How to submit a proposal to the V&A Online Journal

The V&A Online Journal publishes recent research undertaken in connection with the V&A – its collections, public programme and history. Our writers are V&A staff, colleagues involved in V&A projects and external contributors writing about V&A activities. Our audience comprises everyone interested in research at the Museum, whether academics, museum professionals or the public.

Strands

The journal incorporates a range of different types of article:

1. Articles on the history of art, architecture and design, relating to the V&A’s collections or institutional history (word length: 5,000-7,000)
2. Features focusing on individual objects, including new acquisitions and objects linked to future exhibitions (word length: 2,000-3,000)
3. Debates on policy issues relating to the V&A’s activities and its links with education or the creative industries (word length: 2,000-3,000)
4. Excerpts from doctoral research completed on the V&A/RCA and AHRC CDA postgraduate programmes, and from recent V&A publications (word length: 2,000-3,000)
5. Reviews and previews of V&A books, gallery developments and exhibitions (word length: 1,000-2,000)

The material published in the Journal is not necessarily endorsed by the Museum. Any article submitted for publication will be peer reviewed by a panel who will look at quality and relevance to the Museum. All articles should be original, but if previously published, please give us details.

Please note that it is the responsibility of the author to ensure that their article conforms to house style (see Style Guidelines below).

Submission

Submissions for issue 4 should be with the editors not later than 14 September 2011.

Articles should be submitted as close to publishable form as possible ready to send to our peer reviewers.

Please note that incorrectly formatted texts and endnotes cannot be accepted.

Endnote numbers must be entered manually in texts and submitted as a seperate Word document. Contributors should not use any automatic referencing function in Word or other processing packages.

If your article is accepted for publication in the Journal, please note that images (up to ten), captions and permissions must be submitted with the final article after discussion with the editors.

Please include:

• Title of article
• Author's name and affiliation
• Abstract (50-60 words) [please note this will probably be used as a strap-line]
• List of key words (for Google searching purposes)

Style guidelines

Spelling

Use -ise rather than -ize endings.

Capitalisation in headings, subheadings and captions

Headings, subheadings and captions must be in sentence case, not full capitalisation. E.g. 'Charles Dickens and his world' not 'Charles Dickens and his World'. For people's names, and titles of works use full capitalisation.

Paragraphs

Please separate all paragraphs with a blank line. Do not indent either the first line of paragraphs or subsequent beginnings of sections.

Punctuation

• At the end of sentences full points should be followed by only one space, not two.
• Please note the lack of a space in the following examples: p.21, no.2, vol.2.
• Do not use full points with contractions and acronyms (for example, MoMA, St, Dr, UK). Contractions take no full point but abbreviations do (e.g. ed., vol., vols., trans.)

Quotations and quotation marks

• Single quotation marks throughout for quotations, poems, parts of full works, unusual phrases (at least for first use) or to clarify the title of a work mentioned in the text if it is not clear from the capitalisation.
• Use double quote marks only for quotations within quotations, e.g. ‘When I say “I am ready”, I mean I am ready,’ he muttered.
• Don’t use ellipses at the beginning or end of quotations. Don’t follow ellipses with a full point. The three points are sufficient to mark the end of the sentence.
• Quotes should be preceded by a comma, unless they are a cry, slogan or strong statement, e.g. ‘He cried: “God for England! Harry and St George!”’
• The closing inverted comma goes before all punctuation, except when the quotation finishes with a question or an exclamation mark (see above).
• Passages of 50 or more words become an extract. Key as normal, and label: [extract]............................[extract]. Text full out, not indented, after quoted passage.
• The original spelling and punctuation should be followed exactly, using [sic] where appropriate.
• Omitted passages should be indicated by three full points. Inserted passages should be enclosed in square brackets; include ‘my  emphasis’ where appropriate – use bold and not italics to indicate this.

Dates and numbers

• Dates should be written as day, month, year; without punctuation or suffixes: e.g. Monday 29 December 1996; 31 March 1874.
• When referring to years, use the shortest possible form: 1971–4; 1970–5; 1914–18; 1798–1810.
• Do not say ‘from 1623–1626’ or ‘between 1927–1935’. Use instead ‘from 1623 to 1626’ and ‘between 1927 and 1935’, or ‘in the period 1927–1935’.
• Use BC and AD (not BCE and CE). Use BC for every date before the Christian era: e.g. 200 BC. Use AD only when there is a danger of ambiguity: e.g. AD 54.
• Use ‘about’ rather than ‘circa’ or ‘around’.
• When referring to a year that covers part of two calendar years (e.g. the financial year), use an oblique slash, e.g. ‘the years 1945/6–1968/9’).
• Use the following forms: in the 16th century; in the mid 18th century; a 19th-century carpet; the 19th century (not ‘the 1800s’).
• Do not use superscript in captions (19th not 19th).
• Decades: 1990s, not  1990’s. In the 1980s and ’90s.
• All numbers up to 10 should be written in words, not figures, unless they are measurements.

Capital letters

Use capital letters for Renaissance, Gothic, Cubist etc., but lower case for ‘medieval’ and ‘classical’.

References

• Please use endnotes only (i.e. not footnotes, bibliographies or lists of works cited). The V&A Online Journal is a scholarly publication and articles should be fully referenced using the V&A house style as laid out below.
• Note reference numbers should be placed at the end of a sentence, where they should appear after the full point. Please do not use superscript numbers. Otherwise insert at a natural break, after any punctuation except a dash.

E.g. The mechanical drawings of Desmond Paul Henry, of which the V&A hold three early examples, were created using an analogue bombsight computer adapted by the artist into a drawing machine. […] 'The Guardian' article of 1962 described Henry's images as, 'quite out of this world' and, 'almost impossible to produce by human hands'.7 The sensationalist tone sets it apart from more scholarly art criticism and suggests the novelty of this new type of art, as well as a sense of the utopianism surrounding the new technology that was still felt by many at this time.8

Italics

Not to be used anywhere online, so please avoid.

Bold

• Use bold for titles of monographs or journals in the the endnotes. Do not use bold not for titles of works in the main text.In most cases, the title capitalisation will suffice. If a title is not obvious use single quotation marks if required.
• Within quotations bold can be used to indicate author's emphasis (sparingly)
  

Please give references in the following style:

• Eliding page numbers as follows: E.g. 15–16 not 25–6; 1801–5; 1982–3; 1990–96
• Do use Ibid. (not italicised, not capitalised unless at the start of a note)
• Please avoid using op.cit, loc.cit. etc. as these are confusing, misused, and increasingly misunderstood by readers.

• Book: one author

Brown, David Blayney. Romanticism. London: Phaidon, 2001: 65. For two or more authors, only the name of the first is inverted, e.g.

• Book: two or more authors

Ward, Geoffrey C., and Ken Burns. The War: An Intimate History, 1941–1945. New York: Knopf, 2007: 23.

• Book: four or more authors

Edward O. Laumann et al. The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994: 262. Chapter or other part of book

• Chapter or other part of a book

Kelly, John D. 'Seeing Red: Mao Fetishism, Pax Americana, and the Moral Economy of War'. In Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency, edited by John D. Kelly, Beatrice Jauregui, Sean T. Mitchell, and Jeremy Walton, 67–83. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.

• Preface, foreword, introduction, or similar part of a book

Rieger, James. Introduction to Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, xi–xxxvii. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.

• Book published electronically

Kurland, Philip B., and Ralph Lerner, eds. The Founders’ Constitution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Accessed February 28, 2010. http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/

• Journal article - article in a print journal

Weinstein, Joshua I. 'The Market in Plato’s Republic'. Classical Philology 104 (2009): 439–58.

• Article in an online journal

Kossinets, Gueorgi, and Duncan J. Watts. 'Origins of Homophily in an Evolving Social Network'. American Journal of Sociology 115 (2009): 405–50. Accessed February 28, 2010. http://jama.amaassn.org/issues/v287n5/rfull/joc10108.html#aainfo

• Newspaper article

Stolberg, Sheryl Gay, and Robert Pear. 'Wary Centrists Posing Challenge in Health Care Vote'. New York Times, February 27, 2010. Accessed February 28, 2010.

• Paper presented at a meeting or conference

Adelman, Rachel. '"Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On": God’s Footstool in the Aramaic Targumim and Midrashic Tradition'. Paper presented at the annual meeting for the Society of Biblical Literature, New Orleans, Louisiana, November 21–24, 2009.

• Web site