Submissions Guidelines

Articles

Many issues of Socialist History are organised around a particular theme, but we also welcome freestanding articles. If you have a proposal for an article or even a themed issue, we are always happy to hear from you. To discuss your ideas, please contact Francis King, the editor.

To submit an article for consideration by the editors, please ensure that it conforms to the style guide below, and send it to us as an e-mail attachment, either in MS Word [.doc; .docx] or Open Document Formats [.odt], to [this link]. We endeavour to acknowledge submissions as soon as possible; feedback and readers reports where appropriate may take a few weeks.

Please refer to these style guidelines when preparing your contribution:

Style guide for Socialist History articles

Length

  • Usually 6000-9000 words unless otherwise arranged with the editor.

Quotations

  • Use ‘single quotes’ for quotations ‘and “double inside single”?’
  • Long quotations should be indented without quotation marks, in normal font and with a line space at beginning and end.
  • Punctuation and footnote indicators normally outside of quotes; punctuation inside only if sentence quoted in full.

Spelling and capitalisation

  • Use English not US spellings, e.g. -ise, not -ize; First World War, not World War I.
  • Spell out acronyms/abbreviations on first use, e.g.: Independent Labour Party (ILP).
  • Lower case preferred for all except proper names, e.g. socialists, the left, parliament.  However, use upper case for all full proper names, e.g. the Labour Party, but the party.

Dates and figures

  • Give dates in form 12 May 1978; decades as 1900s, 1880s.
  • Spell out numbers to one hundred.
  • Hence spell out centuries (including twenty-first!).

References

  • Socialist History uses endnotes, not footnotes. Please keep these for references, suggestions for comparisons and other brief remarks. More substantial points should either be made in the main body of the text, or omitted. 
  • In text, give footnote indicators thus.62 If possible, please insert them at the end of a sentence, and in any event after punctuation.
  • Articles and unpublished sources (including theses) should be cited according to this pattern: Andy Croft, ‘Mapless in the wilderness. Randall Swingler and 1956’, Socialist History, 19 (2001), pp.44-70.
  • References for books cited should on first citation give the Author, Title, Place of Publication, date of publication and p. number, e.g. Alison Macleod, The Death of Uncle Joe. A memoir, London, 1997, p.72. Use contracted forms for second and subsequent citations, e.g., Macleod, Uncle Joe, p.53.
  • References to online sources should indicate the author and title of the material cited, as well as giving the web address of the resource. However, if the online resource is simply a scan of material originally published on paper, please reference the source as if you had used the original article or book (i.e. without the web address).
  • In reference notes please avoid all Latinisms apart from ibid. 

Headings

  • Socialist History uses short sub-headings to break up text, rather than as ‘section headings’. Please provide these headings if possible.
  • Use upper and lower case for title of article (Mapless in the wilderness), lower case for headings (Culture, politics and the New Reasoner).

Abstracts, key words and author details

  • Please supply an abstract of 120-200 words for your article, as well as four key words
  • For the ‘notes on contributors’ section please supply two or three sentences about yourself.

General

  • Please use a bold typeface to indicate your headings; use italics where required, please avoid underlines except in quotations where the original was underlined.
  • Please provide brief contextual information on names or events mentioned which may be unfamiliar to readers, e.g. the MP and former South Wales miners’ leader, David Watts Morgan.

Style guide for Socialist History book reviews 

Socialist History does not accept unsolicited book reviews. If you would like to review for the journal please contact the reviews editor, Dianne Kirby. We can usually arrange for review copies to be supplied. We also publish reviews of multiple books or volumes, as well as standalone review articles.

Length

  • Usually 1000-1500 words (per book, in the case of reviews considering more than one volume). In special cases reviews can be longer, but only by prior arrangement with the reviews editor 

Style

  • Full publication details, including the publisher, should be included at the beginning of each review, thus: Cal Winslow, Radical Seattle: The General Strike of 1919, Monthly Review Press, New York, 2020; 290pp; ISBN 9781583678534, $95.00, hbk; ISBN 9781583678527, $26.00, pbk; ISBN 9781583678541, $19.00, ebk.
  • Add page references in parenthesis in text if quoting from the book, e.g. (p.33).
  • Avoid using endnotes in reviews; if you must refer to or cite other works, please indicate the source in your main text.