Journal submission guidelines

Editor: Richard Woodfield (r.woodfield@bham.ac.uk), Department of the History of Art, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT

This journal has been recognized by the online Dictionary of Art Historians as ‘the major research organ of the field’. It is indexed by ProQuest, EBSCO, DOAJ, Paperity and is linked to by the world’s leading research centres for art history. It is archived by LOCKSS and the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC). It has also been awarded the DOAJ Seal. The journal has been approved for inclusion in ERIH PLUS. 

The following Guidelines for Contributors, Style Guidance and Guidelines for Publishing have been created by the Editor of the Journal of Art Historiography, to guide and assist contributors.* Please read them carefully from beginning to end.

* The editor is indebted to the kindness of the editor of Art History (David Peters Corbett in 2009) for being allowed to use its guidelines as a model in their preparation.

Journal of Art Historiography is an international refereed journal which publishes contributions on all aspects, areas and periods of writing on the history of art from a diversity of approaches. It is Open Access, which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access. There are no author fees.

The principles behind these Guidelines are:

  • to highlight a clear order of procedure
  • to encourage conformity of presentation
  • to ease the transfer of author’s text to the ejournal
  • to minimize additional work
  • to expedite the production process
  • to produce a professional product

Sections:

  1. Guidelines for Contributors
  2. Style Guidance
  3. Guidelines for Publishing

1. Guidelines for Contributors

Potential contributors to the journal should be at least mildly familiar with its contents and ethos and should at least have read one or two of its relevant articles or reviews.

The article for consideration should be sent to the editor, together with a word count (including notes), a 100 word abstract, with key words and short author biography, list of illustrations and small jpgs of illustrations. Authors are responsible for securing permission to reproduce quoted material and all illustrations. Please also include a very short biographical note which incorporates your institutional address.

Contributions should be:

  • sent to Richard Woodfield, Editor, Journal of Art Historiography, by email
  • in UK English
  • double-spaced in Times New Roman
  • illustrated, where appropriate, with small jpgs
  • the email (including attachments) should be no larger than 1 mb
  • 11 point should be used for text and abstract

Title page should include:

  • Full name and Title (Doctoral students should also give the name of their advisor/supervisor)
  • Institutional address
  • Home address (optional)
  • Telephone number
  • Email address
  • Title of submission

Editorial Procedures:

  • Journal of Art Historiography does not publish previously published material except in translation or as documents.
  • Journal of Art Historiography is a peer-reviewed journal and articles considered for publication are read by specialist readers, as well as by the editor.
  • Journal of Art Historiography aims to inform potential contributors of a decision within three to four months of their submission though this can be variable. All submitted articles are read by at least two readers, one of whom is the Editor.
  • Decisions by the Editor are final.
  • Once accepted, it can take up to twelve months for an essay to be published.
  • The editors reserve the right to edit the texts received. Any substantial changes will be made in consultation with the author.
  • Once accepted for publication, the author must agree to undertake any revisions and to deliver a final copy to the editor by a mutually agreed date.
  • All articles accepted for publication will be sent to author at proof stage.
  • Authors are expected to correct page proofs; they must be returned to the editor within ten days of receipt.
  • No material changes may be made at proof stage; typographic errors must be corrected.
  • Contributors are advised that as the journal has no income, either from readers or contributors, it does not employ professional copy-editors and proof-readers. Authors themselves are ultimately responsible for the quality of their own texts. Authors using English as a second language are advised to have their submissions checked by an academic native English speaker before submitting them.

Length and Format:

  • Journal of Art Historiography does not impose a set length for submissions and accepts articles, notes, reviews and letters.
  • Journal of Art Historiography accepts illustrated submissions but please remember that it is the responsibility of the author to provide both the image and the permission to reproduce.
  • UK English.
  • All contributions must be submitted in Microsoft Word files with simple file names, such as ‘jones.doc’.
  • Double spaced Times New Roman 11 pt.
  • The first page should indicate the author’s name, institution (if any), address, telephone number and email address together with an abstract of 100-150 words, with key words and short author biography.
  • Do not put author’s name on any subsequent pages.
  • Do not use headers and footers.
  • Please virus check files.
  • Footnotes only.
  • Do not use Latin abbreviations in footnotes (ibid, op. cit., etc).
  • No separate bibliographies; please incorporate all references into footnotes.
  • Please supply jpgs of all suggested illustrations with the initial submission including captions as a Word document. 
  •  Indicate the desired location of the illustrations within the text.

2. Style Guidance

Authors should be consistent in format and style.

Style should be clear and accessible, avoiding jargon. Authors should state the context of their work, its place in the existing field of study, and identify individuals and specialist references.

UK English spelling and punctuation conventions should be followed in the text and notes.  Foreign language citations should be given in translation in the main text, with the original appearing in full in an accompanying footnote. MS Word enables spelling language to be specified.

Please avoid turns of phrase that are not acceptable; please also avoid acronyms.

Please avoid personal pronouns, we, our, us and you.

A person’s full name should be given on first appearance no matter how famous, for example, William Gunn or Henry Moore not Gunn or Moore until second mention.

As a general rule, spelling and capitalization for the journal is consistent with that specified in the Oxford English Dictionary. Style is consistent with the New Oxford Style Manual.

Title of article: capital used only for initial capital of first word and for first letter of all proper nouns. The same applies to titles split by either a colon or a full stop.

Review titles: the same rule applies.

Paragraphs: should be indented.

Subheadings: should be typed on a separate line, not run in with the text. Only first word and proper names have initial capital. Please limit subheadings to A and B level subheads.

Page numbering: all pages, including captions, notes, etc., should be numbered in the lower right-hand corner. Pages should be numbered consecutively throughout the text, not by individual sections.

Quotations: should be set in single inverted commas if brief, and indented if longer than four lines. No quotation marks in indented quotations. Spellings within quotations should be as per original. Usually all lines of poetry are indented. Double quotation marks should be reserved for quotation within quotation. Words added by authors in quotations should go in square brackets. Quotation marks should follow full stop if quotation is full sentence (or contains full sentence) or finite clause, but should precede full stop if phrase. Where there is consistent reference in the article to one text, page reference in parenthesis should follow quotation mark and precede full stop if quotation is phrase; if clause, full stop then quotation mark then page reference.

Hyphenation: compound adjectives and adverbs (eighteenth-century art).

Breaks: in the text should be indicated by a line break, and subheadings should be in Bold.

Capital letters: should be used with restraint. Omit ‘The’ in journal titles except for example, The Times and The Economist. Use for the specific rather than the general: ‘the church’ but ‘The Church of England’.  Job titles should be lower case – for example, curator of the Walker Art Gallery.

Numbers:

• Spell out numerals up to one hundred, then use figures: ‘in her twenties’ not ‘in her 20s’.
• Thousands with comma – so £4,000.
• Be specific about dates so that either 1839 or 1840 would be written 1839/40. Whereas from 1839 to 1840 would be 1839–40; never between 1839-40 – should be between 1839 and 1840.
• 1930s not ’30s or Thirties – and certainly not 1930’s which is wrong! 1830s and 1840s, not 1830s and ’40s.
• Twentieth-century movement not 20th-century movement – i.e. spell out in the twenty-first century, in the nineteenth century – no hyphen when not used adjectivally Mid-1950s and in the mid-sixteenth century, but late 1940s and early 1730s and late eighteenth-century cabinet.
• c. 1850 – circa abbreviated to c, so full stop, then space date.
• 1914–18 war, 1939–45 war, not Great War or the Second World War.

Punctuation:

• For parenthetical dashes please use hyphens.
• Spaced ellipses ( … ).
• Hyphens between date figures: 1960–70.
• No full stop in BBC, MP, UK, USA, RA, Washington DC, PhD.

Contractions (ending in last letter of full word) with no full stop, abbreviations with full stop – so Ltd, co., etc., ed., eds, vol., vols, edn, exhib. cat. Except in measurements where abbreviated measurements have no full stop: so ‘cm’ not ‘cm.’, ‘in’ not ‘in.’

Use metric measurements but miles can be used instead of kilometres. Use figures in all measurements, space between figure and unit of measurement: 6 miles, 15 m, 146 cm. Dimensions with spaces so 14 x 45 cm. Areas in sq. m.
Height before width.

Dates should be expressed ‘15 November 2001’. Please remember to have ‘seventeenth-century Britain’ but ‘the seventeenth century’.

Do not use dates as adjectives: thus ‘the discovery of 1724’ but not ‘the 1724 discovery’ or ‘1724 publication’.

Fifth Avenue, 56th Street for US address, but rue, boulevard, place lower case for French, although Place de la Concorde upper case, etc; use schafes S in German where appropriate.

Footnote: figure should follow the punctuation mark, whether comma or full stop.

Non-English words and phrases in common English usage should be in Roman (for example, cliché or oeuvre – but if in doubt, check in dictionary). Non-common words and phrases such as mise-en-scène should be in italics.

Avoid using italics for emphasis, the structure of the sentence should be sufficient to convey this. Use italics for titles of books, newspapers, picture titles, exhibition titles but poems and essays in single quotes.

References:

Books:
Cite full name of author/editor (not initials if possible), book title in italics, place of publication: publisher, date of publication, x vols, page reference but do not use ‘p’ or ‘pp’ for specific page references: Michael Baxandall, The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980, 20–1; William Vaughan and Helen Weston, eds, David’s The Death of Marat, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 6–8.

Articles in journals:
Full name of author, ‘journal article title in single quotes’, Journal title in italics, vol. No (in arabic figures), no. 4, date month year, page reference but do not use ‘p’ or ‘pp’ for specific page references: Shearer West, ‘Thomas Lawrence’s “halfhistory” portraits and the politics of theatre’, Art History, 14: 2, June 1991, 240.

Chapters in books and contributions in edited works. Where there is a query not addressed in the guidelines, the default guide is the New Oxford Style Manual. So: Susan Lowish, ‘Searching for the Origin of Art’ in Rethinking Australia’s Art History, New York and London: Routledge 2018 (52-76), 55. Areti Adamopoulou, ‘Simultaneous Equations: Early Cold War Politics and the History of Art in Greece’ in Noemi de Haro García, Patricia Mayayo and Jesús Carrillo, Making Art History in Europe After 1945, New York and London: Routledge 2020, (149-166) 154.

Please note that the comma in UK style comes after the quotation mark, not before it as in US style.

Journal of Art Historiography will not publish List of Works Cited. All references must be included in footnotes.

First and subsequent citations: the first citation should provide full reference as given above; subsequent citations should use short abbreviations rather than Latin abbreviations like ibid., op. cit, or loc. cit. Thus repeat shortened title of reference even if it appears consecutively, for example, Pointon, Hanging the Head, 34; West, ‘Lawrence’s “half-history”’, 240; Lomas in Vaughan and Weston, Marat, 156.

No ampersands (except when citing web pages and in information in books for review, see below).

3. Guidelines for Publishing

On acceptance of essay for publication, author will receive a formal email of acceptance. Authors are asked to strictly adhere to the timetable of production.

Once an article has been accepted, the re-submission of the contribution must be accompanied by all the required illustrations. No image larger than 200 kB will be accepted. Given that the journal’s focus is on writing, the images just play an illustrative role. They are not primary as they would be in an art historical publication, in  which high quality print would be important. This is why we ask for images and captions to presented in a Microsoft Word document that would be no more than 2 mB. 

When submitting large files, use a facility such as Dropbox.

When final copy is submitted please adhere to the Journal of Art Historiography style guidelines as given above. Failure to do so could result in a delayed publication. This final copy should also be submitted in a PC (not Mac) Microsoft Word format and with a short title ending .doc (thus smith.doc).

Please remember to supply captions for illustrations as a Word document.

Abstracts:

• approx 100–150 words
• title in capitals bold roman
• line space
• Author in bold u/lc followed by a dash and a short biographical note on author**
• line space
• abstract in u/lc roman

** The short biography (60–70 word) should indicate two to three achievements of note as well as most recent publications and, if relevant, the context for the article submitted (for example, a forthcoming book).
Please also supply a list of five to seven ‘keywords’ by which your article could be searched.

Illustrations:

Journal of Art Historiography encourages authors to use illustrations where relevant. Given that the journal’s focus is on writing, the images just play an illustrative role. They are not primary as they would be in an art historical publication, which in which high quality print would be important. This is why we ask for images and captions to be presented in a Word document that would be no more than 2 mB. 

• For publication please supply digital files as jpgs at an acceptable resolution. Lower resolution images are acceptable as long as they are fit for purpose. No single image should be larger than 200 kB.
• All costs of image reproduction are borne by the author.
• Full list of captions in specified format (see below) must be provided as a Word document.
• Authors should consider how and where their illustrations might appear in the published text.
• A copy of the full set of reproduction permissions should be submitted with the final version of the article.
• When presenting images as e-files please accompany submission with a list of file names identifying images.

Captions:

They must contain all information required for reproduction permission to be granted, but generally should be supplied in one of following formats, or as close as possible:

• Artist, Work title in italics, date. Medium, dimensions (in cm; height before width). City/town of location: Gallery name. Picture credit line.

• Engraver, title or description after Artist, Picture title in italics, date. From title of publication or permission line.

• Description of object in roman, date. Medium, size. Location: Gallery name. Picture credit.

• Title of engraving, plate 00 from Author, Title of book in italics, date of publication. City of publication: Publisher.

Copyright and Permissions:

It is the author’s role to obtain the original illustrations and copyright permission for both illustrative and written material. The Journal of Art Historiography will not pay for illustrations.

Copyright for articles published in this journal is retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal. Authors may subsequently archive and publish the pdfs as produced by the journal. By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles are free to use, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial settings. Copyright restrictions apply to the use of any images contained within the articles.

For a guide to public domain images see the journal’s  blog  https://arthistoriography.wordpress.com/2018/01/18/public-domain-images/

Copy-editing and proofs:

It is vital that the Editor has up-to-date contact details for authors during this time.

Final suggestions:

  • Begin to request pictures and permissions as early as possible.
  • As Journal of Art Historiography is a non-profit open access scholarly journal try to negotiate a fee waiver or reduced fee for illustrations and reproduction costs.
  • When your article or review has been published insert a link to it in your institutional profile. If you do not have this facility you should consider creating a profile in academia.edu and inserting a link there as it has a growing audience for art historiography. Academic institutions and research bodies are increasingly stressing the importance of ‘impact’ and hits on the Journal are measurable.