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 before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF document file format.
  • Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
  • The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); 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.

Author Guidelines

Please follow these guidelines when submitting to Westmoreland History magazine:

Format

Attach the text as a Microsoft Word document or google docs document; do not paste the doc or the images into the body of an e-mail. Also do not embed the images in the doc.

Length

3,000-4,000 words + photo captions/credits and embedded endnotes.

Images

6-10 high-resolution files (TIFF preferred; if JPEG, save at highest quality/least compression). If images are too large for email, send via OneDrive or similar file sharing service. We do not accept low-resolution images from the internet or images obtained without written permission from the copyright holder. If images are needed, WHS may supplement from its own holdings or source additional images.

Captions

Number the image file names in the order they should appear in the article. Please include a brief descriptive caption and credit the source for each photo.

Style

All submissions should adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style.

Bio

Include an author bio at the end of the text, 30 words max.

Further information for prospective authors:

  1. An article must be based on primary sources and original analysis of historical events with a strong connection to Westmoreland County. It must include thorough citations formatted as endnotes.
  2. If sending a proposal, be specific about what your article will focus on; if sending a manuscript, make sure it has a clear, concise thesis statement (which is more than just what the article will be about).
  3. Articles should not be of a general nature but should be written to be enjoyed by a general audience. We do not accept reprints, book excerpts, verbatim documents, genealogy, etc.
  4. There are no deadlines until an article is accepted and scheduled for publication. The magazine is published April, August, and December. Publication in a particular issue cannot be guaranteed.
  5. Submissions are subject to review and modification by our internal Editorial Board, both before and after being accepted for publication.
  6. The magazine pays authors upon publication, typically $150, via invoice with a W-9 form.
  7. WHS will hold copyright of the published article and retains the right to reprint articles in any format or media, along with the right to grant that permission to others
  8. Questions can be e-mailed toeditor@westmorelandhistory.org
  9. We also consider non-fiction book reviews of 200-300 words (occasionally longer), which should include basic info (publisher, year, page count, special features, cover format, cost) plus reviewer byline and a small but hi-res image of the cover. There is no pay for book reviews. Columns (very rarely assigned) are 500-600 words, 3-5 images.

Copyright Notice

Authors retain copyright, simultaneously licensing their works under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). This license allows others to copy and redistribute the work so long as they provide reasonable attribution and do not use the work for a commercial purpose. This license applies to the submitted version of the work (preprint), the accepted version of the work (postprint), and the final published version.  

Ideal attribution for a work published in this journal consists of the work’s title, the title of the journal, the name(s) of the author(s), the DOI (digital object identifier), and a link to the CC BY-NC 4.0 license deed. The journal encourages those relying on the CC BY-NC 4.0 license to consult the Best Practices for Attribution on the Creative Commons wiki.   

As they retain copyright, authors are entitled to distribute any version of the article and to grant other licenses to use the work, subject to the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. The journal encourages authors to include the ideal attribution described above when they distribute their works after acceptance by the journal.   

Authors are encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and after publication, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (see SPARC's "Open Access" article). 

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. Users who wish to request the removal or deletion of their personal information from this site may contact the Open Publishing team at openjournals@psu.edu.