Field Notes: 

Guidelines and Information for Authors

General

  1. Field Notes, the academic journal of the Great War Group, aims to publish scholarly work by experts at all career stages, and therefore welcomes submissions from established scholars, early career-academics, post-graduates, and undergraduate students.
  2. Submissions to Field Notes should relate to the First World War, its era and associated themes (broadly interpreted). Articles on the origins, impacts, legacies, and memory of the period c. 1900-1925 are welcomed, as are articles on the social, political, economic, military and archaeological aspects of the period.
  3. If authors require guidance on whether a proposed article falls within the journal’s remit, they should email fieldnoteseditor@gmail.com.
  4. Submissions should not be under consideration for publication, due for publication, or have been previously published. If a submission is found to break standards of academic integrity, it will be rejected without exception.

Basic Guidelines for Submission:

  1. Anyone wishing to submit an article should email a completed draft of their article to fieldnoteseditor@gmail.com.
  2. Authors must also provide the following with their completed draft:
  • Article title
  • Acknowledgements (in the final article these will be included in the first footnote)
  • A 150 word abstract outlining the main arguments of the article.
  1. Articles must be between 6,000 and 8,000 words in length, including footnotes.
  1. A bibliography should not be included, but footnotes are expected.
  2. Submission of a completed article does not guarantee publication in Field Notes. 
  3. Authors must adhere to copyright rules, which are outlined below.
  4. If the author’s research required consideration by an ethics board, (for example if your research used human remains, or human participants who were alive when the research began), the author must provide proof of ethics approval when submitting their article. 

Formatting:

  1. Articles should be submitted in a word document (either Word 97-2003 “.doc”, or Word Document “.docx” format).
  2. UK spelling must be used throughout. If any other language is used in the article, the author must provide a translation in English. Any non-English words should be italicised.
  3. Use Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3), including for footnotes. Roman numerals should only be used for names of monarchs, individuals within a family who share the same name. or appropriate unit names, such as Corps numbers.
  4. All work should be 1.5 line spaced, with a gap between each paragraph. Paragraphs should be indented, with the exception of the opening paragraph.
  5. Tables, pictures, maps etc should be provided in a separate document, and the author should indicate where they should be positioned in the article.
  6. If authors wish to include images, they should supply them in 300 dpi quality of higher, and are responsible for sourcing the permission to reproduce them in Field Notes. More details can be found below under Copyright and Licensing
  7. Authors must use footnotes (not endnotes) and should reference according to the MHRA style. Details of this can be found below under MHRA referencing guide.

Copyright and Licensing:

  1. Authors are required to secure (and provide proof of) the copyright permission for the use of any images or data included in their submissions. Any images or data that do not have copyright approval detailed in the final submission will be removed from the final article. 
  2. The author holds the copyright to their article. By agreeing to publish in Field Notes, the author grants the journal the rights to the first publication of the article, which will automatically be protected under the journal’s Creative Commons Licence (see below). By submitting to Field Notes, authors agree not to attempt to reprint the article in its published form for at least one year after the publication date.
  3. Dual authorship:
    1. If there are multiple authors of an article, authors  hold the joint copyright to that article, and should come to a joint agreement between themselves over any future reproductions of that article.
    2. If there are multiple authors of an article, their names will appear alphabetically in the published version of the article, unless an alternative agreement is reached between all the authors.
  4. Field Notes operates under the CC-BY-NC 4.0 Creative Commons Licence. This means that if material from an article published in Field Notes is reused by a third party, the author must be acknowledged. Under the CC-BY-NC it is also forbidden for a third party to re-use material published in Field Notes for commercial purposes. However, the information contained in any article can be used without prior consultation with the copyright holder (ie the author), provided that it is for non-commercial purposes, such as research.

MHRA Referencing Guide

  1. Single quotation marks should be used for short quotes, and double quotation marks should be used for a quote within a quote.
  2. Long quotes should be indented, and quotation marks should not be used. 
  3. Omissions and additions to quotes for clarity should be indicated by square brackets: […]. 
  4. Footnote reference numbers should be placed at the end of the sentence, after the fullstop.
  5. Books: First name, Surname, Title of Book in Italics, (Place of Publication: Publisher, Year), pp. 24-25
  6. Journal Articles: First name, Surname, ‘Title of Article in quote marks’, Title of Journal in Italics, Series Number, Volume Number (Year of Publication), first-last page of article, p. 14
  7. Archives and Manuscripts: The location of the repository, name of the collection  and name of the manuscript (in the format used by the repository) 
  8. Newspapers and Magazines: First name, Surname (if known), ‘Title of Article’, Title of Newspaper in Italics, date, page
  9. Online material: First name, Surname, Title of Piece in Italics, type of material eg video, date posted, <https://www.website.url> [Date accessed eg: 29th May 2020]

Publication Process

  1. Submissions will be subjected to a ‘double-blind’ peer review. This means that an anonymised version of the article will be sent to at least two experts in the field of your research, and they will provide feedback on alterations that may need to be made.
  2. The editor will make a decision on how closely the feedback should be followed and will advise the author accordingly. Authors should be aware that making changes to a submitted article is a normal part of the publication process. 
  3. If authors are not willing to make reasonable changes to submission after discussing the matter with the editor, then the editor reserves the right not to publish the submission.
  4. Field Notes is published annually in February/March. The deadline for draft submissions for inclusion in the next year’s edition will be 1st September the preceding year.
  5. The review process will take an estimated 8 weeks. The editor will keep authors updated if this timeframe cannot be met.
  6. Authors will have 6 weeks to amend their submission in line with the double-blind feedback

Takedown Policy

  1. The Takedown process will be triggered if a published article is found to be plagiarised, breaches copyright, contains offensive material, or contains factual inaccuracies. 
  2. Whilst the journal editorial team will work to prevent plagiarised or otherwise problematic work from being published, authors have ultimate responsibility for ensuring that all material that they wish to publish in the journal conforms to copyright laws.
  3. Anyone who has concerns over an article which relate to the areas covered by this Takedown Policy should contact the editor at fieldnoteseditor@gmail.com, with details of their concerns, and proof of rights to the material if the concern related to copyright.
  4. Provided the complaint is a legitimate one, the editor will, in the first instance, encourage the author and complainant to come to an amicable resolution to the proposed problem. This may amount to an acknowledgement of the issue, as a note in a future edition of the journal, or equivalent solution.
  5. If no resolution can be reached, the journal reserves the right to de-publish the article, and will contact recipients of the journal accordingly.