arq Guide for Contributors
Submissions
Prospective authors are welcome to discuss or send outlines or drafts to the Editor-in-Chief in advance of making a formal submission. Drafts need not conform to any of the text conventions or other requirements given below for final submissions.
Submission of an article will be taken to imply that it is unpublished and is not being considered for publication elsewhere. Upon acceptance of a paper, the author will be asked to sign a license to publish with Cambridge University Press. (Permission to reproduce is not normally withheld.)
Contributors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce any material (including illustrations) for which they do not hold copyright. In case of doubt, they should discuss this with the Editors or Editorial Office.
Length, style and format
The length of papers should normally range between 4,500 and 6,500 words. The text must be in English. For ease of reading, it is advisable that the text should be divided into sections with section headings typed on separate lines.
The title page should include title, contributor's name, email addresses and date of submission together with a 28-word abstract to introduce the paper and the approximate total number of words in the main text.
A brief biography of no more than 50 words should be included, along with affiliation and address details.
When writing the final version of their articles, contributors should follow the journal’s stylistic conventions set out below.
Acknowledgements should be given to any practical or financial assistance.
Text conventions
References and notes, used sparingly, should be indicated in the text by a manually inserted superscript number. A full list of references and notes should be given at the end of the paper. Examples of references are given below. For further guidance on referencing and preparing submissions contributors should consult the MHRA Style Guide, available at www.mhra.org.uk
William J. R. Curtis, Modern Architecture since 1900, 3rd rev. edn (London: Phaidon, 1996), pp. 124-32.
Tadao Ando, ‘Towards New Horizons in Architecture’, in Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture, ed. by Kate Nesbitt (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996), pp. 462-530 (p. 473).
Jeremy Melvin, ‘More than just the British Library’, in Architects’ Journal 206, Pt. 10 (18 September 1997), 48-55 (p. 51).
Marcus Frings, ‘The Golden Section in Architectural Theory’, Nexus Network Journal: Architecture and Mathematics On-line 4, No. 1 (2002)
References to illustrations should be keyed into the text with italicised square brackets thus: [1]. They should be numbered in the sequence in which they appear in the text.
Appendices should only be used to accommodate essential information subordinate to the text.
Tables
Tables, which should be referred to in the text, should be supplied as a separate titled file. They will usually be reproduced without reduction. Heavy rules should be inserted at the head and foot of each table, and fine rules below column headings. Tabs (and not the space bar) should be used to create tables.
Illustrations
The best course of action is to submit what you already have and to await any particular requests from the Editors. However, if you are preparing material from scratch for publication, you should consider the following:
- Photocopied and, in particular, pre-printed material from books and journals will show a loss of reproduction quality. Pre-printed colour material is unacceptable.
- If images are pre-scanned, the resolutions to give best results are 300 dpi for halftones and 1200 dpi for line artwork. Anything at a lower resolution will show a loss of quality on reproduction. The image size should be as large as possible up to A4 size.
- Line artwork should have good black lines and no tinted areas which are too fine, as these will close up in reproduction. Including lettering, they should not be too large compared with the size of the journal page.
- Electronic line artwork can be accepted in Illustrator or as eps, Tiff or JPeg files with fonts embedded. All submissions of electronic files must be accompanied by a printout numbered in the same way as in the text and on the files.
- Artwork in any other format should be reproduced on good quality paper.
- Photographs and other images for halftone reproduction: should, where possible, be black and white. Colour photographs can be transformed to produce black and white images, but do not reproduce well in mono-printing. 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.
- For electronic files, file names should include the figure number.
- Photographs and other halftone images can also be accepted as glossy bromide prints or laser printer proofs (preferably all of the same size). Each photograph should be identified on the back in soft pencil or label with the contributor’s name and the figure number. In cases where there may be uncertainty about orientation, the top of the photograph should be indicated on the reverse side. The use of paper clips (which mark photographs) should be avoided.
If authors are uncertain about the format of their images, it is advisable to check with the Editorial Office or with the Art Editor, Angela Ashton, (email: [email protected] and Tel: +44 (0) 7967 194 133).
Captions
Captions for diagrams, drawings, tables and photographs should be supplied as a separate titled file.
Web Abstract
All published papers will also be made available online. An abstract of no more than 300 words should be provided for use on the website.
Submissions Checklist
- 4,500-6,500 words divided into sections with section headings
- Title page with title, name, full contact details, 28 word abstract and word count
- Biography of no more than 50 words, affiliation and address details (see Author affiliations)
- Referenced following MHRA style guidelines
- Illustrations and tables in an appropriate format, labelled and with captions on a separate sheet
- Web abstract of no more than 300 words
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
Author Hub
You can find guides for many aspects of publishing with Cambridge at Author Hub, our suite of resources for Cambridge authors.
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.