1. Research Articles
Transactions welcomes the submission of original research articles, which should be between 10,000 and 12,000 words in length including footnotes and must not exceed 12,000 words.
In addition to the main text, each research article submission should include:
- an abstract of not more than 250 words.
- a title that should not ideally exceed 20 words.
- five to ten keywords.
- figure and table captions and place markers, positioned appropriately within the body text and indicating whether they should appear as portrait or landscape.
Review process: The journal uses a double-anonymous peer review model. This means that the identities of both the peer reviewers and the authors are kept hidden.
2. Special Sections
Transactions welcomes submissions of a special section of themed articles.
Proposals
- A brief (up to 1,000 words) special section proposal should be submitted first to the Editors. The proposal should include a brief outline of the Special Section theme and its overall framework. The proposal should make clear how the special Section addresses broader audiences beyond the contributors’ immediate specialty and field of study.
- The proposal should also include brief abstracts for each essay (up to 150 words each), including the guest editor(s)’ brief introduction. The paper abstracts should also make clear how each paper will contribute to the overall section theme. We expect the Special Section to have up to 4 articles (not including the brief introduction to the special section).
- The Editors will then review the proposal and abstracts.
Submissions and Peer Review
- If the proposal moves through this phase of review, the guest editor(s) will be invited to coordinate the paper submissions. Please note that an invitation to submit Special Section papers for review does not guarantee publication for any or all essays.
- The Special Section editor is responsible for ensuring that authors follow the guidelines and styles required by Transactions and submit their papers (and resubmit revised articles) as agreed with the Transactions Editors. Section editors should ensure these submissions occur at roughly the same time. We cannot send any submission out for review until all contributors have submitted their essays.
- Once the articles are submitted, contributions to Special Sections undergo a full process of double-anonymous peer review.
- The Special Section articles should follow the above guidance on Research Articles including that each article should not exceed 12,000 words each including footnotes.
- The special section articles should also be accompanied by an introduction authored by the editor(s) of the section and not exceed 2,000 words including footnotes. The introduction should outline the overall section theme and highlight the comparative dimensions that emerge from the papers individually or collectively.
3. The Common Room
The Transactions welcomes submissions for The Common Room that differ from Research Articles. This section has been created to give a space for diverse contributions that speak to concerns and discussions pertinent to History. We encourage shorter pieces that might focus on historiographical issues, methodological problems, intellectual debates or engagement with the latest scholarship.
While the Editors do not have specific requirements for the form of contributions to this section an individual submission could be between 5000-8000 words, while a round table might have up to four pieces of at least 2000 words each. We will not publish conference proceedings or reports.
If you have an idea for a submission to The Common Room, please contact the Editors with a brief proposal of the potential form and outline of the piece(s). If the Editors accept the proposal the submission will undergo a rigorous process of internal peer review, which may involve other Editors and/or Editorial Board Members. The decision to accept a proposal for The Common Room does not commit the journal to publishing the final manuscript. Submissions must conform to the style requirements of Transactions.
All submissions
A separate cover sheet should be provided which should include contact details for the corresponding author, including email, postal address and telephone number. Please also provide the academic affiliations of all authors. Any author acknowledgements, whether personal or in reference to funding, should also be included here.
Submission of articles to Transactions is taken to imply that it is the original, entirely unpublished work of the author(s) and is not under review for publication elsewhere in any form.
Initial submissions should be presented to a high scholarly standard and conform with instructions listed below.
All authors should submit their essays individually via ScholarOne.
Style and text conventions
1. Footnotes
Footnote numbers should be clearly marked in one continuous sequence. Footnotes in Transactions are intended for references, and should not normally be used for substantial pieces of additional text. Any special requirements for diagrams, illustrations or supplementary material should also be notified well in advance.
Information on the following topics should be placed at the end of the article with the relevant section heading;
- Data Availability Statement
- Acknowledgements
- Author Contributions
- Financial Support / Funding Statement
- Competing interests
- Ethical standards
- Appendices
- Author Biographies
2. Spelling
Follow British English rather than American English (e.g. defence, labour, programme, sceptical). Note the following preferences:
- ise rather than -ize endings (e.g. criticise, emphasise)
- acknowledgement
- connection
- elite (no accent)
- focused
- inquiry
- judgement
- medieval
- premise
- reflection
- regime (no accent)
- role (no accent)
3. Quotations
Within the text, single quotation marks should be used, employing double quotation marks only for quotations within quotations. Longer quotations, over about fifty words in length, should be indented and presented without quotation marks. Use three point ellipses ... when omitting material within quotations. Do not put brackets around ellipses. Punctuation should come after closing quotation marks, except for exclamation marks and question marks belonging to the quotation. Use square brackets for editorial interpolations within quoted matter.
4. Punctuation
Do not use the serial comma: ‘red, white and blue’ not ‘red, white, and blue’. The addition of a possessive ’s following a name ending in -s is preferred (e.g. Dickens’s not Dickens’), except that people in the ancient world do not carry the possessive final ‘s, e.g. Sophocles’, Jesus’. Round (not square) brackets should be used for brackets within brackets. Spaced en-rules ( – ) should be used for parenthetical dashes.
5. Dates and numerals
Dates should be set out as 1 January 1660, the 1660s, the seventeenth century, 1642–5 (but 1614–18). Dates in footnotes should be abbreviated as 1 Jan. 1660. Numbers up to ninety-nine should be spelled out in full. Percentages should be in figures, with the words ‘per cent’ spelt out (25 per cent). Thousands take a comma: ‘1,000'.
6. Abbreviations
Contractions should have no full points (Mr, St, Jr, Revd), though abbreviated words, which do not end with their final letters, and their plural forms, should (vol., vols., ed., eds.). Acronyms and lettered abbreviations should be rendered with no stops (BBC, NATO, USA, EU, BC, AD) but stops should be used for authors' initials, which should be spaced (H. J. Dyos).
7. Capitalisation
Capitalisation should be minimal, generally only for persons and places, and for titles that are attached to a personal name (duke of York and the queen, but Duke Richard and Queen Victoria or George V).
8. Foreign and ancient languages
In the body of the text words and quotations in Latin or any language other than English should be italicised. Authors may wish to give consideration to offering a translation of important passages in footnotes. In the footnotes quotations in foreign languages and Latin should not be italicised, but should appear inside single inverted commas. Proper names such as institutions and streets should not be italicised.
9. Italicisation
Titles of publications, and words to be italicised for emphasis should all be formatted appropriately within the digital manuscript.
10. References
References to other sources should be in full when first cited. Further references to the same sources should be by an author's surname and short title rather than by loc. cit., op. cit. and so on. Ibid. may be used for consecutive references to the same work, but not when the previous reference refers to more than one source. References to books should give author's initials or first name and surname; title italicised; number of volumes where appropriate, place (when it is not London) and year of publication in round brackets; abbreviation where used in round brackets; volume in roman small capital; and page number(s) without a p. prefix. In footnote references the preference for minimal capitalisation does not apply. References should take the following forms:
Books
Ann Hudson, The Premature Reformation (Oxford, 1988), 103–10
Books with more than one volume
C. S. Parker, Life and Letters of Sir James Graham (2 vols., 1907), I, 213–49
Contributions to edited books
D. Vincent, ‘Communications, Community and the State’, in Artisans, Peasants and Proletarians 1760– 1860, ed. C. Emsley and J. Walvin (1985), 166
Articles
J. Newman, ‘Oxford Libraries before 1800’. Archaeological Journal, 135 (1978), 248–50
Theses
C. R. Niehus, ‘The Issue of Law Reform in the Puritan Revolution’ (Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1957), 149
Manuscripts (collection, location, with abbreviation where appropriate for repeated references)
Cardwell to Russell, 3 Nov. 1865, London, The National Archives (TNA), Russell papers, 30/22/156, fo. 23
11. Other conventions
The Editors recognise that there are conventions which are particular to certain specialist areas and to the citation of some standard sources. Where authors wish to use such conventions they are welcome to do so, after consultation with the Editors. Authors should, however, recognise that Transactions has a wide and varied readership and the references, as well as the text, should be accessible to such a readership.
12. Tables and figures
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format please see the Cambridge Journals Artwork Guide. 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 but it must be clear that colour is needed to enhance the meaning of the figure, rather than simply being for aesthetic purposes. If you request colour figures in the printed version, you will be contacted by CCC-Rightslink who are acting on behalf of Cambridge University Press to collect author charges. Please follow their instructions in order to avoid any delay in the publication of your article.
Supplementary material
Please follow these guidelines when submitting supplementary material with your paper.
Copyright in your contribution
The policy of Transactions is that authors (or in some cases their employers) retain copyright and grant the Royal Historical Society 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 shortly after their article has been accepted for publication; the journal is unable to publish the article without this.
For open access articles, the author has a choice of Creative Commons licences under which the article can be made available for re-use by third parties.
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”.
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.
ORCID
We encourage 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 can create one by registering directly at https://ORCID.org/register.
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.
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.
Author Hub
You can find guides for many aspects of publishing with Cambridge at Author Hub, our suite of resources for Cambridge authors.
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.