Manuscript Guidelines
Concerning Consideration and Publication of Manuscripts
The Quarterly accepts for consideration manuscripts on the history of Florida, its people, and its historical relationships to the United States, the Atlantic World, the Caribbean, or Latin America. All submissions are expected to reflect substantial research, a dedication to writing, and the scholarly rigor demanded of professionally produced historical works.
Manuscripts should be typed, double spaced throughout (excluding footnotes, block quotes, and tabular matter), on good quality white 8.5" x 11" paper. And ideal page length is twenty-five to thirty-five pages. Three copies of the manuscript are requested. Do not send a computer disk with the submission. The hard copy should be prepared as follows:
- The first page should be headed by the title without the author's name. Authorial identification should be avoided throughout the manuscript. On a separate sheet of paper, please provide the author's institutional title or connection or place of residence, and acknowledgements (if any).
- The entire text should be paged consecutively.
- Citations should be single-spaced footnotes, numbered consecutively, and in accordance with The Chicago Manual of Style.
- Tables and illustrations should be created on separate sheets of paper, with positions in the manuscript indicated.
- A reasonable number of corrections and additions may be made on the manuscript without retyping, provided they are legible.
- In a cover letter, authors should include phone number, fax number, email address, and mailing address. Also, authors should outline the substance and significance of their work and identify anyone who has already critiqued the manuscript.
Following acknowledgment of receipt of the manuscript, the editor completes a preliminary reading of the manuscript. Those not prepared according to Quarterly guidelines are returned with a brief explanation. Others are assigned to one or more referees for evaluation.
All articles submitted to the Florida Historical Quarterly are subject to peer review. No manuscript will be considered if it has been published in some form before or if it is soon to be published elsewhere or if it is under consideration by another journal or press.
Referees are typically granted two months to review a manuscript. [Note: submissions in the late spring or summer may take longer for review.] Upon the editor's receipt of the referees' reports, the author is contacted as to the suitability of the manuscript to the Quarterly. Readers' reports are advisory; the editor is the final arbiter.
A manuscript may be unconditionally accepted, rejected, or conditionally rejected (requiring revision and resubmission). An author in doubt about the nature or terms of decisions should contact the editor. If a manuscript is conditionally accepted, the author may propose a general plan of revision to the editor. Revised manuscripts are normally submitted to one of the original referees and a new referee. As a rule, an article rejected upon revision will not be reconsidered again.
When a manuscript is accepted, the editor projects a provisional publication date and makes an initial copyedit of the manuscript based on the following criteria: clarity, coherence, and logic of argument; punctuation, spelling, figures, and capitalization; accuracy of names and titles; citation formats. Although it is the policy of the Quarterly to let authors' wording stand as much as possible, it is also in the interest of the Quarterly to create clarity within articles and coherence of style among articles. Editing and revision are negotiable within limits. Final drafts of accepted manuscripts are evaluated in house, and more than one revision of an accepted manuscript may be requested.
Upon completing revisions, authors must send a final hard copy version of the article and a computer-generated copy in one of the following formats: Microsoft Word for Windows 6.0 or 7.0, or WordPerfect 4.2, 5.0, 5.1, 6.0, 7.0, or 8.0. Special instructions for computer preparation: Use as few codes as possible. For example, do not use right justification, center heads, breaks, or other design features. Do not use the word-processing program to hyphenate; use only hyphens that belong in words. Please use a letter quality or better printer with fresh toner and a standard typeface.
Authors are expected to provide their own illustrations. These will be returned after publication. Pictures should be 5"x7" or 8"x10" black-and-white glossy prints. Or pictures may be submitted in EPS or PDF electronic format at 300 dpi or higher. All illustrations should include full citations and credit lines. Authors should retain letters of permission from institutions or individuals owning the originals for their own legal protection.
For Authors Preparing Historic Notes and Documents for Publication
The Quarterly publishes an occasional section entitled "Historic Notes and Documents," designed to make available sources that will add to the readership's understanding of some episode, movement, idea, or interpretation, to open up new areas of historical inquiry, or both. Discussion of the document should consider the context of the document's creation and dissemination, the intrinsic importance or uniqueness of the document, the document's relation to similar documents (if any), and the new understanding the document engenders. In general, the document should be new to readers, although a new interpretation of a known document is possible.
Additionally, the document should be thoroughly edited according to the guidelines found in Mary-Jo Kline, A Guide to Documentary Editing (Baltimore, 1987) or in Michael E. Stevens and Steven B. Berg, Editing Historical Documents (Thousand Oaks, Calif., 1997).
In formatting the document and accompanying manuscript, the author should follow the same guidelines as those for authors preparing original manuscripts for publication; and a "Historic Notes and Documents" submission is subject to peer review similar to the process that article submissions undergo.
A document that has been published more than seventy-five years ago is likely in the public domain and thus does not require permission. A document that has been published within the past seventy-five years probably will need permission from the copyright holder. A document never before published will require permission of the owner and the copyright holder (the author or the author's heir or assignee). Possession of the physical document is not always coterminous with copyright ownership. Authors need not submit documentation of their permission to publish, but should retain such evidence for their legal protection.