The Agricultural History Review

Guidelines on the presentation of manuscripts by authors and reviewers

Agricultural History Review publishes articles on all aspects of the history of agriculture, rural society and rural economy. The normal focus of the Review is the agrarian and rural history of the British Isles, but papers on the rural history of Europe, North America and Australasia are also welcome, especially where they make a comparative contribution to our understanding of British developments. There is no formal date range. The Review is open to papers employing a wide range of methodologies. As well as papers which employ an orthodox historical approach, the Review is as equally interested in publishing papers which employ archaeological and landscape techniques as ones which utilize the insights derived from quantitative history, from modern literary studies or gender studies. Papers are, however, expected to appeal to a wide audience. The Review does not publish papers whose interest is essentially local.

Submission and presentation:
Papers can be submitted at any time to Professor R. W. Hoyle (who is the editor responsible for the Review's article content). He is willing to discuss projected papers with authors before submission and to advise on whether or not the Review would be interested in carrying work on a specific subject. Articles greatly exceeding the Review’s normal word limit should be discussed with the editor before submission.
 It is the policy of the Review that all articles should be refereed before acceptance. Authors who wish their work to be refereed anonymously should take care not to identify themselves on their text. Papers will be sent to the Review's advisors in the form received, including any cover pages which name the author or their place of academic domicile.
 

 Three copies of all submissions should be sent, preferably on A4 paper with generous margins. For preference footnotes should be placed in a single sequence at the end of the text. Graphs, tables or plates should follow the footnotes: they should not be integrated into the text. Whilst the Review wishes to set papers (as far as possible) from discs supplied by its authors, only hard copy text should be sent at initial submission. Nor should original artwork, photographs etc. be supplied, only photocopies.
 

 Acceptance of articles by the Review is frequently conditional upon authors making revisions to their papers in the light of referees' comments. Revised papers should be resubmitted as quickly as possible: a paper's place in the Review's publication schedule depends on the moment at which the revised text is received. Revised texts should be checked with great care for matters of both style and accuracy to avoid corrections to the page proofs. It is a condition of acceptance that the footnotes in the revised text conform to the conventions employed in the Review and detailed later in these guidelines.
 

 Authors should supply one paper copy of their revised text (laid out as described previously) together with the text on disc, for preference on a 3.5" floppy employing Word for Windows 6.0. If the author uses a different word processing system (or Apple Mac technology), it would be advantageous if the disc could include the text file in both the original format and the file saved in Word 6.0 format. Discs should be clearly labelled. Graphs and tables should be contained in separate files on the same disc. Discs should be clearly numbered: if necessary include a hard copy letter listing the contents of the disc which our typesetters can use for their information. Artwork, photographs etc. should also be supplied. Authors are requested to ensure that they have the appropriate copyright permissions for illustrations.
 

 The revised text should contain an indication of where plates, tables, graphs etc. should be placed in the text.
 Revised papers should also be accompanied by an abstract of up to 100 words placed after the title and the author's name and before the main text, and a brief note about the author, including their career to date, interests and other publications, and finishing with a contact address. Again, this should not exceed 100 words.
 Authors will be sent page proofs of their paper. It is imperative that these are returned, after careful examination, as quickly as possible. Authors are asked to restrict corrections to mistakes incorporated into the article during copy editing or the setting process. The editor will not look sympathetically on authors who wish to make anything more than minor amendments to proofs. The Review reserves the right to charge authors the cost of making corrections where these could have been detected by the author when their revised typescript was prepared.
 The Review will supply authors with 25 offprints gratis, but additional copies may be ordered and supplied at cost price. Those requiring extra offprints should consult the Editor well in advance of final printing and certainly no later than at the return of proofs.

Length:
The maximum length normally acceptable for articles in the Review is 8000 words, including footnotes. Each issue of the Review has space for only a limited number of articles at this maximum length. Longer articles of up to 15,000 words will be judged on their merits; but authors may be required to shorten articles as a condition of their acceptance. Shorter articles are particularly welcome. Authors are asked to state the length of their Ms in a covering letter.
 

 The Review also publishes occasional supplements. Proposals for supplements, which may be monographs or collections of essays about a common theme, should in the first instance be sent to the editor.
 Tables, charts, maps and other illustrative material should be counted within this limit, and contributors are urged to take this into account when submitting manuscripts. For practical guidance, you should treat one full-page chart or map as the equivalent of 720 words. Smaller illustrative material should be allowed for in proportion. It is especially important that authors submitting illustrative material attempt to supply clear copy, allowing in the legends and labelling for the needs of clarity when reduced in size and adopting a layout which conforms in its proportions to the page format of the Review, 245 x 185 mm.
 

 Book reviews and shorter notices should be confined to the length requested. Where a book proves to warrant an extended review or a review article (normally a maximum of 3000 words) the agreement of the editors should be sought in advance for such a variation in length. It is acceptable to write a short notice where a book can be quickly assessed.

Footnotes:
Footnotes should be confined to a reasonable minimum and, where possible, a succession of references in the same paragraph of text should be grouped together into a single clearly-structured footnote. Footnote markers must be placed only at the end of sentences, and numbered consecutively throughout the article. They should be typed, double-spaced, on separate numbered sheets at the end of the text.
 

 Asterisks should not be used except in the single case of a footnote attached to the title of the article, which should be confined in its usage to the acknowledgement of assistance in funding, advice, etc., which relates to the matter of the entire article.
 

 Footnotes for tables and source attributions for tables or graphs or other illustrative material should be follow the table or graph and indicated by letters, a, b, c etc.
 

 Footnotes should be confined wherever possible to indicating sources. Lengthy comments or methodological explanations should normally be incorporated into the text or placed in an appendix. Footnotes should not be used for conducting a dialogue with other historians.
 

 Footnotes should be avoided as far as possible in book reviews or shorter notices.

Style for footnotes:
Footnotes should be presented in the Review style, of which issues after vol. 47 part one (1999) will provide guidance. References should be unambiguous, readily comprehensible and consistent with the form of citation adopted by the Review. After the first reference, published sources should normally be indicated by a clear form of short reference. Place of publication need not be given for modern works published in the UK by commercial or academic publishers; it should be given for foreign books, small or local press publications and pre-twentieth century works. The titles of books in languages other than French or German should also be given in English translation following their title. Capitals should be used sparingly in book and article titles and normally limited to proper nouns.

Some examples:
William Marshall, Review and abstract of the county reports to the Board of Agriculture, (5 vols, York, 1818), V, p. 13. Subsequent references would be to Marshall, Review and abstract, V, p. 13. Ibid., pp. 29-30 may be used for the immediate following reference.

Journals should be cited as follows. At a journal's first or  only appearance, give the full title but abbreviate Journal to J., Proceedings to Proc., Review to Rev., Transactions to Trans., so Economic History Rev., J. Historical Geography. If the title is used subsquently, then give a short form, so J. Royal Agricultural Society of England (JRASE); Yorkshire Archaeological J. (YAJ). To avoid confusion with other journals, use AgHR for this Review, EcHR for Economic History Review and JEcH for J. Economic History. The Review doe s not use ante for earlier issues of the Review.

Citations of articles should take the form

J. A. Clarke, 'On the farming of Lincolnshire', J. Royal Agricultural Society of England, 10 (1851), pp. 11-18; subsequently, Clarke, 'Lincolnshire', p. 17, never Clarke, op. cit
.
Graham Cox, Philip Lowe and Michael Winter, 'The origins and early development of the National Farmers' Union', AgHR 39 (1991), pp. 30-47; subsequently Cox et al, 'NFU'.

Serial publications, including record society publications, should take the form author or editor's name(s), title (in inverted commas), serial title (italic), volume number, date of publication, so

S. Wade Martins and T. Williamson (eds), 'The farming journal of Randall Burroughes (1794-1799)', Norfolk Record Soc., 58 (1996); subsequently Wade Martins and Williamson (eds), 'Randall Burroughes'.

Volumes in multi-part works take roman capitals, so Mingay, Victorian Countryside, II, pp. 170-73, Agrarian History V (i), p. 62, but volumes in serials or the volume number of journals always take arabic numerals whatever the practice of the publisher, so Surtees Soc. 172; J. British Studies 35 (1996).

Archival citations should follow the same principles:

TNA, E 315/385, fo. 385v (or fos. 385v-387r); BL, Lansdowne Ms 47, no. 5. [It is not necessary to spell out either BL or TNA]

Hertfordshire RO [hereafter HRO], Delme-Radcliffe MSS, DE 1420 B, Edward Radcliffe, London, to Ralph Radcliffe, Hitchin, 7 Sept. 1728. Thereafter adopt the short form of citation provided no ambiguity arises in archival source reference; thus HRO, DE 1420 B, 8 Oct. 1729.

Citation of theses and other unpublished typescripts should follow this format:

Raine Morgan, 'The Root Crop in English Agriculture, 1650-1870' (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Reading, 1979), p. 73; subsequent references would be to Morgan, 'Root Crop', p. 74.

Parliamentary Papers should be cited in ways which make them intelligible, following the recommended forms:

BPP, 1895, XVI, RC on the Agricultural Depression, p. 546; thereafter BPP, 1895, XVI, p. 547.

House style:
1. Book Reviews. The titles of book reviews and shorter notices should be presented as follows:

JOHN WALTER and ROGER SCHOFIELD, (eds), Famine, disease and the social order in early modern society, (CUP, 1989). xiv + 335 pp. £35.

No place of publication should be given for books published in London. Where books are published by private presses or local societies, a contact address from which the book can be obtained should be provided. Reviewers should receive with the work to be reviewed bibliographic details of the book in the Review's house style which they are asked to reproduce exactly at the head of their review.

The name of the Reviewer should appear at the end of the Review or short notice, in capitals, on the right-hand side of the sheet. For review articles, adopt the layout of a paper and identify the books under consideration in a first footnote marked by an asterisk attached to the end of the title.

2. Spelling.
The following should always be spelled out:
seventeenth century (hyphenated where adjectival); 74 per cent; numbers under 10 except where a series of precise figures is being listed. Where a numerical quantity opens a sentence, it should always be spelled out.

The Review follows the conventions of the Oxford University Press in spelling, and will normally use 'ize' endings in preference to 'ise'. Authors will find clear guidance in The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors, OUP, 1981, on most areas of uncertainty.

3. Punctuation:
The Review does not use full stops after titles (Dr, Mr, Ms but Prof.), in academic awards (so PhD thesis, MA dissertation), in the short titles of record repositories (BL, LRO, TNA) or abbreviated journal titles (EcHR). It does use points after ch. (but chs), ed. (but eds), p., pp., and fo. (but fos), in the short titles of months in footnotes (Aug.), and in predecimal coinage (see below).

Single inverted commas should be employed for outside quotation marks, the titles of articles in journals, for theses and unpublished papers; but double quotation marks for quotations within a quotation: so Cicely Howell has suggested that 'perhaps the medieval holding with its culture could be termed "peasant" while the seventeenth-century holding with its qualitatively higher standard of living could be called a "smallholding" or "commercial family farm"'.

Commas will normally be employed to separate lists of more than two items, and before 'and' where sense requires: so 'On these farms were grown wheat, barley, and turnips'. or 'Their holdings were large and well-organised, and their leases long'.

4. Numbers:
For all numbers not exceeding four digits, no comma:  so 3478 [not 3,478], but thereafter 13,478.

5. Prices:
10s. 4d.;  £17 16s. 6¼d.; £56.75; 54p.

6. Forms of dates:
Friday 6 December 1991; on 6 December 1991; Jackson's Oxford Journal, 226, 27 August 1757.

Months in the text should be given in full, i. e. September;  but abbreviated in footnotes (i. e. Sept.).

7. Fonts:
In typescript the use of italics should always be indicated by underlining. In word processed text it is acceptable to employ italics or bold as appropriate.
 
 
 

Revised 16 February 1999