Ancient Mesoamerica | Special and Compact Sections | Manuscript Preparation | Preparing your Manuscript for Peer Review | Editorial Style | Final Submission | Data & Research Transparency | Publication Ethics | Seeking Permissions for Copyrighted Material | Supplementary materials | Policy on prior publication | ORCID | Authorship and contributorship | Author affiliations | Competing interests | Author Hub | English language editing services | Style Guide | Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools
Ancient Mesoamerica
Ancient Mesoamerica will publish primarily in English, but will also feature contributions in Spanish. All papers will have Spanish (or English) summaries as a regular feature to enhance scholarly communication. When preparing your contribution, please remember that Ancient Mesoamerica unifies several different fields from archaeology to ethnohistory, art history, and beyond. We also wish to reach nonspecialist readers. While some degree of technical language is often proper and necessary, jargon can always be avoided. Therefore, authors should strive for clear, lucid prose. The Editor will gladly discuss topics or contents of manuscripts prior to submission.
Queries may be addressed to [email protected].
Special and Compact Sections
Information about proposing and submitting contributions to Special and Compact Sections can be found here.
Manuscript Preparation
Research Articles
Research Article manuscripts submitted to Ancient Mesoamerica for consideration should be no longer than 10,000 words (excluding references) and have no more than 20 figures (additional figures may be included as supplementary material).
An abstract of 200 words or less and a longer summary (1–2 double-spaced pages) of the paper in Spanish should be included. We do not permit the use of footnotes and endnotes except in very rare instances. Critical information should be included in the text. The order of manuscript elements should be as follows: title page, abstract, main text, Spanish summary, acknowledgments, references, tables, and figures. Tables and figures should be numbered consecutively using Arabic numerals.
Authors will be asked to provide key words indicating the cultural/geographical areas under study, and the field/expertise represented in the manuscript.
Tables, figures and photographs can be submitted in JPEG or Word format embedded in the text of the article in the first instance. But if the article is accepted, these elements must subsequently be submitted in a format of a higher quality (preferably TIF) as separate files accompanying the Final Version.
Please also make sure that the manuscript constitutes original research that is not under consideration in another journal.
Obituaries
AM publishes obituaries under as the article type 'In Memoriam'. Contributors wishing to propose an obituary should first contact the Editorial team at [email protected]. Obituaries do not require an abstract, and should be no longer than 5,000 words with 10 images or fewer. Obituaries should also adhere to the following structure: I. Introduction and Significance of Scholar’s work to Mesoamerica; II. Personal Information & Formative Years; III. Education & Influences; IV. Contributions (publications, fieldwork, mentoring, service, museum work, etc.); V. Reflections; VI. References Cited; VII. Additional Works Not Cited
Ancient Mesoamerica style guide and further information
The Ancient Mesoamerica style guide can be found here.
Further information about manuscript preparation can be found here.
Preparing your Manuscript for Peer Review
Ancient Mesoamerica operates a double-anonymous peer review policy. Submissions should be anonymized and stripped of identifying information, and should be accompanied by a title page providing the following information:
- Corresponding author, email & affiliations
- Co-Authors, emails & affiliations
- Acknowledgements
- Competing interests declaration
- Data Availability Statement
- Funding Statement
Each contribution will be reviewed by at least three, and some times as many as five, outside readers who will make recommendations to the Editors concerning revision of the manuscript, acceptance or rejection. Reviewers may choose to remain anonymous. Reviewers’ comments will be passed on to the authors.
Further information on the peer review process can be found here.
Editorial Style
Please refer to the Ancient Mesoamerica style guide
Final Submission
Please see Submitting your materials for further information concerning manuscript submission.
After a contribution is accepted, the Editor will require a manuscript file in a common digital format, such as Rich Text Format (RTF), Word, or WordPerfect. Best practices for the production of digital manuscripts should be followed. Illustration files should be provided in ready-to-print, high-quality digital formats, according to the following basic guidelines:
- Line drawings (including stippled drawings): 1200 dots per inch (dpi), bitmap (1-bit) color mode, TIF format
- Alternative for line drawings: Vector-based images may be submitted in Illustrator, EPS, or PDF format
- Halftone drawings and photographs: 300 dpi, 8-bit grayscale color mode, TIF format
Dots per inch (dpi) values given are for images at final, printed size. Please refer to the Ancient Mesoamerica style guide and the Cambridge University Press artwork guide for more information on figure submission.
If you request colour figures in the printed version, you will be contacted by CCC-Rightslink who are acting on our behalf to collect Author Charges. Please follow their instructions in order to avoid any delay in the publication of your article.
Authors should also ensure they include all mandatory statements (funding, conflict of interest, and data availability) in their final submission.
Data & Research Transparency
Ancient Mesoamerica highly encourages all authors of articles that feature quantitative analysis or rely on images, materials, protocols, or software code to make data available for replication purposes. Authors should ensure that they are meeting data replication and deposit requirements stipulated by their funding bodies and institutions as well as any regulations set by governments or other bodies responsible for materials or sites under analysis.
Ancient Mesoamerica can host such data on the journal’s website, and authors wishing to avail themselves of this facility should supply all files electronically in ScholarOne.
Alternatively, the data can be hosted in an appropriate institutional or subject repository (please see 'Research Transparency' in the Journal Policy menu for repository recommendations).
Where the data involve artifact collections and/or records, authors should provide relevant archival information. Authors should also note if materials have been turned over to a state or national repository, institute, organization, or other relevant body.
Data should be cited in the article, and where possible, permanent links should be provided. From late 2022 Ancient Mesoamerica will require all authors to publish a Data Availability Statement as part of their article.
Articles should include information about processes by which any data or images were manipulated.
Publication ethics
Ancient Mesoamerica is published by Cambridge University Press, which is a member of the Committee for Publication ETHICS (COPE), whose core practices may be found here: https://publicationethics.org/core-practices. Cambridge’s policy on publication ethics is available here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/about/ethical-standards.
Authors contributing to the journal are expected to adhere to standards established by the relevant professional bodies, such as the SAA’s Principles of Archaeological Ethics.
Further information about Publishing Ethics may be found here.
Seeking Permissions for Copyrighted Material
If your article contains any material for which you do not own copyright, including figures, charts, tables, photographs or excerpts of text, you must obtain permission from the copyright holder to reuse that material. As the author it is your responsibility to obtain this permission and pay any related fees, and you will need to send us a copy of each permission statement at acceptance.
Please see here for further information on how to seek permission for copyrighted material.
Supplementary materials
Material that is not essential to understanding or supporting a manuscript, but which may nonetheless be relevant or interesting to readers, may be submitted as supplementary material. Supplementary material will be published online alongside your article, but will not be published in the pages of the journal. Types of supplementary material may include, but are not limited to, appendices, additional tables or figures, datasets, videos, and sound files.
Supplementary materials will not be typeset or copyedited, so should be supplied exactly as they are to appear online. Please see our general guidance on supplementary materials for further information.
Where relevant we encourage authors to publish additional qualitative or quantitative research outputs in an appropriate repository, and cite these in manuscripts.
Policy on prior publication
When authors submit manuscripts to this journal, these manuscripts should not be under consideration, accepted for publication or in press within a different journal, book or similar entity, unless explicit permission or agreement has been sought from all entities involved. However, deposition of a preprint on the author’s personal website, in an institutional repository, or in a preprint archive shall not be viewed as prior or duplicate publication. Authors should follow the Cambridge University Press Preprint Policy regarding preprint archives and maintaining the version of record.
ORCID
We require all corresponding authors to identify themselves using ORCID when submitting a manuscript to this journal. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration with key research workflows such as manuscript submission and grant applications, provides the following benefits:
- Discoverability: ORCID increases the discoverability of your publications, by enabling smarter publisher systems and by helping readers to reliably find work that you have authored.
- Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your iD or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID record, and will enable you to share this information with other systems and platforms you use, saving you re-keying information multiple times.
- Keeping track: Your ORCID record is a neat place to store and (if you choose) share validated information about your research activities and affiliations.
See our ORCID FAQs for more information.
If you don’t already have an iD, you will need to create one if you decide to submit a manuscript to this journal. You can register for one directly from your user account on ScholarOne, or alternatively via https://ORCID.org/register.
If you already have an iD, please use this when submitting your manuscript, either by linking it to your ScholarOne account, or by supplying it during submission using the "Associate your existing ORCID iD" button.
ORCIDs can also be used if authors wish to communicate to readers up-to-date information about how they wish to be addressed or referred to (for example, they wish to include pronouns, additional titles, honorifics, name variations, etc.) alongside their published articles. We encourage authors to make use of the ORCID profile’s “Published Name” field for this purpose. This is entirely optional for authors who wish to communicate such information in connection with their article. Please note that this method is not currently recommended for author name changes: see Cambridge’s author name change policy if you want to change your name on an already published article. See our ORCID FAQs for more information.
Authorship and contributorship
All authors listed on any papers submitted to this journal must be in agreement that the authors listed would all be considered authors according to disciplinary norms, and that no authors who would reasonably be considered an author have been excluded. For further details on this journal’s authorship policy, please see this journal's publishing ethics policies.
Author affiliations
Author affiliations should represent the institution(s) at which the research presented was conducted and/or supported and/or approved. For non-research content, any affiliations should represent the institution(s) with which each author is currently affiliated.
For more information, please see our author affiliation policy and author affiliation FAQs.
Competing Interests
All authors must include a competing interest declaration in their title page. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and may be published in the article.
Competing interests are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the content or publication of an author’s work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations.
If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting must include competing interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors.
Example wording for a declaration is as follows: “Competing interests: Author 1 is employed at organisation A, Author 2 is on the Board of company B and is a member of organisation C. Author 3 has received grants from company D.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none”.
Author Hub
You can find guides for many aspects of publishing with Cambridge at Author Hub, our suite of resources for Cambridge authors.
English language editing services
Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, may wish to have their English-language manuscripts checked by a native speaker before submission. This step is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the Editor and any reviewers.
In order to help prospective authors to prepare for submission and to reach their publication goals, Cambridge University Press offers a range of high-quality manuscript preparation services, including language editing. You can find out more on our language services page.
Please note that the use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge-published journal.
Style Guide
Download the Ancient Mesoamerica style guide here: (177 KB)
To view the PDF file linked above, you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools
We acknowledge the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the research and writing processes. To ensure transparency, we expect any such use to be declared and described fully to readers, and to comply with our plagiarism policy and best practices regarding citation and acknowledgements. We do not consider artificial intelligence (AI) tools to meet the accountability requirements of authorship, and therefore generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and similar should not be listed as an author on any submitted content.
In particular, any use of an AI tool:
- to generate images within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, and declared clearly in the image caption(s)
- to generate text within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, include appropriate and valid references and citations, and be declared in the manuscript’s Acknowledgements.
- to analyse or extract insights from data or other materials, for example through the use of text and data mining, should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, including details and appropriate citation of any dataset(s) or other material analysed in all relevant and appropriate areas of the manuscript
- must not present ideas, words, data, or other material produced by third parties without appropriate acknowledgement or permission
Descriptions of AI processes used should include at minimum the version of the tool/algorithm used, where it can be accessed, any proprietary information relevant to the use of the tool/algorithm, any modifications of the tool made by the researchers (such as the addition of data to a tool’s public corpus), and the date(s) it was used for the purpose(s) described. Any relevant competing interests or potential bias arising as a consequence of the tool/algorithm’s use should be transparently declared and may be discussed in the article.
Last updated 26th May 2021