Submission Instructions for Authors
Length:
The following word counts are guidelines. The editors will occasionally consider longer works at their discretion.
- Articles (regular and review) and biographies: 7000 words including bibliography and endnotes.
- Essays: 3000 words including bibliography and endnotes.
- Nonfiction reviews: 000 words.
- Fiction reviews: 500 words
- Film and television reviews: 750 words
Templates
To assist authors of articles and reviews, we have provided the following templates in RTF format. These can be saved and used in any standard Word Processing program.
Style Guide
As of Issue 11, our style guide is the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition (also available at http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html). Use the Author - Date Citation and Reference List style, described in 16.90 of the 15th edition. Chapter 17 provides specific examples for different types of references. When following examples in Chapter 17, use the "T:" examples for parenthetical citations, and the "R:" examples for the reference list. Another very easy way to find proper citations formats is to use World Cat. For each item in the World Cat database, they include a "Cite this item" link that will generally properly format reference list citations in Chicago, MLA, APA, and other common citations styles.
Please Note: The Author - Date style has some significant differences from the Bibliographic style. Author - Date does not use quotation marks for article or chapter titles. As a general rule, all titles use sentence capitalization, not title capitalization. The exceptions to this rule are journal and series titles. Please see CMS 16.96 and 16.97. (Contra CMS 16.99, The Heroic Age prefers using the author's full name in Reference Lists.)
Citation Examples
Primary Sources
Please note that primary sources from the ancient and medieval period should not be cited in the Author - Date format. Instead, citations should use the original author (if known), title or an abbreviation as appropriate. Specific references to the text should use the original author's divisions (ie book, chapter, verse, etc), rather than page numbers of modern editions (see Chicago Manual of Style 17.250–17.260).
Correct: (Bede HE 4.26.) —or— (Bede Ecclesiastical History 4.26.)
Correct: (LHF 40.) —or— (Liber Historiae Francorum 40.)
By using the author's original divisions, the reader can refer to any edition of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, Book 4, Chapter 26.
Incorrect: (Mynors and Colgrave 1969, 426–431.)
The reference list should follow the format for Author-Date Reference Lists as described in CMS 16.90. Primary sources should be listed by original author:
Correct: Bede. 1969. Bede's ecclesiastical history of the English People. Ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
When the original author is not known, the Reference List entry places the modern editor in place of the original author.
Correct: Bachrach, Bernard, ed. and trans. 1973. Liber historiae Francorum. Lawrence, Kansas: Coronado Press.
Secondary Sources
In-text citation should include a parenthetical note to the Author, the date of publication, and page numbers if relevant.
Correct: (Story 2003, 127)
The reference list includes Author's full name, Date, Title (in italics), Place of Publication, Publisher.
Correct: Story, Joanna. 2003. Carolingian connections: Anglo-Saxon England and Carolingian Francia, c. 750–870. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Correct: Brennan, Brian. 1985. Senators and social mobility in sixth-century Gaul. Jornal of Medieval History 11:145–161.
Correct: Muhlberger, Steven. 1998. War, warlords, and Christian historians. In After Rome's fall: narrators and sources of early medieval history: Essays presented to Walter Goffart, edited by A. C. Murray. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Electronic Sources
Citations of websites should only be used if the author is citing information unique to the site. Derivative sites that have collected "common knowledge" for informational purposes need not be cited. In-text citations follow the standards for secondary sources listed above.
The reference list should include a description in square brackets as to the type of electronic source (several examples of electronic sources are provided in Chapter 17 of the Chicago Manual of Style)
Correct: Foys, Martin K., ed. 2003. The Bayeux Tapestry: digital edition [Electronic text]. Leicester: SDE.
Correct: Robinson, Peter. 2005. Current issues in making digital editions of medieval texts—or, do electronic scholarly editions have a future? Digital Medievalist 1.1. http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/article.cfm?RecID=6.
In the case of print journals that also are archived online, complete reference to the print journal article should accompany the citation, even if the article was accessed exclusively online—not all scholars have access to Online Journal Article Databases such as JSTOR.
In the case of a website with an indeterminate date of publication, use the date the page was accessed in lieu of date of publication.
Correct: Shanzer, Danuta. 2005. Danuta's Advice for Lecturers. International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University. http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/advice.html.
Abstracts, Keywords, and Short Titles
Each article or essay should be accompanied by an abstract of approximately forty words. The abstract should be clearly marked at the beginning of the file. Authors should also include a series of keywords, up to a maximum of ten. Keywords should be chosen with care, as they will be included with the published file to help search engines index articles. The short title should be a compressed title of the paper, used for the Issue Navigation column.
Proofreading
All manuscripts should be completely proofread before submission. Proofreading includes spell checking, grammar checking, and providing complete and accurate references.
Author information
Authors should include their e-mail address with all submissions to facilitate feedback from our readers. Authors are also encouraged to include their current academic affiliation. Additional biographical information, such as geographic area, highest degree, and current academic post or situation, is optional.
Submission
All entries should be emailed to the Editor-in-Chief as an attached file. To ensure that your file can be read across platforms and programs, please submit your file as a Rich Text (.rtf) file (when saving your file, select "Save As" and change the file-type to "Rich Text"). In the body of the e-mail message, include current contact information and any biographical data that should appear with the article. If for any reason it is not possible to transmit attached files via email, please contact the Editor-in-Chief privately to arrange a submission through conventional mail. Within one week, all authors will receive an e-mail message confirming receipt and readability of the submission. Please review all submission requirements listed on this page before submitting.
Editing procedure
All submissions will be sent to two blind reviewers. Authors will receive feedback from the reviewers through the Editor-in-Chief and/or issue editor within three-to-six months. Editing of materials accepted for publication will be the responsibility of the issue editor, who will supervise all changes necessary for publication. All acceptances are conditional upon completion of all changes deemed necessary by the editor. All decisions by the reviewers are final. Conflicts between reviewers, author, and/or issue editor will be resolved by the Editor-in-Chief.
Copyright & Permissions
Each issue of The Heroic Age is copyrighted as a periodical. Individual authors retain the rights to their own works, however, they must grant permissions to The Heroic Age to include said works as part of the contracted issue of the journal, and as part of a permanently archived electronic database. All authors of accepted publications will be asked to sign a release form, granting these rights to The Heroic Age, and the signed release form must be returned to the address provided on the form prior to publication.
Although each issue is copyrighted, a copyright for a periodical does not protect the rights of the individual author. Authors are strongly urged to register their own copyright with the Library of Congress. Copyright forms are available at http://www.loc.gov/copyright/forms/, and the current cost of copyright protection is $20.
Anyone who wishes to utilize material contained within The Heroic Age elsewhere (including, but not limited to, posting articles on homepages) must obtain permission from the authors and notify The Heroic Age. Material reprinted from The Heroic Age must carry a notice giving the publication details for the work's appearance in this journal.
If you wish to link to anything in The Heroic Age, please inform the Editor-in-Chief.
Revised May 27, 2010.