acceptance, expediting refused for any reason, DOIs assigned. It is the only venue in this category where money cannot buy you a faster or easier outcome.
If you are considering The Curieux Review: ask before you commit. Whether it has an ISSN, whether it assigns DOIs, who reviews and how many of them, and when it last rejected a paper. A relaunched publication may well be better than its predecessor — but you should establish that rather than assume continuity from the old name.
If your project is a literature review: no research journal is the right home, and that is not a criticism of your work. Most student journals want original findings. A strong review is a strong EPQ or Extended Essay and it does not need a journal to be worth having.
Do not pay for a fast track anywhere. If your deadline is too close for honest review, the answer is to submit next cycle.
How to check a journal is still alive
Five minutes, four checks, before you write a word toward a particular venue.
| Check | Where | What a bad answer looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Is it accepting submissions? | The journal's own submissions page | No date, or a closing date in the past |
| When did it last publish? | Its current issue or archive | Most recent issue more than a year old |
| Does it assign DOIs? | Any published article's citation line | No DOI, or a link that resolves nowhere |
| Who reviews, and how many? | Its about or review-process page | "Our editors", or no number given |
The last one is the check almost nobody runs, and it is the one that separates a journal from a publishing service. Two independent subject reviewers is the floor the DOAJ sets for inclusion. A venue reviewed by its own editorial team is doing something real — copy-editing and plausibility checking — but it is not the thing the word "peer-reviewed" is understood to mean on an application.
Curieux would have failed the first check in 2026 and passed it in 2024. Nothing about the journal changed in the guides that recommend it; only the journal changed. That is the general case, not a one-off.
How we handle submissions
The Oxford Centre for Advanced Research runs 1:1 mentorships with PhD candidates and early-career researchers at Oxford, Cambridge, other leading UK universities and Ivy League institutions. The Oxford Publication Fellowship — £3,400, about $4,400 — exists to get a project to submission standard.
We submit to the Oxford Journal of Student Scholarship, the Journal of Research High School and Vanderbilt's Young Scientist Journal, through standard review. All three reject student work, ours included. We do not use paid expediting and we do not promise acceptance, because it is not ours to promise.
We also check annually whether the venues we name are still operating, which is how we caught this. It is a low bar and most of this industry does not clear it.
The habit worth building
Before you prepare a submission, load the journal's own submissions page and read the date on it.
Curieux is the second venue in this sector to change materially in the last two years, and NASA's high-school internship listings changed too — its OSTEM programme now requires college enrolment, despite appearing on dozens of high-school lists. The guides do not update. The primary sources do.
Frequently asked questions
Is Curieux Academic Journal still accepting submissions?
No. Its own site states that no new papers will be published there going forward. Submissions have moved to The Curieux Review at curieuxreview.com. Any guide, programme or counsellor still directing students to the old submissions page is working from outdated information.
What did Curieux charge?
No submission fee, then $200 on acceptance for the seasonal edition or $250 for fast-track. Financial aid was available by email. The fee structure — nothing to submit, payment only if accepted — is the arrangement that creates the most difficult incentive for a journal, because it only earns when it says yes.
Who reviewed the papers?
Two of its own editors, checking for 'academic integrity, factual certitude, and grammatical correctness'. That is copy-editing and plausibility checking rather than subject peer review by independent experts, which is the distinction Think.Check.Submit. asks authors to establish before submitting.
Did Curieux assign DOIs?
We found no evidence that it did, and no indexing claim on its pages. It held an ISSN under an earlier title. Without a DOI a published paper has no permanent citable identifier, which matters if you want to reference your own work in a future application or dissertation.
Should I submit to The Curieux Review instead?
Check its terms directly before you do. We could not establish whether the new publication has an ISSN or assigns DOIs. A relaunch is a reasonable moment to ask the questions that matter — reviewer independence, reviewer count, fee timing and whether anything is ever rejected.
Where should I submit instead?
For original science, the Journal of Emerging Investigators: $49 at submission, nothing on acceptance, expediting refused outright, DOIs assigned. It is the only venue in this category we checked where paying more cannot buy you anything.