Author guidelines

 

GUIDELINES FOR THE SUBMISSION AND ASSESSMENT OF MANUSCRIPTS 

1.- The Revista de Estudios Latinos is an annual publication aimed at bringing together in one journal particularly original and unpublished scientific contributions to any field of Latin and Roman Studies and related disciplines. The journal accepts works written in any of the academic languages.

2.- Manuscripts submitted for publication should adhere to the instructions detailed in this section and will be subject to a confidential report by at least two external specialists (anonymous assessment). The positive evaluation of such reports is required for the piece of work to be accepted by the Editorial Board. In case of any discrepancy between the reports received, the opinion of a third specialist will be sought. Manuscripts should be unpublished and not be approved or pending publication by any other editing body.

3.- Submissions must be strictly unpublished, they must not involve plagiarism or self-plagiarism, and they must not have been accepted for publication or be under review for publication at any other journal or publisher. Along with the original, the author or authors must send completed and signed the Declaration of authorship and editorial commitment (available on the RELat website). This is an essential requirement to start the evaluation process.

4.- Authors will receive notification within six months of sending their manuscript of the Editorial Board’s decision and reasons will be given for the decision made. Should the work be accepted for publication, the relevant indications will be sent to the author.

5.- The following information should be included at the top of each article :

a) the title, in English, in Spanish and in the language in which the piece is written (if neither English nor Spanish);

b) the author’s name and surname and the academic institution to which he/she is affiliated;

c) a summary of no more than 200 words, in English (abstract), Spanish (resumen) and in the language in which the piece is written (if neither English nor Spanish);

d) key words (between three and six) in the same languages as the title and summary.

6.- If necessary, a separate document should be supplied with any comments deemed necessary for the Editor’s consideration (typographical peculiarities or layout characteristics, notes on images, figures or maps, format or files, etc.).

7.- Reviews should be critical and not just descriptive on recent scientific contributions in the field. Reviews should be no more than 15,000 characters in length (spaces included) and will be assessed by members of the Editorial Board. Reviews submitted for publication should include the following information on the work reviewed:

a) A summary of the aims and methodology employed and whether it deals adequately with the subject in question.

b) An analysis of the content structure and the main topics explored in the volume.

c) Comments on the relevance of the bibliography used and the texts and editions cited.

d) An assessment of the specific scientific contributions offered by the reviewed book to the area of research in question, as well as its innovative character and relevance.

 If the review should include any quotations or bibliographical references, these should follow the guidelines detailed in the journal’s Editing Standards.

 8.- Final versions of manuscripts in strict accordance with the journal’s Editing Standards should be sent to the journal’s Editor via email as attachments (OpenOffice, Microsoft Word or WordPerfect) to the following email address: revista.relat@selat.org.

A second version of the piece of work should also be sent to the above address in pdf format, with no references to its author included [name of the author(s), acknowledgements, research projects, previous publications, or any other information hinting at the author’s identity]. This version will be used for assessment purposes.

The Editorial Board will confirm receipt of the original manuscript via an email addressed to the author and will pass on the manuscripts to all revisers. Authors are assured that all revisers will receive anonymous versions of their work.

9.- In the editing process, significant additions and changes to the article should be avoided. Authors should return the corrected proofs of their articles within ten days of receipt.

10.- The content and opinions expressed in each article is the sole responsibility of its author(s).

EDITING STANDARDS
 
1.- Manuscripts of either articles or reports should not exceed 20 pages in length, including foot/endnotes and the bibliography. They should be written in font size 12, with line spacing 1.5 and standard margins (top and bottom 2.5cm and sides 3cm). The first line should be indented by 1cm. Proposed reviews should also follow these guidelines and not exceed 5 pages in length.
 
2.- The titles for each section should be organised in the following way, avoiding as much as possible the use of more than two of the following:
 
     1. Small Capitals
 
          1.1. 1.1. Bold type
   
                   1.1.1. Italics
 
3.- Unicode font should be used, especially when Greek or other non-Latin alphabets are present.
 
4.- As a general rule, «» should be used, and if the use of different kinds of inverted commas should be necessary, the following order should be adhered to:
« “ ‘ ’ ” ».
 
5.- Should brackets appear inside brackets, square brackets should be used ( [ ] ).
 
6.- Phonetic transcriptions should always come between square brakets ([ ]), and phonological transcriptions between slashes (/ /).
 
7.- Bold type should not be used. If a word or phrase needs to be highlighted, italics should be used. If the text is already in italics, words can be highlighted using roman type.
 
8.- Words or quotations in Latin should be in italics (whether inserted into the main body of the text or separately) and, as a general rule, the letters i and u should be used for i and u when consonants, rather than j and v. However, V should be used instead of U in capitals.
 
9.- Abbreviated references to Roman authors and Latin texts should follow the system proposed by the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. For abbreviation references to Greek authors and texts, the DGE (Diccionario Griego Español) should be consulted. Passages from ancient texts that are cited in the main body of the article should follow the following format: Name of author (in roman type), comma, title of text (in italics and capitalised), book or poem, chapter and paragraph, all in Arabic numbers. All numerical references should be separated by commas and spaces.
 
Example:
     Hor., Sat. 1, 2, 107-108.
 
10.- Notes should be numbered in order (in superscript) and should appear as footnotes.
 
11.- Short quotations taken from texts should be placed in inverted commas both in the main body of the text and in footnotes. Extensive quotations of more than three lines in length, however, should appear as a separate paragraph, indented by 1cm on each side, one font size down from the rest of the text and without quotation marks. Elision in quotations from texts should be signalled using ellipsis: …
 
12.- Bibliographic references to authors of modern works should be made using abbreviations in accordance with the following format:
  If the author is cited in the main body of the text or in footnotes:  
    Calboli (1983: 41-57);      
 
 If the author is not cited in the main body of the text or in footnotes, however, the following model should be used:
   
     (Calboli  1983: 41-57).       
 
Page ranges should be included in full, with the first and last page separated with a hyphen, avoiding if possible imprecise references (s. or ss., for example).
 
13.- The full bibliography should appear at the end of the article in alphabetical order with hanging indentation, adapted to the following rules:
 
a. Books: Author’s surnames (in small capitals), followed by initials, the year of publication (in brackets), colon, title (in italics and lower case), city of publication (in Spanish) and the publisher (in roman type). If the work is a second or later edition, this should be indicated with the number in superscript before the year of edition (31994)When the work is a reprint, this should also be noted (repr.) after the year of the edition. In case of translations, the year of the original edition should be included.
 
     Examples:
   
   Bolgar, R. R. (1954): The classical heritage and its beneficiaries, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press (reimp. 1977).
   
    Väänänen, V. (1985): Introducción al latín vulgar (versión esp. de M. Carrión), Madrid, Gredos (ed. or. París, Klincksieck, 1967).
 
b. Articles: Author’s surnames (in small capitals), followed by initials, the year of publication (in brackets), colon, title (between quotation marks, in roman type and lower case), name of the journal (in italics), followed by the volume in Arabic numbers and, if necessary, the fascicule should be indicated after a forward slash along with page numbers. Abbreviations of journal names should follow the conventions of the Année Philologique.
 
   Example:
 
      Blatt, F. (1938): «Remarques sur l’histoire des traductions latines», C&M 1, 217-242.
 
c. Studies published in collective works: Initials and surname of author (in small capitals), year of publication (in brackets), colon, title of study (between quotation marks, in roman type and lower case), initials and surnames of editors (in roman type and lower case), volume title (in italics), place and year of publication, page numbers.
 
   Example:
   
     Calboli, G. (1983): «The development of Latin (cases and infinitive)», en Pinkster, H. (ed.), Latin linguistics and linguistic theory. Proceedings of the 1stInternational Colloquium on Latin Linguistics, Amsterdam-Filadelfia, John Benjamins, 41-57.
 
d. References to electronic resources and publications: in addition to the details mentioned above for printed editions include, if possible, information on permanent localisers such as the DOI (Digital Object Identifier). The URL reference should be included between angle brackets and not be underlined (with the hyperlink deactivated), along with the date of the last time the link was consulted in square brackets and in the following format: [dd/mm/yyyy].
 
     Examples:
     
     Pompei, A. (2011): «De la classification typologique des phrases relatives en latin classique»,  Emerita 79.1, 55-82.    <http://emerita.revistas.csic.es/index.php/emerita/article/view/749/791> [28/02/2013]. doi: 10.3989/emerita.2011.03.1020.
 
14.-  If the author has published several pieces of work in the same year, these should be distinguished with a letter (1994a, 1994b, 1994c, etc.) and indicated both in abbreviated references throughout the article and in the final bibliography. Should there be several authors behind a particular piece of work, the &amp sign should be used, both in abbreviated references throughout the article and in the final bibliography, to avoid confusion with double-barrel surnames.
 
15.-  Should references be made to articles or documents published online (Refbacks), these should be included (in order to get the article published online) at the end of the work in alphabetical order with hanging indentation, adapted to the following guidelines:
 
a. For books, articles or chapters of books with an electronic address, follow the instructions given in point 13.d, but include the complete address (URL) as a hyperlink so that the article can be accessed straightaway from the web version by clicking on the link.
 
     Example:
 
      Pompei, A. (2011): «De la classification typologique des phrases relatives en latin classique»,  Emerita 79.1, 55-82
 
b. In the case of internet sites of reference, the name of the website, work or document should be included literally in roman type and the same font as the rest of the article. The hyperlink should be given along with the complete address (URL) so that the article can be accessed straightaway from the web version by clicking on the link.
 
      Examples:
     Catálogo Colectivo del Patrimonio Bibliográfico Español
(Link http://www.mcu.es/patrimoniobibliografico/cargarFiltroPatrimonioBibliografico.do?cache=init&layout=catBibliografico&language=es)
       Diccionario Griego Español
(Link http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge)
 
16.- Most common abbreviations: p.; pp.; ed.; eds., e.g. (in roman type); cf.; s.u.; supra; ibid.; uid. (in italics).
 
17.- Figures, tables or any other graphics should be original and of the highest possible quality. The author is responsible for obtaining the rights to reproduce the material if necessary. Such images should be numbered and carry a key so that they can be easily identified. In addition, their location amongst the text should be made clear. The Editorial Board reserves the right to request the author to re-send the material in a more suitable format and with higher quality.
 
18.- The Editorial Board reserves the right to adapt articles accepted to the Editing Standards that RELat has in place. 
 
Download these instructions in pdf format.