Guidelines for Authors

Monograph Proposals

At least six months before submitting the entire manuscript, the author should submit a proposal consisting of a brief account of the content, purpose and value of the work, accompanied by a draft table of contents, an estimate of the number of words and illustrations that the work will contain, and a proposed completion date. The author will be informed whether or not the proposal has been accepted in principle.

Evaluation of Manuscripts

All CBRL monographs are fully peer-reviewed before they are accepted for publication. The author should submit two drafts of the complete text, along with two sets of photocopies of all illustrations. The final decision on the manuscript’s acceptance will be taken once the peer reviews have been received, and may be conditional on minor or extensive revisions, which need to be completed to the satisfaction of the Honorary Monographs Editor. Please see Notes on Preparing Typescripts below for details of house style and format.

Submission of Final Manuscripts

All manuscripts should be complete and include all of their chapters, contributions, illustrations and references. The text should be in 12-point Times New Roman, double-spaced, left-justified, with a margin of at least 2.5 cm on all sides, and printed on one side of a page only. Please submit one high-quality printout and a CD with a digital version of the text which is identical to the printout. Microsoft Word or RTF is preferred, on a PC-formatted disk.

Copyright

Please cite the copyright for each illustration, either in the captions or in the acknowledgements section at the beginning. If you are not the copyright holder, please supply written proof that permission to reproduce the illustration or text has been obtained. It is the author’s responsibility, not the CBRL’s, to ensure that all copyright permissions have been gained. The CBRL will not pay copyright or reproduction fees unless by prior arrangement.

Subventions
  
The CBRL only has limited funds for publication, and may ask authors to contribute to the expenses of publication by means of subventions. In most cases authors will know appropriate funding bodies relevant to their particular research area. The Monographs Editor will be happy to advise on possible sources of funding.

Page Size and Layout

Most of our books are published in one of two formats, ‘A4’ and ‘pinched crown’. Fieldwork reports and conference publications are usually A4.

For A4 the overall page size will be 297 x 210 mm (= 11.7 by 8.2 inches). The pages will be laid out in two columns; the text will be set in columns, the illustrations can be in one column or both. The text area, which is the maximum area for illustrations, is 240 mm (= 9.5 inches) high by 172 mm (= 6.75 inches) wide. This makes NO ALLOWANCE for figure captions. In general allow 10 mm (0.4 inches) for a one line caption.

For ‘pinched crown’ the overall page size will be 240 by 170 mm. The text will be set in one column, and the overall text area is 190 by 135 mm. This is the maximum size for illustrations, though it makes NO ALLOWANCE for figure captions. In general allow 10 mm for a one line caption, 15 mm for 2 lines, etc.

A book is easier to read and to handle if all the pictures are arranged to be viewed upright – portrait – and this is our preferred style; and we will fit them in this way if we can. Alternatively, very long pictures can be set across two facing pages, and we would prefer doing this to having fold-outs.

Illustrations

The printed parts of the book are going to be in black and white, and care should be taken that the images submitted show what they are supposed to show when printed in black and white. If you are supplying original artwork, whether photos or drawings, please label each item clearly. We are unable to scan artwork larger than A4. Please make sure all original illustrations have been reduced to this size.

If you are supplying your illustrations electronically, please print them out in black and white and check them before submitting them. Very often, and particularly in charts and diagrams, you will get a better, clearer effect in black and white if the tones and tints are suppressed or removed. Please provide a hard-copy print of your images AS WELL AS any electronic version, so that we can check them as we proceed.

The following image formats are acceptable:

 DO NOT SEND anything in these formats: JPEG, GIF, Powerpoint, Images less than 300 dpi; WMF

Text

Please provide a hard copy of the text marked up with the following:

1.   The positions for the figures and tables, indicated in the margin.

2.   Any non-standard characters, highlighted.

Please provide an electronic copy of the text in one of these formats: Word (versions 95 to 2003), or Wordperfect, or Corel, or in MAC files CONVERTED to PC format. For multi-author volumes, the complete text with all contributions should be in a single file.

We don’t need the text to be elaborately formatted, but italics should be in italics.  

Things to AVOID:

1.  Please do not supply embedded illustrations and tables (submit them as separate individual files).

2.  Please avoid superscript th in 6th, 8th, etc. If your wordprocessor does this automatically please SWITCH IT OFF (in Word go to Tools, Autocorrect, Autoformat as you type)

Things to DO:

1.   Please use fullstops after initials in people’s names and make sure there are SPACES between them as well. Thus Sinclair Hood should be M. S. F. Hood, and NOT M.S.F. Hood or  MSF Hood. This applies to the Bibliography as well as the text.

Spelling: Please standardise spelling across all parts of the same volume.

References: Harvard style (Author Date, Page Number) followed by end-of chapter bibliographies.

Thus: ‘according to Bloggs (1966, 31) it seems …’ or ‘it has been stated (Bloggs 1966, 31) that …’

Please use a comma after the date, NOT a colon.  

Footnotes: Please AVOID all footnotes, and endnotes; incorporate the comments into the text, or omit them.

Headings and Sub-headings: Type these in upper and lower case characters, NOT in capitals. Use Bold for the top level, Italics for the second level and ordinary Roman type for the third level.

Illustrations and Captions: Please number your illustrations, both figures and photos, in one sequence. Figures numbers can also be sequential in each chapter: Fig. 5.4 is the fourth figure in Chapter 5, Fig. 7.3 is the third figure in Chapter 7, etc. Please AVOID sub-numbering such as Fig. 7a, Fig. 7b, call them Fig. 7 and Fig. 8. Please ensure that there is a numbered reference to each figure and table in the text. Please list all your figure and table captions separately at the end of your article AFTER the Bibliography, or in a separate file.

Bibliography: Please choose a specific format and stick to it scrupulously. What follows is the standard Oxbow one; others are also acceptable, if clear and consistent. If in doubt, please contact the CBRL Monographs Editor.

Author (Date) Title of article or book. Title of journal. Vol & Page numbers. Place, Publisher.

Examples:

Bottema, S. (1974) Late Quaternary Vegetation History of North-Western Greece. Unpublished thesis, University of Groningen.

Lamb, H. H. and Tessier, L. (1987) Weather, Climate and Human Affairs. London, Routledge.

Cruise, G. M. (1990) Pollen stratigraphy of two Holocene peat sites. Review of Paleobotany and Palynology 63, 299–313.

Serre-Bachet, F., Guiot, J. and Tessier, L. (1992a) La dendroclimatologie; pour une historie du climat. In Les veines du temps. Catalogue d’exposition, 93–119. Paris, Musée du Monde

Long, D. (1993) An ash fall within the Loch Lomond Stadial. Journal of Quarternary Science 2, 97–103.

Foster, I. D. L. and Grew, R. (1990) Magnitude and frequency of sediment transport in the Po valley. In J. Boardman (ed.) Soil Erosion of Agricultural Land, 36–56. New York, Wiley.

General points … Please put full stops after initials AS WELL AS spaces. DON’T use bold for volume numbers. Use a comma  rather than a colon between volume and page numbers. Write all journal titles out IN FULL, don’t abbreviate. (In multidisciplinary volumes even the most familiar archaeological abbreviations are confusing to other people)

Other conventional abbreviations:

BC and AD (no punctuation)

e.g. and et al. and c. (italics and fullstops)

No fullstops after abbreviations such as m (=metre), cm (=centimetre) and other abbreviations of measurements

Leading zero before measurements and numbers that are less than 1, e.g. 0.56 rather than .56.

Contact

Until the appointment of a new Monographs Editor, please direct any queries to

Prof Bill Finlayson
Director, CBRL
PO Box 519, Jubaiha, 11941 Amman, Jordan

Email: director@cbrl.org.uk