Submissions

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Author Guidelines

The Journal for the History of Knowledge welcomes submissions of up to 8000 words, including notes and bibliography.

Submissions should be made electronically through this website. Once submitted, the author can track the submission and communicate with the editors via the online journal management system.

Please ensure that you consider the following guidelines when preparing your manuscript. Failure to do so may delay processing your submission.

If your article is published, the Editors may make minor edits to your paper during the copyediting and proofing stages.

References

The Journal for the History of Knowledge uses The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.), notes and bibliography system. For examples and guides, please refer to: University of Chicago Press. The Chicago Manual of Style. 16th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.

The notes and bibliography system is detailed in Chapter 14 of the manual. We use shortened citations only, followed by full entries in the bibliography.

Structure

Please organize your manuscript using section headers as indicated below

Title page
To ensure blind peer review, please only list the title and abstract on the submitted manuscript file.

The names of all authors, affiliations, contact details, biography (optional) and the corresponding author details must be completed online as part of the submission process. All authors must fit within the journal's definition of an author, available here.

Author names should include a forename and a surname. Forenames cannot include only initials. The affiliation should ideally include ‘Department, Institution, City, Country’. However only the Institution and Country are mandatory.

Please include a word count on the title page, one including and one excluding the notes and bibliography. Articles should not exceed 8000 words including notes and bibliography.

Abstract
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. Make sure the abstract is sufficiently enticing and representative of the content of the piece. This plays a significant role in finding appropriate reviewers.

A list of between three and six key words must be placed below the abstract.

The Abstract and Keywords should also be added to the metadata when making the initial online submission.

Main text
The body of the submission should be structured in a logical and easy to follow manner. A clear introduction section should be given that allows non-specialists in the subject an understanding of the publication and a background of the issue(s) involved. Methods, results, discussion, and conclusion sections may then follow to clearly detail the information and research presented.

US spelling should be used throughout.

Acknowledgements (optional)
Any acknowledgements must be headed and in a separate paragraph placed after the main text but before the reference list.

Funding Information (if applicable)
If the research for the article was funded by a grant, then the grant provider and grant number should be given separately after the acknowledgments section.

Competing interests (if applicable)
If any of the authors have any competing interests, these must be declared. A short paragraph specifying them should be placed before the references. Guidelines for competing interests can be found here. If there are no competing interests to declare then the following statement should be present: "The author(s) has/have no competing interests to declare."

Authors' contributions (if applicable)
If applicable, a sentence or a short paragraph should be provided detailing the roles each author held as contributors to the authorship of the submission. Individuals listed must fit within the definition of an author, as per our authorship guidelines.

References
All references cited within the submission must be listed in a bibliography at the end of the main text file.

Supplementary Files (optional)
Any supplementary/additional files must be listed with a corresponding number, title and option description. Ideally the supplementary files are also cited in the main text.

e.g. Supplementary file 1: Appendix. Scientific data related to the experiments.

Note: additional files will not be typeset so they must be provided in their final form. They will be assigned a DOI and linked to the published article.

Reproducibility (if applicable)
If data, structured methods or code used in the research project have been made openly available, a statement should be added to direct the reader where to access it. This statement should include the location and the DOI link to it. Read our reproducibility guide for more information on best practice and maximising the impact of your open data.

If data used in the research project will not be made available, a statement confirming this should be added along with reasons for not including it.

The journal's data policy is available on the Editorial Policies page.

File formats

Articles may be submitted in either of the following formats: 

  • Microsoft Word Open Document Format (.docx)
  • Google Drive (Docs) 
Unfortunately, JHoKis not able to process LaTeX files. For equations, please use Microsoft Equation Editor 3.

Tables should be submitted separately in either of the following formats:

  • Microsoft Excel Open Document Format (.xlsx) 
  • Google Drive (Sheets) 

Graphs and diagrams should be submitted separately in any of the following formats:

  • Microsoft Visio (.vdx or .vsd) 
  • Portable Document Format (.pdf) 
  • Adobe Illustrator EPS (.eps) 
  • Tagged Image File Format (.tiff, uncompressed)

Images should be submitted separately, and should have a resolution of at least 300dpi and a size of 10x10 centimeters, which translates to a pixel count of no less than 1200x1200 pixels. The color profile should ideally be set to RGB. The following formats are accepted:

  • TIFF (.tif), with an LZW compression setting no less than 80%  
  • JPEG (.jpg), with a compression setting no less than 80% 
  • PSD (.psd) only in the case of multi-layered images
You must ensure you have the correct permissions for any images included in your submission.

Permissions

The author is responsible for obtaining all permissions required prior to submission of the manuscript. Permission and owner details should be mentioned for all third-party content included in the submission or used in the research.

If a method or tool is introduced in the study, including software, questionnaires, and scales, the license this is available under and any requirement for permission for use should be stated. If an existing method or tool is used in the research, it is the author's responsibility to check the license and obtain the necessary permissions. Statements confirming that permission was granted should be included in the Materials and Methods section.

Image permissions

You must ensure you have permission to use any images included in your submission, either by gaining permission from the copyright holder or by finding images with CC licenses. The following websites maye be useful:

  • https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/arthistory/research/visualresources/open/
  • https://guides.lib.monash.edu/c.php?g=594405&p=4122046 
  • https://search.creativecommons.org/
  • https://www.pexels.com/
  • https://images.google.com/
  • https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/
  • https://unsplash.com/
  • https://pixabay.com/
  • https://pxhere.com/
  • https://www.maxpixel.net/
  • https://www.europeana.eu/en

Cheat Sheet

Cheat Sheet:

  • Manuscript: .docx, Google Docs 
  • Tables: .xlxs, Google Sheets
  • Graphs and diagrams: .vdx, .vsd., .pdf, .tiff or .eps  
  • Images: .tif or .jpg, >80% compression, >= 1200 x 1200 pixels, CMYK. psd For multi-layered images
  • Language: US spelling

Title Page:

  • Title. Subtitle 
  • Abstract 
  • Keywords (3 to 6) 
  • Word Count without footnotes (word count including footnotes between brackets) 

NOT on title page:
Authors, affiliations, contact details, biography (these are to be completed online during submission).

Publication Fees

The JHoK does not require article processing charges, and there is no cost to authors.

The journal is supported by the Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, Huygens Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Vossius Centre for the History of Humanities and Sciences, the Belgian-Dutch Society for History of Science and Universities Gewina, and the Stevin Centre for History of Science and Humanities. Their contribution covers all publication costs (editorial processes; web hosting; indexing; marketing; archiving; DOI registration etc.) and ensures that all of the content is fully open access.

Submission Preparation Checklist

All submissions must meet the following requirements.

  • The submission has not been previously published, in part or in whole, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • Any third-party-owned materials used have been identified with appropriate credit lines, and permission has been obtained from the copyright holder for all formats of the journal.
  • The manuscript(s) are in either of the following formats: Microsoft Word Open Document Format (.docx) or Google Drive (Docs). Portable Document Format (PDF) is not a valid submission format.
  • Tables are all cited in the main text and are included within the text document.
  • Figures are all cited in the main text and are uploaded as supplementary files. Figures/images have a resolution of at least 150dpi (300dpi or above preferred). The files are in one of the following formats: JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, EPS (to maximise quality, the original source file is preferred).
  • All patients included within case reports or other article types in which an individual or a group of individuals can be identified have signed consent forms, or had had their guardian do so, giving permission to publish the submitted content under a CC-BY licence.
  • Research has been approved by an appropriate ethics committee, with the name of the committee and reference number of approval included within the submitted file. Otherwise, a statement that ethics approval was not required has been added to the file.
  • All authors qualify as authors, as per the authorship guidelines, and have given permission to be listed on the submitted paper.
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines. Every effort has been made to ensure that the submission is ready for peer review according to the journal's review policy (following the instructions to ensure blind peer review).
  • The corresponding author is submitting an ORCID identifier in their author data and co-authors have been recommended to also provide an ORCID, as per the journal policy.
  • The author has filled in his 'Bio Statement' under the 'public'-tab.

Copyright Notice

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party. The full privacy policy can be viewed here.