The best guide as to both content and questions of presentation is the Review itself, but you should also read the appropriate sections here.

Articles

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

Submitting an article

Articles can be submitted at any time to the Articles Editor, who is willing to discuss projected articles 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 length should be discussed with the editor before submission. Please use the contact form and choose Journal Articles.

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 or title pages which name the author or their place of academic domicile.

For preference, a submission should be sent to the editor as an email attachment as either a PDF or a Word file. Footnotes should be placed in a single sequence at the end of the text (as endnotes). Graphs, tables or plates should follow the footnotes: they should not be integrated into the text.

Word length

The maximum length normally acceptable for articles in the Review is 9000-11,000 words, including footnotes. 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.

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.

Illustrations

Smaller illustrative material is allowed for in proportion. Supply clear copy, making sure that legends and labels will be readable when reduced in size and adopting a layout which conforms to the page format of the Review (245 x 185 mm). The author is responsible for providing images of publication quality and for the payment of any fees that might be due. For convenience, the initial submission can have the images copied into a Word file on the understanding that higher quality images will be required at a later date.

Illustrations should be suitable for black and white reproduction. When your article has been accepted for publication, images should be supplied separately from the text of the article.

Illustrations created on a computer, i.e. graphs, maps, and figures, should be supplied as PDF or EPS format with all fonts fully embedded or as TIF files at 300dpi.

For files created in a spreadsheet, the spreadsheet file with all source data accessed locally should be supplied, i.e. not referencing data from files that have not been sent. Graphs should have the figure number and caption as the graph title to avoid any confusion and any key/legend information should be placed at the bottom of the graph.

Graphs will be modified to journal standard format for print compatibility with regard to thickness of axis lines and line and data point size/type. Graph font and size will be modified to output approximately 10 pt on reduction.

Specifically for Microsoft Excel files, journal standard format is:

graphs are not to have plot area shading or lines across the plot area
axis lines should be the .5pt, tick lines should be to the outside
for line graphs, the lines should be .5pt solid and data points should be 5 points in size and use the square, triangle, circle, diamond, and then cross symbols (all to be filled, not outlines)
for scatter graphs, data points should be 5 points in size
for bar graphs, use only greys for the fill colours

If there is any doubt, contact the Articles Editor for clarification.

Pictorial illustrations wherever possible should be originals. Digitally supplied files should be 300dpi TIF or high resolution JPEG files at the size of final reproduction (16cm wide), but do not increase image sizes artificially as this can produce unusable files. If files are larger than this, leave them at the larger size.

If the publication is to have colour images/illustrations, treat them exactly the same as above but supply at 400dpi.

Copyright and permissions

The author(s) of an article are responsible for securing permission to reproduce copyright materials where this is necessary and for the payment of any fees that might be due. Copies of permissions should be made available to the editor on request.

Acceptance of an article

Papers are accepted for refereeing on the understanding that (i) the article is not currently under consideration by any other journal or publisher and (ii) that republication of the article, in a book or collection of essays, is not envisaged in the future. The copyright of all articles accepted for publication in all media will remain with the British Agricultural History Society, but the Society will permit re-publication once a reasonable time has lapsed from publication in the Review. As a not-for-profit charity, we do not pay royalties to authors.

The Review is willing to accept articles which do not conform to its house style, on the understanding that, should the article be accepted, authors will make the necessary revisions.

Acceptance is frequently conditional upon authors making revisions to their articles in light of referees’ comments. Revised articles should be resubmitted as soon as possible: an article’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 footnote conventions employed in the Review. Authors will be sent a checklist on the final presentation of articles when their article is accepted. The editor reserves the right to ask a referee to check a revised article before accepting it for future publication.

Revised articles should also be accompanied by:

An abstract of up to 150 words placed after the title and author’s name, before the main text.
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 150 words.

What happens after that?

Authors will normally be sent the copyedited text of their article for approval before it is sent for setting so that they can make any final corrections or amendments. They will also receive page proofs of their article. It is imperative that the proofs 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.

Papers are published in print and online (through IngentaConnect). After five years the Review is made available both here and through JSTOR.

Supplements

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 Articles Editor. Please use the contact form and choose Journal Articles.

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.

Book reviews and shorter notices should be confined to the length requested by the reviews editor. 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 review where a book can be quickly assessed.

Follow the guidelines for authors, given elsewhere on this page, when writing a 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 an article and identify the books under consideration in a first footnote marked by an asterisk attached to the end of the title.

The Review does not accept unsolicited reviews.

House style

The following style guidelines apply to all content in the Review and its supplements.

Spelling

The Review follows the conventions of the Oxford University Press in spelling, and will thus use ‘ize’ suffixes for many verbs, for example, ‘organize’, rather than ‘ise’. (The rule affects about 200 verbs, with notable exceptions being: advertise, advise, analyse, chastise, enfranchise, improvise, paralyse, supervise, tantalise, comprise, surmise, surprise, promise.) Authors will find guidance in the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors (2005). The editors also use the New Oxford Spelling Dictionary (2005).

Punctuation

The Review does not use a full stop, or point, at the end:

after an abbreviation that ends in the last letter of the word (Dr, Mr, St)
in academic awards (PhD thesis, MA dissertation)
in the short titles of record repositories (BL, LRO, TNA)
in abbreviated journal titles (EcHR).

Points are used when the abbreviation does not end in the last letter of the word:

ch. (but not chs)
ed. (but not eds)
p., pp.
fo. (but not fos)
the short titles of months (Aug.)
the s. and d. of predecimal coinage (see below).

Numbers

For all numbers not exceeding four digits, no comma: so 3478 (not 3,478), but 13,478. Per cent should be spelled out in the text (60 per cent, not 60 percent) but the per cent sign (%) can be used in footnotes and tables.

Always spell out:

seventeenth century (or seventeenth-century when used as an adjective)
74 per cent
numbers from zero to ten except where a series of precise figures is being listed, or for currency or other measurements (8s., 8 acres); or when citing chapters from another work (for example: ‘Perhaps the most rewarding part of the book is contained in chapters 4 to 9’)
Any numerical quantity that starts a sentence.

Prices

For pre-decimal prices: 10s. 4d.; £17 16s. 6¼d.; for decimal prices: £56.75; 54p.

Forms of dates

Friday 6 December 1991; on 6 December 1991; Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 226, 27 August 1757.

In the text, months should be given in full (i.e. September), but in footnotes all but May, June and July should be abbreviated (i.e. Sept.).

Fonts

Use italics or bold as appropriate.

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.

Every table or illustration should be followed by a note giving the source of the data in the case of a table or graph, or of the image in the case of a photograph. If a table requires further notes (for instance, to explain missing data or a change in the basis of calculation), then this should follow the table under the heading Note(s). If footnotes are needed, then they should use superscript 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, to which recent issues will provide guidance. References should be unambiguous, readily comprehensible and consistent with the form of citation adopted by the Review:

Place of publication is not required for modern works published in the UK by commercial or academic publishers
Place of publication is helpful for works that cannot easily be found in the standard online library catalogues (e.g., COPAC). These might include foreign books, small or local press publications, or pre-twentieth-century books.
Titles in languages other than French or German require an English translation following them.
Initial capitals should be used sparingly in book and article titles and normally limited to proper nouns. Hence David Cannadine, The decline and fall of the English aristocracy (1990).
Runs of page numbers should be elided, so 1-9, 64-7; 221-23.
After the first reference, references to published sources should normally be shortened, for example, Cannadine, Decline and fall.
Refer to the original source even if you access a book or archive online: it is not necessary to say that the copy used was found on EEBO or Google Books.
For volumes in several parts, give the number of volumes: so G. E. Mingay (ed.), The Victorian countryside (2 vols, 1981).
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).
The full citation from Mingay or a similar work would therefore be F. M. L. Thompson, ‘Landowners and the rural community’, in G. E. Mingay (ed.), The Victorian countryside (2 vols, 1981), II, pp. 457-76. On a second citation it would simply be Thompson, ‘Landowners’, pp. 458-60.

Some examples

William Marshall, Review and abstract of the county reports to the Board of Agriculture (5 vols, 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:
- History to Hist.
- Journal to J.
- Proceedings to Proc.
- Review to Rev.
- Transactions to Trans.
For example:
- Rural Hist.
- Economic Hist. Rev.
- J. Historical Geography.
If the title is used subsequently, then give a short form, so:
- AgHR for this Review
- EcHR for Economic Hist. Rev.
- JEcH for J. Economic Hist..
- JRASE for J. Royal Agricultural Society of England.
- YAJ for Yorkshire Archaeological J.
The Review does 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 italic), followed by (in brackets), serial title, 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); on second and subsequent citations this would be Wade Martins and Williamson (eds), Randall Burroughes.

Edited texts should be cited like this: William Langland, Piers the Plowman, ed., F. J. Goodridge (1959); similarly, translated texts like this: Bernard Palissy, Resources: a treatise on ‘water and springs’, trans., E. E. Willett (1876). But if the work’s title is not the title of the original book (and typically, it might include the name of the author), cite it like this: F. N. Robinson (ed.), The works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1966).

Agrarian history of England and Wales references take the form:
J. Thirsk (ed.), The agrarian history of England and Wales, IV, 1500-1640 (1967)
or Alan Everitt, ‘The marketing of agricultural produce’, in J. Thirsk (ed.), The agrarian history of England and Wales, IV, 1500-1640 (1967), pp. 466-592.

If there is going to be a further citation of any of the volumes, the first citation should look like this:
J. Thirsk (ed.), The agrarian history of England and Wales [hereafter AHEW], IV, 1500-1640 (1967).

Those volumes of the Agrarian history in two volumes take the form:
J. V. Beckett, ‘Agricultural landownership and estate management’, in E. J. T. Collins (ed.), The agrarian history of England and Wales, VII, 1850-1914 (2 vols, 2000), I, pp. 693-758.

Or, if this is the second or subsequent citation of any Agrarian history volume:
J. V. Beckett, ‘Agricultural landownership and estate management’, in E. J. T. Collins (ed.), AHEW, VII, 1850-1914 (2 vols, 2000), I, pp. 693-758.

Or, if this is the second or subsequent citation of the same volume of The agrarian history:
J. V. Beckett, ‘Agricultural landownership and estate management’, in E. J. T. Collins (ed.), AHEW, VII, I, pp. 693-758.

Victoria County History references:
The very first VCH reference in an article takes the form, Victoria County History, Borsetshire [hereafter VCH] II, p. 242. Do not give the total number of volumes published for that county or either generic or individual publication dates. Subsequent references take the form VCH Borsetshire III, pp. 1-99; VCH Wessex I, p. 12. But VCH City of York where the volume for Beverley is VCH East Riding III.

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.

Open access and the terms and conditions of publication in Agricultural History Review

March 2018

The British Agricultural History Society, as the publisher of Agricultural History Review, is committed to the free circulation of information whilst needing to protect its income from the Review, without which neither the Review nor the Society’s other activities could take place. To further its commitment to open access, the Society makes the Review available to all readers three years after the publication date both on its own website and through the Ingenta platform.

It is important that the terms and conditions by which the Review operates are carefully and comprehensively spelt out. By accepting an offer of future publication in the Review, authors are deemed to (a) have read and understood the terms and conditions which follow; (b) be able to accept these terms and conditions and (c) undertake that they will subscribe to these terms and conditions.

General notes

The Society recognises that many authors will wish to circulate their work amongst colleagues and professional peers in the form of PDFs. It has no objection to the private circulation of PDFs in this way and on request will supply a watermarked PDF to authors, or they can download a PDF from the Ingenta website if their institution has a subscription. We do not, however, permit the posting of PDFs on open access websites such as Academia or Researchgate or personal webpages from which they can be freely downloaded, until an embargo period of two years has passed from the end of the year in which the paper was published, so a paper published in 2017 may be made freely available from 1 January 2020.

The author of a paper may make a PDF of the paper available to students within the embargo period on teaching sites such as ‘Blackboard’ provided that the site is password-protected and only available to students registered with the author’s university.

Notes for contributors based in UK universities

For authors based in UK universities, the Review offers a gold access route. In return for the payment of a fee of £1700, the Society will make any paper available both on this website and on Ingenta from the point of publication. Any contributor wishing to take advantage of this is asked to make the editor aware of their desire to do so on the submission of the final paper. An invoice will then be raised to be paid by the appropriate university authorities.

Where it is a requirement, authors based in UK universities may also submit the final typescript of their submission (before it goes through our editorial process) to their university’s institutional repository on condition that it is embargoed for a period of three years from the date of submission of the final typescript. They may also submit a PDF of the published paper to their institutional repository on the condition that it is embargoed for two years from the year of publication of the paper: so a paper published in 2017 may be made available from 1 January 2020.

The Society, as publisher of the Review, does not at this time accept submissions under the terms of the UK Scholarly Communications Licence (UK-SCL).

Re-publication

On request, the Society will allow the re-publication of articles (or sections from articles) originally published in the Review provided (a) that a period of three years has passed since the year of publication and (b) provided that full acknowledgement of the first place of publication is made. Please use the contact form and choose Journal Articles.

Terms and conditions for library and institutional subscribers to Agricultural History Review

All library and institutional subscribers receive two issues of Agricultural History Review (hereafter the ‘Review’) and two issues of Rural History Today per year. There is no online-only subscription. The subscription year runs from 1 January to 31 December.

Recent editions of the Review are also available online through the Ingenta portal, and comply with Ingenta’s rules and guidelines. Earlier editions may be accessed through the Society’s Agricultural History Review web pages or through JSTOR. The following outlines the rights of access of institutional subscribers of the Review through Ingenta.

All library and institutional subscribers of the Review have online viewing rights. IP access is allowed, with no limitations on the numbers of simultaneous online users, or the proxy IPs. VPN access is not permitted.
During their subscription year, library and institutional subscribers can view the Review online for the current subscription year and the previous three years. If an institution chooses to cancel their subscription, then access to the online texts of back issues on the Ingenta site, including those years for which a subscription has been paid, will be lost. Access to earlier issues beyond the three-year moving wall will still be available through JSTOR and the Society’s own website.
‘Authorised users’ of institutional and library subscriptions to the Review are defined as full and part-time employees, retired staff and researchers holding honorary (unsalaried) positions, independent contractors, and students officially affiliated at the location of the library or institution. They may also include walk-in users of library facilities. Distance learners must be authenticated, subject to the usual rules of the host library, via proxy by the campus holding the subscription.
Inter-library loan access to the Review in electronic form is not permitted under any circumstances.
An institution or library with satellite and/or franchised campus(es) abroad shall purchase separate subscription for each campus.
The online Review and any information or other material contained in it is made available strictly on an ‘as is’ and ‘as available’ basis.
Any library or institution in a position not covered by these guidelines or in doubt about their applicability, should use the contact form to contact the Assistant Treasurer to seek a ruling on how they should proceed.
The British Agricultural History Society reserves the right to withdraw or alter these guidelines at any time.

Policy on the use of PDFs by institutional repositories

Agricultural History Review is made available online at the point of publication through the Ingenta portal. It is also made available after three years on JSTOR and through the Society’s own website as a freely accessible resource.

As a professional society (as opposed to a commercial publisher or academic press) we are committed to the free dissemination of the Review so far as it is compatible with the maintenance of our subscription income, hence the use of the moving-wall principle.

We do not give permission for PDFs of papers to be archived in institutional repositories in advance of the three-year moving wall. Links may be made from repositories to the Society’s website where, for papers published less than three years ago, an abstract will be found, or the full paper in the case of older issues.

PDFs of papers in the Review are supplied to authors only for private use and not for mounting on personal websites or supply to third parties. We do not support the inclusion in institutional repositories of pre-publication versions of the papers as this, to our mind, only creates confusion when two or more versions of the same article are available.

Guidelines for authors and reviewers