Submissions

Author Guidelines

This style guide is available for download here.

Formatting Electronic Files

Please adhere to the requirements below when submitting a new or revised manuscript. The system relies on automated processing to create a PDF file from your submission. If you do not follow these instructions, your submission cannot be processed and will not be received by the journal office.

Acceptable Formats:

• Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx)

File Contents

Word documents should be submitted as a single file. Authors should submit any figures as separate files, in TIFF (.tif) or EPS (.eps) (not GIF [.gif] or JPEG [.jpg]) format. Please note that authors of accepted manuscripts may be required to submit high-resolution hard copies of all figures during production, as not all digital art files are usable. If you used any revision or editorial tracking tools in your word-processing program, be sure the final version of your manuscript does not contain tracked changes.

General Specifications

Review Submissions

Reviews should adhere to the same grammatical and stylistic conventions as research articles. Citations from a book being reviewed should be embedded in the text, following the relevant quote. They should be in parentheses in the following format: (pp. 8-9). References to other books should be kept to a minimum and should be cited as footnotes in the Chicago Style.

Research Article Submissions

Manuscripts being submitted for consideration to the Journal should be carefully proofread and fully documented. Notes should appear as footnotes and be formatted according to The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition. Manuscripts should not contain previously published material or material that will be published in the next eighteen months.

The Journal employs an anonymised reviewing process; all obvious references by which the referees could identify the author must be removed by the author prior to submission. In particular, do not include a title page. Manuscripts that do not meet these standards will be rejected without consideration by referees.

Manuscripts should not normally exceed 8,000 words in length.

The manuscript should have 1-inch margins all around and should be single-spaced throughout, including the text, all quotations, equations, appendices, references, footnotes, tables, figure legends, and headings.

Citation Guidelines

Follow The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition, with appropriate allowances for reference to manuscript sources that require special forms of reference.

Note that all titles, in the text and in footnotes, should be capitalised, and dates should be consistent with the journal style—for example, 10 January 1856—throughout. The IRSS uses the following style for footnote references to printed documents:

First reference to a book

James Hammerton, Cruelty and Companionship: Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Married Life (London: Routledge, 1992), 16.

[Note that first reference includes the full title, including any material placed after a colon. If the author publishes under their full name, the full name must be provided in the first citation.]

Second reference to a book

Hammerton, Cruelty and Companionship, 119.

[Note that only author’s surname, a short title, and page reference are included.]

First reference to a journal article

James Buzard, 'The Uses of Romanticism: Byron and the Victorian Continental Tour,' Victorian Studies 35, no. 1 (Autumn 1991): 29-49.

[Note use of single quotation marks and placement of comma inside quotation marks. Note also the inclusion of the issue number and month/quarter of publication.]

Second reference to a journal article

Buzard, 'Uses of Romanticism,' 37.

[Note use of author’s surname and short title of article.]

Contributions to a multi-author work

Anne Carr and Douglas J. Schurrman, 'Religion and Feminism: A Reformist Christian Analysis,' in Religion, Feminism, and the Family, ed. Anne Carr and Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1996), 11-32.

Archival citations

Copy of Queen Elizabeth’s speech before Parliament, 10 February 1558/9, Lansdowne MS 94, fol. 29, British Library (BL).

[Note that citations to Add. MSS. should include the designation BL prior to Add. MSS. For citations from The National Archives, please refer to The National Archives web site.]

Parliamentary Papers

Churchill, Speech to the House of Commons, 18 January 1945, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 5th ser., vol, 407 (1944-45), cols. 425-46.

Use 'ibid.' when appropriate rather than repeating information from the preceding note. Do not use 'op.cit.' or 'passim' in your footnotes.

Accepted Research Articles

Authors of accepted manuscripts are responsible for providing an electronic file, which must adhere strictly to the guidelines outlined below. Accepted manuscripts that depart significantly from the house style will be returned for revision prior to being considered for copy editing.

Please do not justify the right margin. Do not underline characters. Material that should appear underlined when printed should be in italics in your manuscript (except for URL addresses).

Authors should note that except in direct quotations, the Journal uses Canadian-English spelling (labour, not labor; defence, not defense; colour, not color, etc.) throughout both the text and the footnotes.

Please use single quotation marks throughout, with double quotes for an inner quote: ‘xxxx “yyyy” xxxxx.’

Displayed quotations have no quotation marks: any quotes within a displayed quote will have single quotation marks. Punctuation should be contained within (not outside) the quotation marks.

Endnotes are not acceptable; use footnotes only, with Arabic numerals rather than Roman numerals.

Grammatical Conventions

The IRSS adheres to the grammatical conventions outlined in The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition. By incorporating these into your initial draft, you will save yourself considerable time during the revision process. Listed below are two of the most frequently encountered issues:

• The journal approves the use of the Oxford comma (e.g. Apples, pears, and oranges are all fruits).
• If a sentence ends in a quotation, always place the period inside the quotation marks, rather than outside. (e.g. As Julius said, “Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.”)

If you have any questions about manuscript preparation that are not fully explained in these guidelines, please contact the editorial office at scottish@uoguelph.ca