Download the Journal of British Studies instructions for authors here (306 KB).

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Instructions for Contributors

JBS publishes research articles that are of interest to the specialist and non-specialist reader. To ensure that your contribution is fully accessible and stimulating to the general reader, it is crucial that you situate your article in its historiographical context and make clear the wider significance of your research. Any submission must be the original work of the author(s); not have been published previously, either as a whole or in part, either in print or electronically; and not currently be under consideration or accepted, in whole or in part, for publication elsewhere. Research articles should normally be between 8,000 and 12,000 words, inclusive of footnotes. Review essays and special format pieces should be discussed with the editors prior to submission. If you would like to include images, maps, or tables, please provide those in separate files with a line in the article indicating placement. After publication, authors should follow the Cambridge University Press Preprint Policy regarding preprint archives and maintaining the version of record.

Initial Manuscript Submission

Before submitting your manuscript, please ensure that you carefully read and adhere to all the guidelines and nstructions to authors provided below. Manuscripts that do not conform to these guidelines will be returned.

Authors should submit manuscripts online via the Journal of British Studies Editorial Manager system at https://www.editorialmanager.com/jbritstudies/default.aspx. You will need to create an account if you do not have one (see information about ORCID in the Submitting Your Materials tab on the website). If you are unsure if you have an account, or if you have forgotten your password, use the password help function provided. Please contact the editorial office at jbs@nacbs.org if you have any further questions about the process.

General Guidelines

Follow the style guidelines below regarding the format of your manuscript and references. The system relies on automated processing to create a PDF file from your submission. If you do not follow these instructions, your submission cannot be processed and will not be received by the journal office. At the top of the first page of the manuscript, please provide word counts for your article: one that includes footnotes and one that does not.

Prepare your manuscript using a recent version of Microsoft Word and save it in .docx format.

• Be sure the final version of your manuscript does not contain tracked changes.
• Anonymize your files and text:
  • Do not include a title page, any acknowledgments, or your abstract (there will be a place to enter that as you upload your document into our system).
  • In the text and citations, replace any information that would identify the author(s) by substituting words such as: [citation deleted to maintain the integrity of the review process].
  • Do not add any running headers or footers that would identify authors. Refer to your own references in the third person. For example, write “Smith has demonstrated,” not “I have previously demonstrated” [reference].
  • Check that all identifiers have been removed from electronic files, including your documents prepared using Microsoft Word. Current MS Word instructions for removing identifiers: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/remove-hidden-data-and-personal-information-by-inspecting-documents-HA010354329.aspx

You should submit any figures as separate files, in TIFF (.tif) or EPS (.eps) (not GIF [.gif] or JPEG [.jpg] format). For further guidelines concerning the electronic submission of images, please see the Guidelines for Artwork.

Submitting Your Manuscript in Editorial Manager

Guidance on submitting to Editorial Manager can be found here.

Research Article Style Guidelines

Manuscripts submitted to the Journal for consideration should be formatted to the Journal style (see below), fully documented and carefully proofread. Notes should appear as footnotes (not endnotes).

Format and style

• Please use Microsoft Word.
• Set the manuscript margins at 1-inch margins all around and the font Times New Roman, 12 pt, left justified, double-spaced (text and headings, quotations, footnotes, table titles, figure captions). Do not use any boldface. Please set the proofing language as US English.
• Turn off hyphenation.
• Turn off automatic citation programs. 
• Except for direct quotations, the journal uses US English spelling (labor, not labour; defense, not defence; satirize, not satirise, etc.) for all text and footnotes. The journal also uses US English punctuation (double quotation marks, single for internal quotations, punctuation inside the quotation marks). This extends to the abstract as well.
• Use British English style for dates: 10 January 1856.
• All figures and tables must be called out in the text.
• Quotations of more than 50 words must appear as a block quote; omit quotation marks.

Grammatical Conventions

The Journal adheres to the grammar and style conventions outlined in the Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition. By following these in your initial draft, you will save yourself considerable work during the revision process. Articles published in previous issues of the Journal are an excellent resource for answers to most questions concerning grammar. Listed below are two of the most frequently encountered issues:

1. Include a comma before the and between the last and second-to-last items in a list (Oxford comma): Apples, pears, and oranges are all fruits.
2. Place punctuation inside quotation marks: As Mark Antony said, “Cry ‘Havoc’, and let slip the dogs of war.”

Note: avoid abbreviations and acronyms: East India Company (not EIC).

Citation Guidelines

Please ensure that all quotations and all citation details are accurately reproduced.

All titles in English, in the text and in footnotes, should be use title case (not sentence case).

Exceptions:

• Titles published before 1800 (reproduce original capitalization)

Unless part of a published title or archive descriptor, dates should be consistent with the Journal style, for example, 10 January 1856.

The Journal uses the following style for footnote references to printed documents:

First reference to a book:

Robert Lewis, Female Football Spectators in Britain 1863-1939: A Historical Analysis (Routledge, 2024), 16.

Note: the publishing place is not identified in the reference and the first reference must include the full title, including any material placed after a colon. Provide the author’s full name in the first citation precisely as printed in the publication. Italicize book titles.

Second reference to a book:

Khan, India at War, 109.

Note: only author’s surname, a short title, and page reference are included; avoid ‘ibid’.

First reference to a journal article:

Anne Lawrence-Matthews, “William of Newburgh and the Northumbrian Construction of English History,” Journal of Medieval History 33, no. 4 (December 2007): 339–57.

And if you reference a particular page at the first citation:

James Buzard, “The Uses of Romanticism: Byron and the Victorian Continental Tour,” Victorian Studies 35, no. 1 (1991): 29–49, at 36.

Second reference to a journal article:

Buzard, “Uses of Romanticism,” 37.

Note: If using an online journal or eBook that does not render page numbers, please provide the DOI/link.

First reference to a contribution to an edited, multiauthored work:

Roz Southey, “Benefit Concerts in the North of England: More Than Just Musical Entertainment,” in Music and the Benefit Performance in Eighteenth Century Britain, ed. Matthew Gardner and Alison Clark DeSimone (Cambridge, 2019), 105–23.

Note: “ed.” stands for “edited by,” whether there is one editor or more than one. If there are multiple authors, list first name followed by et al.

Second reference to a contribution to an edited, multiauthored work:

Southey, “Benefit Concerts,” 119.

PhD dissertation:

Tourangeau, Catherine, "An Empire of Joiners: Voluntary Associations in the British Atlantic, 1680–1800" (PhD diss., Yale University, 2020.)

Note: we don’t designate whether it is unpublished or published.

Dictionaries, encyclopedias and other references sources:

The Encyclopaedia of Sport, vol. 1, s.v. “Ladies’ Lawn Tennis,” by Lottie Dod (London, 1897), 618.

Note: do not include a URL to a reference with subscriber-only access.

Web Resources

If you’re citing formal documentation (e.g. Word, PDF documents) found on a website, you should cite it like a book or journal article (including all relevant publisher information and a URL). For other information found on a website or page, include identifying information, URL, and publication details.

Alfred Traum, "Britain’s Response," United State Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2019. https://www.ushmm.org/remember/holocaust-reflections-testimonies/echoes-of-memory/britains-response.

Note: we don’t include accessed dates unless the webpage has since become defunct.

Newspapers

Tessa Jowell, “Lie Back and Think of Efficiency,” The Guardian, 12 January 1994. https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/lie-back-think-efficiency-week-was-revealed-that/docview/293473228/se-2

Archival Sources

For all archival repositories, with the exception of The National Archives, the name of the repository appears at the end of the citation (after the document name, date, collection, and folder reference).

With regard to the order of citations, we follow the Chicago Manual of Style format: brief title of document, date, MS collection, folder, repository. So the name of the archive itself appears last. For the National Archives we follow their citation guidelines and place the repository (TNA) in front of the collection and folder information.

For citations from The National Archives, please refer to http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk.

British Library citations to additional manuscripts (Add. Mss) should read: BL Add. MSS.

Maude Royden, “Extracts from May Mission Speeches delivered in London,” 11 May 1910, 7/AMR/1/81, FL379, 3–5, The Women’s Library, London School of Economics, London.

Copy of Queen Elizabeth’s speech before Parliament, 10 February 1558/9, Lansdowne MS 94, fol. 29, British Library, London.

Note: folio is abbreviated as fol.; folios abbreviated as fols., not f. or fs.

Parliamentary Papers

Churchill, Speech to the House of Commons, 18 January 1945, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 5th series, vol. 407 (1944−45), cols. 425–46.

Please ensure that all command papers are cited as such, with command abbreviated according to series/date range (Chicago Manual Style 18, 14,302):

First Interim Report of the Committee on Currency and Foreign Exchanges after the War, 1918, cd. 9182.

Other guidelines for footnotes

• Additional references should be prefaced with see also instead of and see or also see.
• We do not use Latinate abbreviations – ibid, idem, op cit, cf, etc. Please use short form citations or other clearer references.
• Semi-colon for multiple sources in notes goes outside quotations.
• Elide page references to two digits, e.g. 203–07; 247–49.

If you have any questions about manuscript preparation that are not fully explained in this guide, please contact the editorial office at jbs@nacbs.org.