Author Guidelines

Submissions should be made electronically through this website and should be accompanied with a brief cover letter. Please ensure that you consider the following guidelines when preparing your manuscript. Failure to do so may delay the processing of your submission.

Article types

Research articles must describe the outcomes and application of unpublished original research. These should make a substantial contribution to knowledge and understanding in the subject matter and should be supported by relevant figures and tabulated data. Research articles should be approximately 8,000 words in length and must pass peer review in order to be published. 

We invite review essays on two to three books, published in the last five years, on a shared topic or question. Papers should critically engage with the relevant body of extant literature. Please email the review editors with suggested books; please see the 'News' page for the latest call for review essays. 

Review essays should be no longer than 3,500 words in length. All word limits include referencing and citation.

Interviews with contemporary writers and prominent scholars are welcomed. Questions should not be limited to one book or work, and deal with wider issues of contemporary writing and literary culture. Please note interviews should not be for promotional purposes. Interviews should be no longer than 2,500 words in length. 

Use of AI

Authors should claim full responsibility for their submitted work, including any output(s) from AI use. Any substantial known use of generative AI should be declared in full in your submission. 

Structure

Your paper needs to include the following: title; abstract; keywords; introduction; discussion; conclusion; notes; competing interests; references; appendix.

Research articles must have the main text prefaced by an abstract of no more than 250 words summarising the main arguments and conclusions of the article. This must have the heading 'Abstract' and be easily identified from the start of the main text. The Abstract and Keywords should also be added to the metadata when making the initial online submission. 

Please also take care to ensure that your article contains no identifying information, for example in the header/footer, notes, or the title of the submission itself. 

Language & Text

For additional detailed guidance please visit the Open Library of Humanities Journal's 'Author Guidelines' page.

Spelling and grammer

Submissions must be made in English. Authors are welcome to use American or British spellings and grammer as long as they are used consistently throughout the whole of the submission.

Capitalisation

For the submission title:

Capitalise all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs and subordinate conjunctions (i.e. as, because, although). Use lowercase for all articles, coordinate conjunctions and prepositions.

  • Slip-Sliding on a Yellow Brick Road: Stabilization Efforts in Afghanistan

Headings within the main text:

First level headings in the text should follow the same rule as the main title.

For lower-level subheadings, only capitalise first letter and proper nouns.

Movements, such as 'Modernism' should be capitalised. When describing a noun, there should be no capitalisation: e.g., 'the modernist poets'.

Historical periods should be capitalised: e.g., 'the Reformation'.

Headings should be under 75 characters.

Quotation marks

Use single quotation marks except for when nested quotes are used (e.g., speech contained within a quotation), in which case double quoatation marks must be used. 

Punctuation should always be left outside of the closing quotation mark, unless it belongs to the quote: e.g., Lembke writes that 'pursuing pain is harder than pursuing pleasure'.

Quotations that are longer than three lines in length must be in an indented paragraph separate from the main text.

The standard, non-italicised font must be used for all quotes unless the quotation contains italics, bolding, or any formatting that is directly replicated from the source. 

It must be clear from the text and/or citation where the quote has been sourced. If quoting from material that is under copyright, then permission will need to be obtained from the copyright holder prior to submission. The editors must be informed of this in the 'Comments to Editor' field at the point of the article's submission.

Acronyms & Abbreviations


With abbreviations, the crucial goal is to ensure that the reader - particularly one who may not be fully familiar with the topic or context being addressed - is able to follow along. Spell out almost all acronyms on first use, indicating the acronym in parentheses immediately thereafter. Use the acronym for all subsequent references.

  • Research completed by the World Health Organization (WHO) shows …

A number of abbreviations are so common that they do not require the full text on the first instance. Examples of these can be found here.

Initialisms should usually be in capital letters without full stops:

  • USA, not U.S.A

Common abbreviations originating from Latin origin do not follow this rule and should be lower case and can include full stops:

  • e.g., i.e., etc.

Terms such as 'Ibid.' and 'Op. Cit.' should not be used as the parenthetical author-date citation system accounts for multiple citations from the same author/place in the source text where required. 

Borrowed common terms from other languages that do not require a direct translation, such as 'fin-de-siècle' from French, may be italicised where appropriate to emphasis their difference to English and can be used in the context of the argument where appropriate; however, their use and italicisation is a stylistic choice for the author.

Data & Symbols

Symbols

Symbols are permitted within the main text and datasets as long as they are commonly in use or have explanatory definition on their first usage.

Hyphenation, em and en dashes

Generally, hyphenation should occus when two or more words are functioning as an adjective before (but not after) the noun they are describing. There is no set rule on the use of hyphenation between compound words, which should be used when doing so enhances readability; these should, though, be handled consistently throughout the submission.

En dashes can be used to replace 'to' when indicating a range. No space should surround the dash.

  • 10-25 years

  • pp. 10-65

Em dashes should be used sparingly. If they are present, they should denote an aside or change of thought, emphasis, or interruption to the main sentence that can replace commas, parentheses, colons or semicolons: 

  • The president’s niece—daughter of his younger brother—caused a media scandal when ...  
  • This century has seen many media scandals—this will not be the last.

Numbers

For numbers zero to nine please spell the whole words. Please use figures for numbers 10 or higher.

Authors may use either words or figures to represent large whole figures (i.e. one million or 1,000,000) as long as the usage is consistent throughout the text.

If the sentence includes a series of numbers then figures must be used in each instance.

  • Artefacts were found at depths of 5, 9, and 29 cm.

If the number appears as part of a dataset, in conjunction with a symbol or as part of a table then the figure must be used.

  • This study confirmed that 5% of…

A sentence that starts with a number must give the number as a word, or the sentence should be re-written so that it no longer starts with the number.

  • Fifteen examples were found to exist…
  • The result showed that 15 examples existed…

When a number consists of more than four digits it must be split by a comma after every three digits to the left of the decimal place: 

  • 23,654

Do not use a comma for a decimal place. 

  • 2.43 NOT 2,43 

Numbers that are less than zero must have '0' precede the decimal point. 

  • 0.24 NOT .24

Units of measurement

Symbols following a figure to denote a unit of measurement must be taken from the International System of Units (SI).

Formula

Formulae must be proofed carefully by the author. Editors will not edit formulae. If special software has been used to create formulae, the way it is laid out is the way they will appear in the publication.

 

Figures & Tables

Figures

Please note that permission to reproduce images must be obtained from the copyright holder prior to submission, and details of the permissions obtained, including a copy of any agreed licensing terms, should be included with your submission. Image permissions should permit open access publication with no restrictions on duration of use or recurring renewal costs.

Figures, including graphs and diagrams, must be professionally and clearly presented. If a figure is not easy to understand or does not appear to be of a suitable quality, the editor may ask to re-render, or may decide to omit it.

All figures must be cited within the main text, in consecutive order using Arabic numerals (e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.).

Each figure must have an accompanying caption with a descriptive main title. This should clearly and concisely summarise the content and/or use of the figure image. A short, additional figure legend is optional to offer a further description. 

Figure captions and legends should be placed directly underneath the figure content. Figures should be placed in the main text of the article as close to their first in-text mention as possible (ideally below the paragraph containing the mention), or as a list after the ‘References’ section.  

The source of the image should be included in the caption, along with any relevant copyright information and a statement of authorisation (if needed). If using images from an archive, then please provide the name of the archive, the collection and the acquisition number: 

Figure 1: Firemen try to free workers buried under piles of concrete and metal girders. Photo: Claude-Michel Masson, published in Le Figaro (16 January 1964), p. 18. Reproduced with permission of the photographer. 

If your figure file is a rendered image that includes text, then please present the font as Arial, Helvetica, or Verdana. This will ensure that the figure is clearly legible in a sans-serif font. 

All figures must be uploaded separately as supplementary files during the submission process, in colour (if possible) and at a resolution of at least 300dpi. Each file should not be more than 20MB in size. Standard formats accepted are: .JPG, .TIFF, .GIF, .PNG, .EPS. For line drawings, please provide the original vector source file (e.g., .EPS, .SVG or .AI). 

Tables

Tables should be used to display information that is most clearly represented in a grid, with clear column and/or row headings. They must be created using a word processor’s table function; using tabbed text to construct a table is not acceptable and this will not be displayed as a table in the final article. Tables should be included in the main text of the manuscript, as close as possible to their first in-text citation. 

All tables must be cited within the main text, numbered with Arabic numerals in consecutive order (e.g., Table 1, Table 2, etc.). The shortened word ‘Tab’ should not be used to cite a table. 

Each table must have an accompanying, descriptive title in the form of a caption. This should clearly and concisely summarise the content and/or use of the table. A short, additional table legend is optional to offer a further description of the table. The table caption and legend should be placed directly underneath the table. 

Tables should not include: 

  • Rotated text
  • Colour to denote meaning (as this will not display the same on all electronic devices)
  • Images
  • Vertical or diagonal lines
  • Multiple parts (e.g., ‘Table 1a’ and ‘Table 1b’). These should either be merged into one table, or separated into ‘Table 1’ and ‘Table 2’.

If there are more columns than can fit on a single page, then the table will be placed horizontally on the page. If it still cannot fit horizontally on a page, the table will be broken into two parts. 

Endnotes

Use endnotes rather than footnotes. These will appear as 'Notes' in the online publication). 

All notes should be used only where crucial clarifying information needs to be conveyed. 

Please insert the endnote marker after the end punctuation. 

References

This journal uses the author-date Chicago system of reference. Please refer to the Chicago Manual style guide.

Reference list

All citations must be listed at the end of the text file, in alphabetical order of authors' surnames.

All reading materials should be included in 'References' - works which have not been cited within the main text, but which the author wishes to share with the reader, must be cited as additional information in endnotes explaining the relevance of the work. This will ensure that all works within the reference list are cited within the text.

NOTE: If multiple works by the same author are being listed, please re-type the author's name out for each entry, rather than using a long dash.

NOTE: DOIs should be included for all reference entries, where possible.