Guide for Authors
The
Journal of Medieval History aims at meeting the need for a major international publication
devoted to all aspects of the history of Europe in the Middle Ages. Each issue comprises around four or five articles on European history,
including Britain and Ireland, between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance.
Types
of Contributions
The
Journal of Medieval History particularly encourages historiographical essays, 'state of research'
articles, and review articles which place important new works in context or else cover a number of related works. Please contact the
Editor, Christopher Woolgar, at:
c.m.woolgar@soton.ac.uk, who will then make arrangements for publishers to provide relevant
books for review articles. The journal does not carry reviews of individual books.
Submission
Details
Authors are requested to submit their articles electronically to the Editor, Professor Christopher Woolgar, by using
the journal's online submission and tracking tool at
http://ees.elsevier.com/mediev. This site will guide authors stepwise
through the submission process. Authors should upload the source files of their articles in the preferred format of Microsoft (MS) Word,
RTF, WordPerfect, or LaTeX for text and TIFF or EPS for figures. The system automatically converts source files to a single Adobe Acrobat
PDF version of the article, which is used in the peer-review process. Please note that even though manuscript source files are converted
to PDF at submission for the review process, these source files are needed for further processing after acceptance. Authors, reviewers,
and editors send and receive all correspondence by e-mail.
Ethics in Publishing
For information on Ethics in Publishing and Ethical guidelines for journal publication
see
http://www.elsevier.com/publishingethics and
http://www.elsevier.com/ethicalguidelines.
Conflict of interest
All authors are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest
including any financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organizations within three years of beginning the submitted
work that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, their work. See also
http://www.elsevier.com/conflictsofinterest.
Submission declaration
Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously
(except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication
elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was
carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, without
the written consent of the copyright-holder.
Copyright
Upon acceptance
of an article, authors will be asked to complete a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' (for more information on this and copyright see
http://www.elsevier.com/copyright).
Acceptance of the agreement will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. An e-mail will be sent to the corresponding
author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' form or a link to the online version of this
agreement.
Subscribers may reproduce tables of contents or prepare lists of articles including abstracts for internal circulation
within their institutions. Permission of the Publisher is required for resale or distribution outside the institution and for all other
derivative works, including compilations and translations (please consult
http://www.elsevier.com/permissions). If excerpts
from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s)
in the article. Elsevier has preprinted forms for use by authors in these cases: please consult
http://www.elsevier.com/permissions.
Retained author rights
As an author you (or your employer or institution) retain certain rights; for details
you are referred to:
http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.
Role of the
funding source
You are requested to identify who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation
of the article and to briefly describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation
of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the paper for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such
involvement then this should be stated. Please see
http://www.elsevier.com/funding.
Funding body agreements and policies
Elsevier has established agreements and developed policies to allow authors whose
articles appear in journals published by Elsevier, to comply with potential manuscript archiving requirements as specified as conditions
of their grant awards. To learn more about existing agreements and policies please visit
http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies.
Language and language services
Please write your text in good English (American or British usage is accepted,
but not a mixture of these). Authors who require information about language editing and copyediting services pre- and post-submission
please visit
http://www.elsevier.com/languagepolishing or our customer support site at
http://epsupport.elsevier.com
for more information. Please note Elsevier neither endorses nor takes responsibility for any products, goods or services offered by outside
vendors through our services or in any advertising. For more information please refer to our Terms & Conditions:
http://www.elsevier.com/termsandconditions.
Submission
Submission to this journal proceeds totally online. Use the following guidelines to prepare
your article. Via the journal's online submission and tracking tool at
http://ees.elsevier.com/mediev, you will be guided
stepwise through the creation and uploading of the various files. The system automatically converts source files to a single Adobe Acrobat
PDF version of the article, which is used in the peer-review process. Please note that even though manuscript source files are converted
to PDF at submission for the review process, these source files are needed for further processing after acceptance. All correspondence,
including notification of the Editor's decision and requests for revision, takes place by e-mail and via the author's homepage, removing
the need for a hard-copy paper trail.
Additional Information
The languages
of publication are English, French and German. Contributions submitted in other languages may, at the Editor's discretion and if funds
are available, be translated into English for publication in the journal. The journal does not have a minimum or maximum length for accepted
articles, but authors should bear in mind that articles in excess of 10,000 words of text will need to be justified in terms of their
significance and originality.
All submissions are sent out anonymously to at least two referees, who may or may not include members
of the Editorial Board. It usually takes between three and six months for the refereeing process to be completed. The time between acceptance
and publication may vary, but we try wherever possible to publish within twelve months of acceptance. The journal has four issues per
annum. It is at the Editor's discretion which articles appear in which issue, but in general order of publication is determined by date
of submission. Once copy editing has been carried out and proof corrections have been received, articles will appear online as articles
in press. Each article will be assigned a digital object identifier (DOI) which may be used to cite the article until it appears in an
issue.
Language
Please write your text in good English, French or German.
Use of wordprocessing
software
It is important that the file be saved in the native format of the wordprocessor used. The text should be in single-column
format. Keep the layout of the text as simple as possible. Most formatting codes will be removed and replaced on processing the article.
In particular, do not use the wordprocessor's options to justify text or to hyphenate words. However, do use bold face, italics, subscripts,
superscripts etc. Do not embed "graphically designed" equations or tables, but prepare these using the wordprocessor's facility. When
preparing tables, if you are using a table grid, use only one grid for each individual table and not a grid for each row. If no grid
is used, use tabs, not spaces, to align columns. The electronic text should be prepared in a way very similar to that of conventional
manuscripts (see also the Guide to Publishing with Elsevier:
http://www.elsevier.com/guidepublication). Do not import the
figures into the text file but, instead, indicate their approximate locations directly in the electronic text and on the manuscript.
See also the section on Electronic illustrations.
To avoid unnecessary errors you are strongly advised to use the "spell-check" and
"grammar-check" functions of your wordprocessor.
Vitae
Include in
the manuscript a short (maximum 100 words) biography of each author.
Essential title
page information
•
Title.
Concise and informative. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems.
Avoid abbreviations and formulae where possible.
•
Author names and affiliations.
Where the family name may be
ambiguous (e.g., a double name), please indicate this clearly. Present the authors' affiliation addresses (where the actual work was
done) below the names. Indicate all affiliations with a lower-case superscript letter immediately after the author's name and in front
of the appropriate address. Provide the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name, and, if available, the e-mail
address of each author.
•
Corresponding author.
Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages
of refereeing and publication, also post-publication.
Ensure that telephone and fax numbers (with country and area code) are provided
in addition to the e-mail address and the complete postal address.
•
Present/permanent address.
If an author
has moved since the work described in the article was done, or was visiting at the time, a "Present address" (or "Permanent address")
may be indicated as a footnote to that author's name. The address at which the author actually did the work must be retained as the main,
affiliation address. Superscript Arabic numerals are used for such footnotes.
Optimizing
the title and abstract of an article for your audience
In order to increase the exposure of your article, we suggest the
following:
• The title of your article must be clear and descriptive, using keywords that are relevant to the subject area,
and would most likely be used in an online search.
• The abstract must also contain keywords and common phrases for the subject
area, perhaps using wording from the title. These carefully chosen keywords and phrases can also be emphasised in the text, however
please do this with caution as some search engines can reject overly repetitive webpages.
Abstract
A concise and factual abstract is required. The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the
principal results and major conclusions. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone.
For this reason, References should be avoided, but if essential, then cite the author(s) and year(s). Also, non-standard or uncommon
abbreviations should be avoided, but if essential they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract itself.
Keywords
Immediately after the abstract, provide a maximum of 6 keywords, avoiding general and plural terms
and multiple concepts (avoid, for example, "and", "of"). Be sparing with abbreviations: only abbreviations firmly established in the
field may be eligible. These keywords will be used for indexing purposes.
Abbreviations
Define abbreviations that are not standard in this field in a footnote to be placed on the first page of the article. Such abbreviations
that are unavoidable in the abstract must be defined at their first mention there, as well as in the footnote. Ensure consistency of
abbreviations throughout the article.
Acknowledgements
Collate acknowledgements
in a separate section at the end of the article before the references and do not, therefore, include them on the title page, as a footnote
to the title or otherwise. List here those individuals who provided help during the research (e.g., providing language help, writing
assistance or proof reading the article, etc.).
House Style
It is very
helpful if articles are submitted in house style at the outset. Articles accepted for publication must be revised by authors using the
correct style. The Editor reserves the right to make changes to articles in order to ensure clarity and conformity with house style.
Articles published in English will use British spelling.
Single quotation marks should be used when single words, phrases or technical
terms are quoted. Italics should be used for all words or phrases in languages other than the language of the paper, and for titles of
works when they are mentioned in the body of the text.
Quotations in the body of the text should be enclosed in single quotation
marks. If they are more than five lines in length, they should be typed in a separate paragraph and indented. Quotations in the footnotes
should not be italicised, nor should quotation marks be used unless the quotation has been translated into, or is in, the language of
the paper.
Forms like c.f.,
vide supra, e.g., i.e., c. should be avoided; instead words like compare, see above, for
example, or their equivalent in French or German according to the language of the paper, should be used.
Numbers under 10 should
normally be written out in full, as should centuries (fourteenth century, not 14th C). Dates should be given as day month year (4 April
1358).
In view of the wide variety of periods, regions and themes that are dealt with in this journal, standard abbreviations
are not provided. Ensure that references are comprehensible to those in other fields by spelling out
Monumenta Germaniae Historica,
Patrologia Latina, English Historical Review, and other works often abbreviated.
The
Journal uses lower case as
default. Capital letters should only be used for words that are commonly capitalised, e.g. names of persons, countries and certain events
and documents (
Peasant's Revolt, Domesday Book). The principal words in the titles of learned societies, etc. should have initial
capital letters: thus Royal Historical Society, Institute of Historical Research. The words pope, river, lake, king, bishop, duke, count
etc. should have an initial capital letter when used in direct conjunction with the name they refer to; thus Pope Innocent III, Bishop
John, River Tyne, King Alfonso, but the papacy, bishop of Utrecht, along the river, the king of England, etc. Biblical references should
be in the form 2 Cor. 7:14-17.
Illustrations
The
Journal of Medieval
History is one of the few journals in its field which offers its contributors the opportunity to illustrate their articles. The
Editor and the Publisher urge all contributors to take full advantage of this opportunity and include photographs, diagrams, maps, etc.
in their articles. The format requirements for such illustrations are described below.
Authors are reminded that it is their responsibility
to seek and pay for permission to reproduce copyright material. Written permission should accompany the final, accepted manuscript. The
publisher cannot print the article without proof of such written permission.
Artwork
Electronic artwork
General points
• Make sure
you use uniform lettering and sizing of your original artwork.
• Save text in illustrations as "graphics" or enclose the font.
• Only use the following fonts in your illustrations: Arial, Courier, Times, Symbol.
• Number the illustrations according
to their sequence in the text.
• Use a logical naming convention for your artwork files.
• Provide captions to illustrations
separately.
• Produce images near to the desired size of the printed version.
• Submit each figure as a separate file.
A detailed guide on electronic artwork is available on our website:
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions
You
are urged to visit this site; some excerpts from the detailed information are given here.
Formats
Regardless of
the application used, when your electronic artwork is finalised, please "save as" or convert the images to one of the following formats
(note the resolution requirements for line drawings, halftones, and line/halftone combinations given below):
EPS: Vector drawings.
Embed the font or save the text as "graphics".
TIFF: color or grayscale photographs (halftones): always use a minimum of 300 dpi.
TIFF: Bitmapped line drawings: use a minimum of 1000 dpi.
TIFF: Combinations bitmapped line/half-tone (color or grayscale): a
minimum of 500 dpi is required.
DOC, XLS or PPT: If your electronic artwork is created in any of these Microsoft Office applications
please supply "as is".
Please do not:
• Supply embedded graphics in your wordprocessor (spreadsheet, presentation)
document;
• Supply files that are optimised for screen use (like GIF, BMP, PICT, WPG); the resolution is too low;
•
Supply files that are too low in resolution;
• Submit graphics that are disproportionately large for the content.
Color artwork
Please make sure that artwork files are in an acceptable format (TIFF, EPS or MS Office
files) and with the correct resolution. If, together with your accepted article, you submit usable color figures then Elsevier will ensure,
at no additional charge, that these figures will appear in color on the Web (e.g., ScienceDirect and other sites) regardless of whether
or not these illustrations are reproduced in color in the printed version.
For color reproduction in print, you will receive information
regarding the costs from Elsevier after receipt of your accepted article. Please indicate your preference for color in print or on
the Web only. For further information on the preparation of electronic artwork, please see
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.
Please note: Because of technical complications which can arise by converting color figures to "gray scale" (for the printed version
should you not opt for color in print) please submit in addition usable black and white versions of all the color illustrations.
Figure captions
Ensure that each illustration has a caption. Supply captions separately, not attached
to the figure. A caption should comprise a brief title (
not on the figure itself) and a description of the illustration. Keep
text in the illustrations themselves to a minimum but explain all symbols and abbreviations used.
Tables
Number tables consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text. Place footnotes to tables below the
table body and indicate them with superscript lowercase letters. Avoid vertical rules. Be sparing in the use of tables and ensure that
the data presented in tables do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article.
References
Reference Style
Articles should be submitted with either
footnotes or endnotes, and not using Harvard style. A bibliography is not required.
In general, the journal uses
MHRA style.
Default house style in the footnotes/endnotes is lower case. Capitals should be used at the beginning of titles of books and articles,
and for words that are commonly capitalised, e.g. names of persons, countries and certain events.
In view of the wide variety of periods,
regions and themes that are dealt with in this journal, standard abbreviations are not provided. Ensure that references are comprehensible
to those in other fields by spelling out
Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Patrologia Latina, English Historical Review, and other
works often abbreviated.
On first mention of a
book, you should give full details as follows: initials of author or first name
followed by surname (guided by author's preference) title of book, italicised, place and date of publication in brackets. Please note
that there should be no comma before the bracket. There is no need to give the name of the publisher.
Example: Rodney Hilton,
Bond
men made free. Medieval peasant movements and the English rising of 1381 (London, 1973).
On subsequent mention, you should use a short title.
Example: Hilton,
Bond men made free, 37.
On first mention
of an
edited work, you should give full details as follows:
•title of work in italics, followed by a comma
•ed.
followed by names of editors. There is no need to use eds.
•number of volumes if relevant
•series if relevant, place
and date of publication, all within brackets.
Examples:
The works of Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster, ed. A. Sapir
Abulafia and G.R. Evans (Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi, London, 1986). 100-50.
Art and politics in late medieval and early Renaissance
Italy 1100-I500, ed. Charles M. Rosenberg (Notre Dame, IN, 1990).
English medieval diplomatic practice. Part 1, documents
and interpretation, ed. P. Chaplais, 2 vols (London, 1982).
For subsequent
references use short title, repeating the editor's name if there is any possibility of confusion, and inserting volume number as vol.
followed by arabic numeral:
Examples:
Works of Gilbert Crispin, 200.
Art and politics, ed. Rosenberg, 25.
English medieval diplomatic practice, vol. 2, 123-5.
If the name of the original author stands separately, this goes at
the front in Roman type: Orderic Vitalis,
Historia ecclesiastica.
On
first mention of an
article, you should give full details as follows:
•initials of author or first name followed by surname
•title
of article between single inverted commas, with comma following closing inverted comma
•title of journal in full, and italicised,
followed by a comma, and the volume number in arabic numerals
•date of publication in brackets
•the page range may be
given if you wish
Example: E. Lourie, 'Free Moslems in the Balearics under Christian rule in the thirteenth century',
Speculum,
45 (1970), 624-49.
On subsequent mention, you should use a short title:
Lourie, 'Free Moslems', 648.
On first mention of an
article in a collection you should give full details as follows:
•initials
of author or first name followed by surname
•title of article between single inverted commas, with comma following closing inverted
comma
•in followed by colon
•title of work
•ed. followed by editor's name
•place and date of publication
in brackets
•the page range may be given if you wish.
Example: Joanna Wood-Marsden, 'Art and political identity in fifteenth-century
Naples: Pisanello, Cristoforo di Geremia, and King Alfonso's imperial fantasies,' in: A
rt and politics in late medieval and early
Renaissance Italy 1100-1500, ed. Charles M. Rosenberg (Notre Dame, IN, 1990), 11-37.
On subsequent mention you should use a
short title: Example: Wood-Marsden, 'Art and political identity', 24.
In
all cases:
•Ibid., id., op.cit., loc. cit., ff. should be avoided
•Do not use p. or pp.•Page ranges should be given
in shortest form possible, eg 345-7; 21-2; 123-235.
Archival references Archival references should use roman type, with the
place name first:
Genoa, Archivio di Stato, Cartolare notarile 1, f. lr. Paris, Archives Nationales, P1354', no. 800, f. lr. Use
f. for folios, p. for page numbers (of manuscripts only), r. and v. for recto and verso.
Manuscripts in libraries Give the
location, and then the name of the library: London, British Library, Additional MS 25691. Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Chigi
E. VI. 182, perg. 40.
It is possible to include editions of texts in appendices to articles and other supporting material (e.g. lists
of manuscripts etc)
Supplementary material
Elsevier accepts electronic
supplementary material to support and enhance your scientific research. Supplementary files offer the author additional possibilities
to publish supporting applications, movies, animation sequences, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound clips and more. Supplementary
files supplied will be published online alongside the electronic version of your article in Elsevier Web products, including ScienceDirect:
http://www.sciencedirect.com. In order to ensure that your submitted material is directly usable, please ensure that data
are provided in one of our recommended file formats. Authors should submit the material in electronic format together with the article
and supply a concise and descriptive caption for each file. Video files: please supply 'stills' with your files: you can choose any frame
from the video or make a separate image. These will be used instead of standard icons and will personalize the link to your supplementary
information. For more detailed instructions please visit our artwork instruction pages at
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.
Submission checklist
It is hoped that this list will be useful during the final checking of an article prior
to sending it to the journal's Editor for review. Please consult this Guide for Authors for further details of any item.
Ensure
that the following items are present:
One Author designated as corresponding Author:
• E-mail address
• Full
postal address
• Telephone and fax numbers
All necessary files have been uploaded
• Keywords
• All figure
captions
• All tables (including title, description, footnotes)
Further considerations
• Manuscript has been "spellchecked"
and "grammar-checked"
• References are in the correct format for this journal
• All references mentioned in the Reference
list are cited in the text, and vice versa
• Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources
(including the Web)
• Color figures are clearly marked as being intended for color reproduction on the Web (free of charge)
and in print or to be reproduced in color on the Web (free of charge) and in black-and-white in print
• If only color on the
Web is required, black and white versions of the figures are also supplied for printing purposes
For any further information please
visit our customer support site at
http://epsupport.elsevier.com.
Use of the Digital Object Identifier
The Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
may be used to cite and link to electronic documents. The DOI consists of a unique alpha-numeric character string which is assigned to
a document by the publisher upon the initial electronic publication. The assigned DOI never changes. Therefore, it is an ideal medium
for citing a document, particularly 'Articles in press' because they have not yet received their full bibliographic information. The
correct format for citing a DOI is shown as follows (example taken from a document in the journal
Physics Letters B):
doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2003.10.071
When you use the DOI to create URL hyperlinks to documents on the web, they are guaranteed never to change.
Proofs
One set of page proofs (as PDF files) will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author (if we do
not have an e-mail address then paper proofs will be sent by post) or, a link will be provided in the e-mail so that authors can download
the files themselves. Elsevier now provides authors with PDF proofs which can be annotated; for this you will need to download Adobe
Reader version 7 (or higher) available free from
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. Instructions on how
to annotate PDF files will accompany the proofs (also given online). The exact system requirements are given at the Adobe site:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/acrrsystemreqs.html#70win.
If you do not wish to use the PDF annotations function, you may list the corrections (including replies to the Query Form) and
return them to Elsevier in an e-mail. Please list your corrections quoting line number. If, for any reason, this is not possible, then
mark the corrections and any other comments (including replies to the Query Form) on a printout of your proof and return by fax, or scan
the pages and e-mail, or by post. Please use this proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness and correctness of the
text, tables and figures. Significant changes to the article as accepted for publication will only be considered at this stage with permission
from the Editor. We will do everything possible to get your article published quickly and accurately. Therefore, it is important to ensure
that all of your corrections are sent back to us in one communication: please check carefully before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent
corrections cannot be guaranteed. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. Note that Elsevier may proceed with the publication of
your article if no response is received.
Offprints
The corresponding author,
at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail or, alternatively, 25 free paper offprints. The PDF file is a
watermarked version of the published article and includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image and a disclaimer outlining the terms
and conditions of use.
For inquiries relating to the
submission of articles (including electronic submission where available) please visit this journal's homepage. You can track accepted
articles at
http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle and set up e-mail alerts to inform you of when an article's status has
changed. Also accessible from here is information on copyright, frequently asked questions and more. Contact details for questions arising
after acceptance of an article, especially those relating to proofs, will be provided by the publisher.
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