Submissions

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Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it currently under consideration with another journal.
  • The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, PDF, or RTF document file format.
  • Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
  • The text is double-spaced with 1" margins; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); includes page numbers; and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.
  • If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed. Be sure to have removed all idenfying language, references, and metadata from the submission file.

Author Guidelines

Interested in submitting to SOAR? We recommend that you review the the Author Guidelines below. Authors need to register prior to submitting or, if already registered, can simply log in and begin the five-step process.

Submitting to a Section:

To ensure that your piece is reviewed by the appropriate member of the editorial staff, please indicate the journal section to which you wish to submit. The "articles" section is intended for research-based articles of between approximately 6000-9000 words. Both solicited and unsolicited articles can be submited for review.

Shorter research notes, survey articles, or commentaries should be submitted to the "Essays, Notes, and Dialogues" section. Unsolicted work can be submitted here as well, but you may wish to consult with the Features Editor prior to submission.

Media and book review authors should also submit their manuscripts here, but only with prior discussion and approval from the Review Editor (send email to americanistjournal@gmail.com). Also, consult our list of recommended texts for review for ideas on texts to propose.

Article/Essay/ General Text Guidelines:

Articles:

All articles must begin with the title that is in boldface and aligned left. The author's name, affiliation, location, and country should appear directly below the title, but should be aligned to the right. The author's name must be in boldface, and affiliation, location, and country in italics.

EX:

A Future from the Past: Perspectives from Memory Studies

Carolyn Kitch
Temple University,
USA

- Each article must begin with a short abstract of no more than 100 words.

 

General Text:

- All section headings should be bold, and must be followed by a blank line.

- A quote that is longer than two full sentences should be set as a separate paragraph. It should maintain 12-point font, and be aligned left, but indented 1 inch. The attribution should be placed directly after.

- Leave only one space after a period ending a sentence.

- "Em-dashes" should be used instead of "en-dashes" or two hyphens.

- All other grammar, syntax, and punctuation must abide by the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition guidelines.

 

Formatting References for Articles:

Articles must use endnotes rather than footnotes and should label these sections as "notes" and "works cited." Full citation information should be given only in the works cited list; in-text citation format should be used in all other sections. All citations must be in-text and all endnotes should use Arabic numbers.

 

In-text citation format: ([Author][year], [page number])

 

Works Cited Formats:

Books: [Author]. [year]. [title]. [place]: [publisher].

Periodical Sources: [Author]. [year]. "[article title]." [periodical title] no. [vol] ([iss]): [pages].

 

Selections from Books: [Author]. [year]. [chapter title]. In [book title], edited by [editors], [pages]. [place]: [publisher].

 

All Web citations should include the full URL and date accessed.

 

 

All other sources should be structured in the same format.

 

Reviews of texts

Each review must begin with the full citation of the work being reviewed and should be aligned left. This citation should use the following format:

[Author name]. [Title]. ([Place of publication]: [Publisher], [Date]. [pagination and ISBN])

EX: Justin Gest. The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
xiii+249 ISBN 9780190632557)

- The review must be double-spaced and should follow the Chicago Manuel of Style, 17th Edition style guidelines.

- The author's name, affiliation, location, and country should appear directly below the title, but should be aligned to the right. The author's name must be in boldface, and affiliation, location, and country in italics.

Ex:

David Stebenne
Ohio State University,
USA

 

Review Reference Guidelines

 

- When referring to outside works and ideas, authors should use in-text citations instead of endnotes, footnotes, or a works cited list.

- When citing page numbers, do not include "p." or "pp.," but rather use commas to distinguish page numbers from other information.

 

Media Reviews

 

Guidelines:

- Each review must begin with the full citation of the work being reviewed and should be aligned left.

- All reviews should be approximately 1,000 words.

- The review must be double-spaced and should follow the Chicago Manuel of Style, 17th Edition style guidelines.

Copyright Notice

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

    1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

 

    1. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

 

  1. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party besides the Journal and the Publisher.