Submissions

Author Guidelines

All newly submitted articles will be assigned by the Journal Manager to two Journal Editors for a first review. In most cases, the editors will suggest the author revises the submitted text before it is sent to an external reviewer. As soon as the Editors find that the submitted article could be suitable for publication, it will be forwarded to an external peer reviewer. The peer reviewer is an expert in the field to which the submitted paper refers and is able to evaluate the article fully and fairly. Once a paper has been accepted, the author will be asked to take care of the final text editing. 

To ensure the integrity of the blind peer-review for submission to this journal, every effort should be made to prevent the identities of the authors and reviewers from being known to each other. This involves the authors, editors, and reviewers (who upload documents as part of their review) checking to see if the following steps have been taken with regard to the text and the file properties:

• The authors of the document have deleted their names from the text, with 'Author' and year used in the references and endnotes, instead of the authors' name, affiliation, article title, etc.
• With Microsoft Office documents, author identification should also be removed from the properties for the file (see under File in Word), by clicking on the following, beginning with File on the main menu of the Microsoft application: File > Save As > Tools (or Options with a Mac) > Security > Remove personal information from file properties on save > Save.
• With PDFs, the authors' names should also be removed from Document Properties found under File on Adobe Acrobat's main menu.

Authors are responsible for the language editing of their articles.

Authors who wish to use copyrighted source material are responsible for ensuring that their use of this material is cleared, or falls within fair use.

ACCEPTED ARTICLES
• are at most 8,000 words (excl. endnotes)
• are in correct English (British English preferred, but American English accepted, as long as the author uses either style consistently throughout the article)
• have an informative title and subtitle
• carry an abstract of max. 200 words in English as well as in the author’s native language, plus max. 4 keywords in English and in the author's native language if applicable (keywords are separated by comma's)
• contain the author’s contact information and ORCID ID (see https://orcid.org)
• use endnotes
• contain a separate bibliography
• carry some personal information about the author at the end (where relevant: research subject, function, most important publications) under the header About the Author
• may contain high resolution images within the text, with captions
• contain, if possible, hyperlinks.

BOOK REVIEWS • are at most 2000 words. Please refer to the reviewed book like so: Author’s first name, last name, Title of book in italics (Place: publisher, year, ISBN). E.g.: Sarah Herbe and Gabriele Linke (eds.), British Autobiography in the 20th and 21st Centuries (Heidelberg: Winter, 2017, ISBN 978 3 8253 6848 7). 

CREATIVE CONTRIBUTIONS 
• are welcome and eligible for publication in the journal when they either reflect directly on issues in life-writing studies, or when they somehow invite sustained reflection on creative practice from a life-writing studies point of view.
• Like all other articles they are peer reviewed and should also be prepared for blind reviewing: neither the author's name nor the author's affiliation should be included in the manuscript, and references to the author's own work should be phrased in such a way that they do not reveal the identity of the author. Any other identifying information, including acknowledgments, should likewise be removed.

LAY OUT / PUNCTUATION
The layout of the article should be kept as basic as possible. The following general rules apply:
• Quotations must always be placed between single inverted commas, unless these are a quotation within a quotation, in which case double inverted commas will be used.
• If a text is omitted from a quotation, this should be indicated through the use of square brackets and three dots, i.e. […].
• If words are added to a quotation as explanation, these words should be placed within round brackets, followed by your initials, i.e. (because x.x.).
• If the author italicises particular words in a quotation, this should be indicated using round brackets and initials within the quotation, i.e. (my italics x.x.).
• If the author is quoting via third parties, this must be clearly indicated in the endnote with … as quoted in … In quotations, the spelling and any italics used in the text quoted must be included. 
• Quotations in languages other than English must be translated in square brackets or in the endnotes. 
• Abbreviations, such as etc., must be written out in full, and the same applies to centuries and percentages. Therefore nineteenth century instead of 19th century; twentieth-century rather than 20th -century; 40 percent rather than 40%.  Also: the Fifties rather than the ’50s. 
• Numbers in the body of the text will be written out in letters up to the number twenty, above twenty these will be given in figures. This does not apply to series. For example: 8, 17 and 43 percent of .... respectively.
• Dates are used like this: 15 May 1840; May 1840; 1840-1903; 1843/1844 (use for a term or period overlapping the years). Do not abbreviate months.
• Italics should be used sparinlgy though foreign words and terms must be italicised, except when they are naturalized, for example: dédain, traitd’union, en passant, but: bona fide, status quo, vis-à-vis.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL CONVENTIONS
The European Journal of Life Writing only accepts articles that strictly adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style in their referencing and bibliography. We use the Notes and Bibliography version of that style (i.e. no in-text referencing), an overview of which can be found here (link).

• Use endnotes, not footnotes.
• Give full notes the first time a source is cited, shortened notes for consecutive citations.
• Use "Idem" to indicate you are citing a different page of the exact same source as in the immediately preceding footnote.
• Use "Ibidem" to indicate you are citing the same page of the exact same source as in the immediately preceding footnote.

It is the author's responsibility to format their endnotes and bibliography according to this style, and articles may be returned if they do not follow this style.