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New Theatre Quarterly

Editorial Policy

New Theatre Quarterly provides a lively international forum where theatrical scholarship and practice can meet, and where prevailing assumptions can be subjected to vigorous critical questioning. The journal publishes articles, interviews with practitioners, documentation and reference materials covering all aspects of live theatre. These explore the actuality and the contemporary relevance of theatre history, investigate and extend the methodology of theatre studies, and utilize and develop the language of theatre criticism.

1. Submissions

Due to the COVID-19 outbreak and the uncertainty it is creating, some reviews are currently taking longer than usual. We want to reassure authors that the journal remains open to submissions and we're doing our best to minimise any delays.

Articles submitted for publication should be sent via email attachment to the Editor, Prof. Maria Shevtsova at [email protected].

Submission of a paper will be taken to imply that it is unpublished and is not being considered for publication elsewhere. Authors of articles published in the journal assign an exclusive licence to Cambridge University Press (with certain rights reserved) and will receive a Licence to Publish form for signature on acceptance of their paper.

Contributors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce any material in which they do not hold copyright and for ensuring that the appropriate acknowledgements are included in their manuscript.

Open Access Policies

Please visit Open Access Publishing at Cambridge Core for information on our open access policies, compliance with major finding bodies, and guidelines on depositing your manuscript in an institutional repository.

2. Manuscript preparation

Observing the text conventions below is more important than such traditional requirements as double spacing and wide margins – though of course clarity of layout is always desirable. Please bear in mind that papers accepted for publication are imported into a page-layout programme, and that text reflows to a different line-length. Accordingly, hard paragraph returns should only be used for intended paragraph breaks and tabs avoided where possible. Tabs and multiple spacing should never be used for such purposes as increasing indention in quoted matter. Two paragraph returns should be used before and after quoted matter, and a style sheet used for indention.

While most types of word-processing file are acceptable, in practice we find that most contributors now use Microsoft Word. In this case, please ensure that the Fast Save option has not been enabled, and that all footnotes have been converted to endnotes. If the ‘Track Changes’ option is used, ensure that desired changes have been confirmed. Please do NOT send files in PDF format.

Illustrations embedded within computer files are not suitable for press-quality reproduction, for which TIFFS or JPEGs at a resolution of 300 dpi should be provided. Please indicate your own order of priorities for illustrations, and provide suggestions for captions and (if not embedded as placeholders in the file) for positioning within the article.

We can also scan illustrations from good quality prints. While every care is taken of prints and other documentation submitted for scanning, which will be returned on request, neither the Editors nor Cambridge University Press can accept responsibility for such materials, and contributors are strongly advised to send copy-prints of material of intrinsic or personal value.

Charges apply for all colour figures that appear in the print version of the journal. At the time of submission, contributors should clearly state whether their figures should appear in colour in the online version only, or whether they should appear in colour online and in the print version. There is no charge for including colour figures in the online version of the journal. 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 theirinstructions in order to avoid any delay in the publication of your article.

All NTQ articles are prefaced by a brief ‘blurb’, which also serves as an abstract on the journal’s website. Contributors are welcome to submit their own draft for this, but if you would prefer the Editors to prepare the 'blurb’, please submit some biographical notes to assist them.

NTQ also uses keywords. Please submit between four and eight keywords with your article. Keywords will be used by Cambridge Journals Online to link to other articles and as online search terms. The choice of keywords is therefore important: words already included in the title need not be repeated.

In addition to references through keywords, please bear in mind in assigning titles to an article and in preparing the ‘blurb’ that these will be the first points of access for all readers, including non-subscribers, before making a decision on whether to read (and possibly pay for) the full article. Without going overboard, take the opportunity to ‘sell’ the article attractively as well as informatively!

Competing interests declaration

All authors must include a competing interests declaration in their submission. 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 company B. Author C owns shares in company D, 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”.

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 is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the editor and any reviewers. We list a number of third party services specialising in language editing and / or translation, and suggest that authors contact as appropriate. Please see the Language Services page for more information.

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.

3. Text conventions

Please follow NTQ house style at all times, particularly in the respects mentioned below, both within the article and in the bibliographic format used for Notes.

Spellings

Use UK spellings.

The authority is Chambers Twentieth-Century Dictionary.

Where Chambers lists more than one spelling, use the first.

Use ‘-ize’ spellings (e.g. organize, not organise) when there is a choice.

Titles and Emphasis

Use italics or underlining for play and book titles, with upper and lower case mixed: The Importance of Being Earnest, The Way of the World. Use quotation marks only for short poems, chapter titles and similar. NEVER USE ALL CAPITALS FOR TITLES OR EMPHASIS.

Dates

For dates, use day, month, year in the form 1 May 1832 (not 1st May or 1 May, 1832).

Use the twentieth century (or twentieth-century dramatists), not 20th or Century.

Use the shortest form for page ranges (172–4, not 172–174 or 172–74), BUT

Elide AD years to two digits (AD 346–48, 1924–25), but do not elide BC years: 341–340 BC.

Use c. 1846, d. 1846.

Numbers and Measurements

Spell out up to twenty, except in mixed passages (356 employees including 72 actors and just 6 actresses), and in measurements and other statistical usages (6 miles, 18 inches). 2,000 not 2000

12 per cent, not 12 %, except in tables of statistics.

Use imperial measurements where possible (miles, pints, not kilometres, litres).

Punctuation

Apostrophes For modern names (and classical names with a single syllable) use Dickens’s, Jones’s, Zeus’s, etc. For classical names with more than one syllable, apostrophe alone (Euripides’, Aeschylus’).

Hyphens Use adjectivally, as in ‘eighteenth-century architecture’, ‘the music-hall bill’, but ‘in the eighteenth century’, ‘going to the music hall’. A slow-moving actor (in distinction to a slow, moving speech). A well-made book (but: this book is well made). No hyphen in compounds with adverbs ending in -ly (for example: expertly written texts).

Commas Use Siddons, Kemble, and Kean, not Siddons, Kemble and Kean.

Parenthetical Dashes Use en-dash with space before and after (the outcome – a delay in publication – was regrettable).

Quoted Matter

Single inverted commas for quotes; double for quotes within quotes. (He said: ‘The word she used was “patriarchal”.’)

No inverted commas around extracts of more than about 60 words. (Extracts over 60 words will be set in a smaller size type, unindented, with extra space above and below.)

Commas and full stops fall outside inverted commas around phrases, inside inverted commas around complete sentences. (He maintained that the article ‘broke new ground’. He maintained: ‘The article breaks new ground.’)

Use three points only for ellipses to indicate omissions in quoted matter, with a fourth point close up to indicate the end of a sentence. Do not use ellipses at the beginning or the end of quotations, or place them in square brackets (unless genuine confusion with the original is possible).

Quoted matter normally to be made consistent in style with the rest of the journal.

Abbreviations and Acronyms

Full points for Mr., Mrs., St., vol., vols., ed., eds., e.g., etc., but not for capitalized acronyms or similar abbreviations in general use (BBC, NATO, BC, AD).

Capitals

Minimum use (the king pondered, the Peloponnesian war, western influence, classical tragedy, ancient authors).

Accents

Minimum use (role, premiere, regime, elite in English usage, none on French capital letters).

Paragraphing and Headings

NTQ tends to disallow lengthy paragraphs where the sense suggests logically shorter units of argument (as in most cases it should). We also like to break the visual greyness of the page with the use of bold sub-headings, intended also to help readers find their way round the material. Such sub-headings employ upper and lower case mixed:

The Sub-Headings for the Article

Contributors are welcome to suggest their own sub-headings or sectional breaks, but the Editors reserve the right to modify these where considerations of layout require.

Notes

These should be keyed within the text in a consecutive numerical sequence, and collected at the end of the article, observing the following conventions for citation of books and articles:

Aphra Behn, The Widow Ranter in Behn, Five Plays (London: Methuen, 1990).

Marc Silverstein, ‘“Body-Presence”: Cixous’s Phenomenology of Theater’, Theatre Journal, XLIII, No. 4 (1991), p. 507–16.

Bertolt Brecht, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. XV (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1967), p. 174–86.

Towards a National Arts and Media Strategy (London: National Arts and Media Strategy Monitoring Group, 1992).

Tate Wilkinson, The Wandering Patentee (York, 1795), p. 227.

See, for example, Christine Eccles, The Rose Theatre (London: Nick Hern Books, 1990).

Sybil Rosenfeld, ‘Landscape in English Scenery in the Eighteenth Century’, in Kenneth Richards and Peter Thomson, eds., The Eighteenth-Century English Stage (London: Methuen, 1972), p. 171–8.

4. Proofs

Only typographical or factual errors may be changed at proof stage. The publisher reserves the right to charge authors for correction of non-typographical errors.

5. Contributor copies

Contributors receive one copy of the issue. A PDF file of the author’s own article may be supplied upon request to the Editors.

6. Copyright

The policy of New Theatre Quarterly is that authors (or in some cases their employers) retain copyright and grant Cambridge University Press a licence to publish their work. In the case of gold open access articles this is a non-exclusive licence. Authors must complete and return an author publishing agreement form as soon as their article has been accepted for publication; the journal is unable to publish the article without this. Please download the appropriate publishing agreement here .

For open access articles, the form also sets out the Creative Commons licence under which the article is made available to end users: a fundamental principle of open access is that content should not simply be accessible but should also be freely re-usable. Articles will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC-BY) by default. This means that the article is freely available to read, copy and redistribute, and can also be adapted (users can “remix, transform, and build upon” the work) for any commercial or non-commercial purpose, as long as proper attribution is given. Authors can, in the publishing agreement form, choose a different kind of Creative Commons license (including those prohibiting non-commercial and derivative use) if they prefer.

Last updated December 2021