BJHS Themes Formatting Guide

(Revised April 2023)

It is the authors’ and guest editors’ responsibility to ensure that submissions are correctly formatted according to the following style guide. Submissions that have not been formatted appropriately may be returned to authors for correction.

Articles should be submitted with all text double-spaced with a margin, in Times New Roman font, size 12 (this applies to the main text and endnotes).

We can only accept submissions in the format of Microsoft Word Files. Please do not submit PDFs or documents in other formats.

The article title should be in bold type, with the first word capitalized but not thereafter.

The author’s name/details, should be omitted until peer reviewing is completed. Once the paper is accepted for publication, please insert name at top of paper, institutional address(es), and email address. Acknowledgements should be placed at the end of the main paper.

Papers should include an Abstract of 150–200 words.

Long quotations should be inset.

All short quotes should have single quotation marks, but quotes within quotes have double quotation marks.

Spelling should follow the Oxford English Dictionary.

There should be no section heading for the introduction.

Subsequent section headings should be in bold type, with only the first word capitalized.

All papers should be rigorously documented. References to primary and secondary sources must be set as endnotes, not as footnotes, double spaced and numbered consecutively. Cite as follows:

1 Boris Smetov and Dmitri Blogski, Chemistry in the Eighteenth Century, 2nd edn (tr. Robert Roe), 5 vols., Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1886–1914, vol. 3, p. iii, pp. 237–8.

2 John Doe, ‘Searching for gravity waves’, in Andrew Burn and Zigmund Trent (eds.), The History of Physics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982, pp. 22–4.

Note that book titles have all words capitalized but for article titles only the first word is capitalized. The names of disciplines e.g. biology, are not capitalized in article titles. Note that publishing details are not in brackets.

3 Doe, op. cit. (2), pp. 114-17.

Always use ‘op. cit.’ to refer to previously cited references. Do not use ‘ibid’.

4 Nicodemus Brown, ‘Developments of the cathode ray’, Journal of Physics (1972) 7, pp. 25-31, 28.

Spell out journal titles. Give complete page run of articles cited and, where appropriate, the page number to which the citation refers. E.g.:

George H.F. Nuttall, ‘The Molteno Institute for Research in Parasitology, University of Cambridge, with an account of how it came to be founded’, Parasitology (1922) 14, pp. 97–126, 123.

5 John Herschel to George Peacock, 17 May 1836, Herschel Papers, Royal Astronomical Society, London (subsequently HP), Box 1234, 56.

For manuscript sources please supply whatever information is necessary for the reference to be found. Subsequent references can be cited by name, date, abbreviated source, box, page or folio number.

Please add semi-colons between citations, and a full stop when the citation is followed by a comment. The comment should begin with a capital letter and end with a full stop. E.g.

Nicodemus Brown, ‘Developments of the cathode ray’, Journal of Physics (1972) 7, pp. 25-31; George H.F. Nuttall, ‘The Molteno Institute for Research in Parasitology, University of Cambridge, with an account of how it came to be founded’, Parasitology (1922) 14, pp. 97–126. It should be recognized, however, that this was only a temporary affair.

Dates should be in the order day, month, year, with no commas between. 12 April 1979.

Endnote reference numbers should always be at the end of sentences and come after a full stop – only one number at the end of a sentence

Two or more initials should not have a space between them. E.g. S.R.E. Werrett.

Citing websites:

Name of author, ‘Title’, Journal (date – day, month, year) issue number, http…, accessed 12 May 2019.

Images:

All images accompanying the original paper should be low-resolution files, sent in a separate MS word file. The figure captions ONLY should be included in the main paper, near the preferred place for the picture to appear.

Please note – if your paper is accepted for publication in Themes – that images are included in the word count for each paper.  These are currently 610 words for a full page image, and 305 words for a half page, but it is CUP who decides which it will be, when they are typesetting the document.

Final submissions of high-resolution JPEG or TIF images should be sent to BJHS once the paper has been approved for publication and have all relevant copyright permissions cleared - by email if the files are small, or by a file transfer system i.e. Dropbox. These image files should be titled e.g. [First author surname] Fig 1.tif.  Please note, they may appear as colour or black and white online but will only appear in black and white in any printed version. We normally state a maximum of 6 images.

Resolution: colour and black and white halftone images must be saved at 300 dpi (dots per inch). Cambridge University Press decide whether images appear as half or full page.

Line drawings should be submitted electronically, saved at 1000 dpi, or 1200 dpi if very fine line weights have been used.  Combination figures must be saved at a minimum of 600 dpi.

Permission to reproduce material is entirely the author’s responsibility and should be cited where given. At proof stage authors will be asked by CUP to provide evidence of permissions, which may be provided in electronic form.

Further notes:

Authors accepted for publication will be asked to submit their accepted paper through the journal's online submission system. Joint contributors should note that proofs will be sent to the first named author unless the Editor is otherwise informed.

It is the author’s responsibility to secure any necessary permission for publication. As open access papers, copies of articles will be made available subject to the terms of a choice of Creative Commons licences: CC-BY, CC-BY-NC-SA or CC-BY-NC-ND.

For more information please visit the following pages:

BJHS Themes: Open Access (for detailed guidance on Open Access and copyright terms)

Cambridge Core Artwork Guide (for detailed guidance on submitting artwork) 

Competing Interests

All authors must include a competing interest declaration in their main manuscript file. 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 A is employed at organisation B, Author C is on the Board of company E and is a member of organisation F. Author G has received grants from company H.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none”.