Would you like to publish an article in CSSH? Please refer to our guidelines for manuscript submission. You’ll also find some frank and helpful tips here.

HOW TO SUBMIT

CSSH welcomes submissions from authors in any academic field. Essays should be written in a way that makes complex issues intelligible and appealing to erudite readers who are not specialists in the subject under investigation. Submissions should develop a comparative perspective in their theoretical, geographic, temporal, methodological, or disciplinary focus. These guidelines are intended to help authors prepare their articles for review; please read them carefully before submitting your manuscript. Papers that do not conform with these guidelines may be declined. Note that CSSH does not publish special issues.

Format: Please create an account at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cssh to submit a digital version of the paper (there is a strict maximum 14,000 words including text, notes, references, and abstract), your abstract of 250 words or less, and up to ten key words. The online program for this, at this link, is called ScholarOne.

Graphic images: For purposes of review, you need to submit digitally any graphic material (figures, images, or maps). Smaller, JPEG files may be submitted for the review stage. Higher-quality digital images are required if an article is accepted for publication. Include a numbered caption list that includes captions for all of your graphic material. The section entitled “Figures” toward the end of this guide provides more detailed information.

Prior publication: CSSH only accepts for review original manuscripts that have not been previously published, in any venue or language. Once published, a CSSH paper must not appear in any other venue, regardless of language, until publication of the CSSH issue following that in which it appears. This includes publication in conference volumes or on public areas of the World Wide Web. (This rule does not prohibit the appearance of all or part of a manuscript on a personal web page, however). Failure to disclose facts of prior or pending publication will be considered cause for a manuscript’s immediate rejection, without peer review. Prior publication in a working papers series may be allowed if that series was produced for limited circulation. Please inquire regarding specific cases. Authors should alert us to any such circumstances in their cover letter. Submitting a single manuscript to multiple publications falls outside of standard fair practice, and papers simultaneously sent to other journals or publishers for consideration will not be reviewed.

PEER REVIEW

CSSH maintains an anonymous peer review process in which papers are reviewed by at least two independent scholars from fields relevant to the manuscript’s subject area. Exceptions include papers judged to be outside the journal’s scope of interest or below its standards of publication: the editorial board may reject such manuscripts may without peer review. CSSH uses a double-blind system—authors will not see the reviewers’ names or other identifying information, nor will authors be identified to the reviewers. Authors should not ask us to provide them with reviewers’ names or contact information. Any concerns about the review process should be directed to the editors.

Suggested and excluded readers: Authors are welcome to suggest the names of possible reviewers or request the exclusion of specific individuals from the list of potential referees. Exclusions should be clearly explained. When recommending potential arm’s-length readers, include their full contact information and carefully check the spelling of each name, since misspellings can hinder our ability to contact them. Author recommendations and exclusions are regarded as suggestions only and in no way bind our editors or staff. The best place to suggest reviewers or request exclusions is not in your submission letter, but in the space provided for this on the ScholarOne website: “Author Recommended Reviewers,” and “Author Opposed Reviewers.”

General criteria for acceptance: The criteria for acceptance of a paper for publication are stringent: CSSH publishes approximately one out of every ten manuscripts submitted. Each submission is carefully reviewed for its relevance to the journal’s mission and its potential appeal to our readership. The list of a paper’s potential reviewers is drawn up based on recommendations from CSSH Editorial Committee members and Consulting Editors, and sometimes authors’ suggestions. We ask readers to evaluate the importance of a paper’s theoretical contribution, the rigor of its analysis, the author’s deployment of evidence in support of their arguments, and the paper’s relevance to a comparative perspective. Additional factors such as the quality of writing and the thoroughness of references to relevant literatures often play a subtle but important role in the journal’s final decision.

Common reasons for rejection: Papers are often rejected for the following reasons, among others: lack of a comparative perspective and/or theoretical contribution (we receive many submissions that are more appropriate to specialist journals); an emphasis on policy recommendations rather than theoretical analysis; failure to make an original contribution to the field (we frequently pass on manuscripts that summarize an existing literature but contribute no new evidence or analysis); and prior publication.

Turnaround time: The journal strives to provide a decision on every manuscript within five or six months, dating from the time when a complete submission has been received. This time frame is often shorter but is occasionally extended if circumstances hinder the effort to find a full complement of reviewers.

FORMAT

Length: The editors will not accept for review essays of over 14,000 words, including notes, references, and an abstract. Abstracts may not exceed 250 words in length, and should describe the essay’s argument, methodology, key sources, and conclusions. Please do not ask us to waive our length rules. The editors may ask that even articles within this limit be shortened further as a condition of acceptance. Recommendations for specific cuts may be made at the copyediting stage as well, even for manuscripts that were accepted at their original length. 

Style: All manuscripts must be double-spaced throughout, including extracts, notes, and bibliography, with one-inch margins on all sides. Use twelve-point Times New Roman font for all body text and endnotes, footnotes, and References. Do not double-space after periods. The journal’s default style is based generally on The Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition). Please note that the journal uses spellings and styles of the American variant rather than the British style (e.g., use “utilize” not “utilise”; double-quotation marks; periods and commas within quotation marks). We will accept papers employing British spellings and style for the purposes of manuscript review, but any accepted paper must be changed to the American styles before the copyediting stage.

Non-standard fonts and symbols: When providing a digital copy of the manuscript, authors must also supply copies of any non-standard fonts or characters (such as diacritics) used in their essay. “Non-standard” is defined as any font or character not provided by Microsoft Corporation with their most recent Word academic software package. Such materials must be provided in full compliance with existing copyright law: unauthorized or pirated copies of fonts or other software will not be accepted. We expect authors to provide proof of such authorization when submitting the files.

References: The journal does not enforce a single house style for references or bibliographic citations: authors are free to utilize styles accepted for work in their own discipline, though they must be consistent throughout. We allow this out of consideration for the widely varying disciplinary backgrounds of the journal’s contributors. This lack of standardization makes proofreading more difficult, however, and authors should check the consistency of their citations very carefully. Within any particular reference style, we often adjust aspects of references to bring them in line with CSSH’s use of that style. Samples of CSSH citation styles are available on request, or authors can simply look at any recent issue on the Cambridge Core website. You must provide the full, inclusive page numbers of journal articles in your references. Italicize all book and journal titles. Do not put your full references in both the notes and in a References section, though abbreviated citations in the notes and text that refer to a References section are fine: (Smith 2005: 125–28). If you use such in-text citations, cross-check that all references cited in the text, notes, and captions are listed in the References, and that everything listed there is cited. Author failure to check this is a common reason for delays in processing papers. You may instead include your full references in notes only and use no References section. If you do that, use a shortened version of the citation after its first occurrence: Smith, Witchcraft Accusation, 143. Again, authors must use only one of these referencing style—not both. Notes should be numbered in a single continuous sequence, from the beginning of the paper to its end. The notes must be attached to the note numbers in the text, so that clicking on the note number will bring up the note, and vice-versa. Make your acknowledgments a single, unnumbered note placed at the top of the notes section. We will convert footnotes to endnotes for the editing stage, but Cambridge will convert them back to footnotes for publication.

FIGURES

While we welcome images, we must be selective. Authors should clearly number their figures, images, and maps in the desired sequence, include the number in the image file’s name (e.g., Smith figure 1). On ScholarOne you will be instructed on providing your captions when you upload your images. Do not embed images in the text. Cambridge University Press prefers that each figure be referred to in the text where possible—for example, “(see figure 2)”—and unless authors indicate otherwise, images will typically be sited after and near the in-text reference to it. A Cambridge University Press guideline sheet for images is available on request. You must also provide any necessary permissions for all images before publication of the manuscript. CSSH will not publish copyrighted images or figures until the necessary permissions are on file in the journal office: failure to provide permissions will delay or prevent publication of the manuscript. If no permissions are required (e.g., an image is your own photo), then state this clearly so that we can pass that information along to Cambridge University Press. Any fees for using copyrighted materials are the responsibility of the author, not CSSH.

Images in accepted papers: Once the article is accepted, images may be submitted in the form of high-quality digital files (for photographs, etc.) and Microsoft Excel files (for tables and charts). This is a common problem for authors whose articles employ maps, since professional cartographers often design their work in formats not accepted by the Cambridge University Press typesetters. Because of schedule and professional restrictions, the journal staff cannot assist authors with file conversions: please convert your materials into one of the accepted formats before you upload them onto ScholarOne. Be sure and retain your own high-quality copies of any images that you upload onto ScholarOne.

Caption text: Caption text should be entered into the Caption/Legend field that appears when uploading figures into ScholarOne (Step 2). Include in the captions an acknowledgment to the source, even in cases where this is not legally required, since for images in the public domain the custom is nonetheless to note the source in the following fashion: Courtesy [name of the archive or other source].

Digital images: Cambridge allows CSSH to publish images in color online without cost to the author. Production editors at Cambridge University Press will resize and sometimes crop images as necessary, subject to the author’s approval. 

COPYEDITING

The copyeditor’s primary obligation is to bring each paper into conformity with conventions of style and form. In this spirit, the editor may make recommendations of varying scopes. The editors view the copyediting process as a collaborative one, which will hopefully help the author to enhance the readability of their manuscript at the same time that it attunes the journal to the subtleties and nuances of the author’s arguments. The journal is sensitive to the proprietary rights of authors over their creative efforts. We hope that you will find the collaboration a productive one.

CSSH employs an on-line editing process, using Track Changes in Microsoft Word. This makes it much easier for authors to track and respond to the copyeditor’s changes. 

Once an article has been copyedited, the Managing Editor will send the file to the author by email attachment. Let us know if you have any trouble opening your attachment, or if you believe that the contents have been corrupted. Once you have determined that the file was transmitted properly, you should immediately save it to your local hard drive or other dedicated file space. Please do not change the name of the file!

When we have received the author’s responses to the edits and made the necessary adjustments to the paper, we will send the paper on to Cambridge University Press for typesetting into proof pages. A few weeks thereafter (sometimes faster), Cambridge will email to the author a link to their paper viewable in a web-based proofing system that allows them to directly incorporate any corrections into the electronic file. Once the author has submitted the electronic file with their corrections to Cambridge, their role in the process is finished. Cambridge will then send the proofs to our CSSHproofreader and the Managing Editor, at which stage we will approve the author’s changes and further corrections may be made before we send the final version to Cambridge. Note that Cambridge University Press will not allow authors to make substantive changes after the pages have been typeset—at the proof stage, only things like typographical corrections or corrections of outright errors are permitted.

The Managing Editor conveys to authors other instructions on how to deal with edits when he sends them their edited manuscripts.

Thank you again for taking the time to read these guidelines. If you have any questions or suggestions about how we could improve this process, please don’t hesitate to let us know.