Notes For Authors
Oral History aims to contribute to developments in the theory and practice of oral history. It welcomes contributions, whether long or short articles, news items, reviews or reports of meetings, conferences or new projects. Articles should be emailed to:
journals@ohs.org.uk or sent by post, along with an electronic copy, to:
Oral History Journal, Oral History, The British Library, 96 Euston Road, London, NW1 2DB
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All articles are submitted to the process of anonymous peer review. Three decisions can be made: accept, revise and resubmit, or reject. The Oral History editorial group makes every endeavour to provide supportive suggestions to contributors whether or not an article is accepted or rejected.
The joint editors welcome contributions from a wide range of disciplines and practices, for example, history, women's studies, sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, politics, social policy, social administration, museum studies, archive work, health studies, education, library and information services, community publishing, folklore, media studies, photography, broadcasting, nursing, social work, psychology, psychiatry, and in fact any area where the significance of orality, personal testimony and remembering is understood and valued. We welcome a variety of approaches from people from different countries and from different backgrounds.
Copy deadlines
Oral History is published twice yearly in Spring (March) and Autumn (September) with a roughly three-month lead time. Articles should be submitted as early as possible to allow each issue to be planned in advance as circulation amongst the editors normally takes around twelve weeks. Final copy dates for contributions to both the Current British Work and International Work sections are the end of November (for the Spring issue) and the end of June (for the Autumn issue).
Manuscripts
Articles must normally be between 5000 and 7000 words in length. All articles, together with an abstract (see below for details) and an accurate word count should be submitted electronically with double spacing and each page clearly numbered. Please ensure you retain a back-up copy of your work.
Authors' names
To facilitate the process of anonymous review, names should appear only on a separate front title sheet with the full title of the article. Joint author's names should be given alphabetically. Authors must specify if they wish otherwise.
Where an author's name appears in the footnotes this should be replaced by 'Author' in order to preserve anonymity. Author's names will be re-inserted if the article is accepted.
Acknowledgements
Persons who have made significant contributions to the article, for example as interviewers or researchers, should be listed in an 'Acknowledgements' section at the end of the article preceding the 'Notes'.
Biographical details
An outline self-description of each author, not more than three lines long, should be submitted with the manuscript on a separate sheet (and a separate computer file). We also encourage you to supply a contact email for inclusion at the end of your article when it is published to allow readers to contact you directly, though this is entirely optional.
Abstract and key words
With the submission the author/s must also supply an abstract of the article not exceeding 120 words which summarises the argument, key points and conclusions; plus up to five key words describing the piece.
House style
Contributions should be written in a direct style, avoiding jargon. Clear, forceful pieces are best. Oral History aims to address historians of all kinds, not only academics. The readership is international.
- Headings. The full title of the article should appear at the top of the first page in bold upper-lower case. Authors are encouraged to keep article titles as short as possible (maximum of 20 words)
- Sub headings. Introduce sub headings in bold upper-lower case where possible. These help to break up the text and make articles easier to read - and edit.
- Paragraphs should be separated by an extra line and not indented. Sections should be separated by two extra lines. Avoid justifying the text on the right margin: leave it ragged.
- Punctuation. Generally, full stops to indicate truncation should be avoided, thus Mrs not Mrs. and PhD not Ph.D. and eds not eds. and tel not tel.
- Numbers and dates. Numbers and ages less than 100 should be written in full, e.g. forty-two. Numbers 100 and over should be in figures, e.g. 235. For decades use 1930s when spoken as such, but thirties not '30s when used in the text. Use 'nineteenth century' not '19th century'. Set all dates out as follows: 5 November 1997. The percentage sign (%) should only be used in tables, otherwise use 'per cent'. Use figures with percentages only when a decimal point is required (e.g. 7.4 per cent). Insert a comma for thousands and tens of thousands, e.g. 1,000 and 10,000.
- Abbreviations. Avoid using abbreviations except in the notes (see below). Write for example in full (not e.g.). Avoid using i.e. The World Wars should appear in full as World War One/Two (not WW1 or World War 1). Full wording forms should be used: do not (not don't), will not (not won't); except in quoted speech.
- Spelling. American spellings should appear in English, for example: colour not color, programme not program, organise not organize. French and other non-English words should be italicised, e.g. frisson and force majeure. Keep capitalisation to a minimum thus: CD-Rom not CD-ROM and Internet not INTERNET. Use lower case for government, church, volume etc. All published works (books, newspapers, journals, radio and television programmes) mentioned in the text should appear in italics. Please spell-check your article before submitting it.
- Quotations and quotation marks. The use of longer direct quotations is welcomed. Quotations must be referenced. If they are less than two sentences in length they should be included in the main body of the text using single quotation marks. Quotations longer than two sentences should be indented without quotation marks. When preparing text on disk use the 'left indent' or 'block indent' feature not word spacing or tabs. Within an indented section quotations should be marked by single quotation marks. Quotations within quotations should be marked by double quotation marks. Full stops should appear after quote marks, e.g. James said, 'I will go to sleep'. And after brackets, e.g. sentence ends (with a bracketed section here). For long passages of quoted text the full stop appears inside the quote:.' Use three dots to indicate a pause in speech. Deletions from speech should be indicated thus: [...] Any author explanatory comments should be inserted in square brackets.
- Longer transcribed interview extracts. Questions should be italicised (see issue 27/1 p 79 for an example). If several people are quoted they should be named each time. Full names, in italics, rather than initials should be used.
- References and notes. Endnotes not footnotes should be used and kept to a minimum. They should be numbered consecutively in the text in superscript following punctuation (for example.1) and the notes typed on separate pages after the main text under the heading Notes. Published books and periodicals should be italicised in the notes, as elsewhere in the text. Do not use full stops after abbreviations such as p, vol, no, tel, etc, nor after initials. Slashes should not be used. Do not use latin words in the footnotes, such as 'op cit', 'passim'. For repeated references to articles or books use the author's surname, year of publication, page number, e.g. Perks, 1993, p 7. When referencing a single page use p. and for a range of pages use pp.
Please use the following referencing formats in the Notes section: - Articles:
Sue Crane, 'Writing the individual back into collection memory', American Historical Review, vol 102, no 4, 1997, pp 1372-85. - Books:
Joe Lambert, Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community, Berkeley, California: Digital Diner Press, 2002, p 52. - Chapters in books:
John Adams, 'A fair hearing: life review in a hospital setting', in Joanna Bornat (ed), Reminiscence Reviewed, Buckingham: Open University Press, 1994, pp 84-95. - Fieldwork interviews recorded by the author:
Interview with Richard Evans, born in London, 1 March 1922, furniture maker; recorded by Ann Jones, 12 March 1997. - Archived interviews and interviews not recorded by the author:
Interview with Jack Smith, interviewed by Cathy Courtney, Artists' Lives, British Library, catalogue reference C466/12/01, transcript pp 2-4. - Referencing Electronic sources
- Articles: Susan Wynne. 'Cataloging Oral Histories: Creating MARC Records for Individual Oral History Interviews', Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, vol 47, no.6, pp 561 - 582. Accessed online at <http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a912535135&fulltext=713240928>, 24 September 2010.
- Websites: Stories Matter [web page]. Accessed online at <http://storytelling.concordia.ca/storiesmatter/>, 24 September 2010.
Respondents' names
The name of anyone interviewed and quoted in an article should be replaced by a substitute name unless the author has written permission from the person quoted to use their actual name.
News
The Current British Work section is ordered alphabetically by region, starting with England then followed by Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Each report should begin with the County and, on a new line, the place and title of the organisation or project in bold capitals. It should conclude with contact details which must appear in the following order: name, address, postcode, telephone number, fax number, email address, website address. Here is an example of how to list this information:
For more information contact: Sylvia King, Jubilee Arts, 84 High Street, West Bromwich, West Midlands B70 6JW, tel 0121 553 6862, fax 0121 525 0640, email info@jubilee-arts.co.uk, website http://www.jubilee-arts.co.uk
Normal style and punctuation rules apply. Note that there is no punctuation after 'tel' and that it should be email not Email or e-mail. All British news should be sent to Cynthia Brown, email: cib2@leicester.ac.uk.
The International Work section is ordered alphabetically by continent and the same rules apply as for the British news section. All International news should be sent to Siobhan Warrington, email: siobhan.warrington@panos.org.uk.
Conference reports
The report should begin with the full title of the conference in bold capitals, followed by the organiser, venue and full date in bold upper/lower case. Individual speakers should be italicised the first time they are mentioned and you are encouraged to use subheadings (see above). Your own name should appear at the end of the report in bold upper/lower case.
Reviews
The review should begin with the full title of the work in bold capitals, followed on a new line by the author/s or editor/s in upper/lower case, then again on a new line the place of publication if it is not London, the publisher, the date of publication, number of pages and price, e.g.:
WHITE GLOVES: HOW WE CREATE OURSELVES THROUGH MEMORY
John Kotre
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995, 276pp, £15.99.
SEX WORK ON THE STREETS: PROSTITUTES AND THEIR CLIENTS
Neil McKeganey and Marina Barnard (eds)
Buckingham: Open University Press, 1996, 114pp, £12.99, paperback.
As with authors, reviewers should provide a self-description not exceeding three lines in length, and add their name in upper/lower case bold to the end of the review.
Copyright
On publication, copyright of all articles passes to the Oral History Society unless otherwise agreed with the editors.
Illustrations
Oral History prefers to publish articles accompanied by photographs, drawings, maps, diagrams, etc. Each illustration should be numbered and its preferred position in the text noted. Please ensure that you have copyright permission to reproduce any illustration. When submitting an article for publication, captions and credits should be numbered and typed on a separate sheet of paper, headed Captions and with the title of the article.
Please note, black and white photographs reproduce better than colour prints. If you are able to supply negatives this can help to improve the final reproduction. We can also accept transparencies. Where appropriate, it is recommended that copies of all illustrations are made before they are submitted for publication, as we cannot accept responsibility for any that may be lost or damaged in the post.
If you are providing digital or digitised images with your text it is important to send the scanned images rather than rely on the embedded image in a programme such as Microsoft Word. Please ensure the images are scanned at a minimum of 240 dpi at full size and saved as JPEGs (.jpg), tiffs (.tif), or eps (.eps). Transparencies must be scanned on a high resolution scanner, preferably by a professional repro house, again at no less than 240 dpi and sized to fit on a full page of the journal (180mm wide). Images from websites are generally unsuitable for printed publications as they are saved at too low a resolution (usually 72dpi for the web). If you see an image that would be useful for your article you will need to contact the website's builders in order to obtain a better version of the image they have used. Copyright problems can also be sorted out at that stage.
If in doubt or you would like further details or advice about images, please contact our print designer via info@smithplusbell.com.
Authors' journal copies
Oral History is a small journal produced entirely on a voluntary basis, apart from printing and design. We have a small budget and little extra time. For this reason we are not able to provide offprints for authors. However, we do provide two free copies of the relevant journal to our published authors. Extra copies are available to authors at half the current sale price, plus postage.
Revised December 2011