Submissions

This page is designed to help you ensure your submission is ready for and fits the scope of the journal. Before submitting you should read through the guidelines here, then register an account (or login if you have an existing account). Submissions should be made electronically through this website.

The Open Library of Humanities journal is no longer accepting general submissions. Please only use this page to submit if you are submitting an article to an open call for one of our Special Collections; general submissions will not be considered at this time.

The Open Library of Humanities is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal open to Special Collections submissions from researchers working in any humanities discipline in any language. The journal is no longer open to unsolicited general submissions. The journal is funded by an international library consortium and has no charges to authors or readers. The Open Library of Humanities is digitally preserved in the CLOCKSS archive.

Special collections of articles are welcomed and will be published as part of the normal issue, but also within a separate collection page. See more information about OLH Special Collections.

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.

1. 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).
2. Any third-party-owned materials used have been identified with appropriate credit lines, and permission obtained from the copyright holder for all formats of the journal.
3. The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format. Please do not submit your article as a PDF.
4. All DOIs for the references have been provided, when available.
5. Tables and figures are all cited in the text. Tables are included within the text document, whilst figure files are uploaded as supplementary files.
6. All tables and figures must have captions within the text. All supplementary files must be labelled (Figure 1, Figure 2, etc).
7. Figures/images have a resolution of at least 150dpi (300dpi or above preferred). Each file is no more than 20MB per file. The files are in one of the following formats: JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, EPS (to maximise quality, the original source file is preferred).
8. The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines. Please ensure that your article includes a competing interest statement in accordance with our Competing Interest Guidelines.
9. Every effort has been made to ensure that author names are removed from the manuscript. The following link provides information on ensuring a blind review.
10. Please indicate in the 'Comments to the Editor' box when submitting if this article is submitted to a forthcoming special collection.
11. The article is scholarly in nature. Open Library of Humanities does not accept general or creative writing submissions, including translations (Translations Studies Special Collection articles are still welcome).

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

• 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. If you would prefer to publish your work under an alternative Creative Commons License, please indicate this in the Comments for the Editor box below, providing reasons for your request.
• 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.
• 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).

This journal is published by the Open Library of Humanities. Unlike many open-access publishers, the Open Library of Humanities does not charge any author fees. This does not mean that we do not have costs. Instead, our costs are paid by an international library consortium.

If your institution is not currently supporting the platform, we request that you ask your librarian to sign up. The OLH is extremely cost effective and is a not-for-profit charity. However, while we cannot function without financial support and we encourage universities to sign up, institutional commitment is not required to publish with us.

All articles submitted to Open Library of Humanities are initially assessed by a Section Editor, who decides whether or not the article is suitable for peer review. Submissions considered suitable for peer review are assigned to one or more independent experts, who assess the article for clarity, validity, and sound methodology.

Open Library of Humanities operates a double-blind peer review process, meaning that authors and reviewers remain anonymous for the review process. We operate robust editorial standards, requiring two positive independent scholarly reviews by experts in the field(s), before articles can be considered for publication. Peer review usually takes 2-3 months although can, in exceptional cases, take longer. Reviewers are asked to provide formative feedback, even if an article is not deemed suitable for publication in the journal.

Based on the reviewer reports, and in consultation with the Managing Editor, the Section Editor will make a recommendation for rejection, minor or major revisions, or acceptance. Overall editorial responsibility rests with the journal's Editors-in-Chief, who are supported by an expert, international Editorial Board.

The journal is published online as a continuous volume and issue throughout the year. Articles are made available as soon as they are ready to ensure that there are no unnecessary delays in getting content publicly available.

All Special Collections articles will be published as part of the normal issue, but also within a separate collection page. For more information about OLH Special Collections please click here.