Contributing

§Statement of Purpose

Scholarly Editing: The Annual of the Association for Documentary Editing is an open-access, peer-reviewed, international journal archived by the U.S. Library of Congress and distributed by the University of Virginia Press. The journal welcomes contributions from educators, students, information specialists, archivists, editors, interdisciplinary scholars, public historians, and all others engaged in scholarly editing and recovery. We seek submissions that amplify the work of diverse voices and celebrate the contributions of underrepresented, marginalized, and silenced communities.

§Key Deadlines

We welcome submissions at any time, but we must receive submissions no later than October to be included in the forthcoming issue.

Micro-editions proposals should be submitted no later than June and completed by October to be included in the forthcoming issue.

§Micro-editions

Scholarly Editing provides technical and editorial support for those seeking to create sustainable, small-scale digital editions of understudied texts. Our micro-edition editors collaborate with you on design and implementation, providing a stable platform for your work.

We’re especially interested in innovative editions of texts that challenge the canon, such as hybrid or “messy” texts, works that complicate single-author models, and texts by marginalized and underrepresented voices. We also welcome projects that experiment with the digital edition format.

Projects can range from a single document to larger sets (e.g., up to 130 short texts or multiple variants). Past editions include plays, letters, poetry, fiction, journals, theological writing, experimental autobiographies, born-digital materials, and more. Peruse our previous issues to see what we have produced.

Contributors need only supply TEI-compliant XML and relevant images. Our technical editor builds the interface and interactive features. More complex projects are possible for contributors with technical experience, but all editions must function within a lightweight, static framework (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, plus image and XML assets).

Do you have a text that everyone should read? Submit a proposal – no finished edition required.

How to apply:

If you’re new to editing, work through the eLaboratories Beginner’s Guide to help you develop your idea. Do not skip this step.
Pitch your idea to the micro-edition co-editors, who will help refine it. Contact Raffaele Viglianti and Megan Bushnell.
Submit your proposal using the template provided in the submissions portal.

§Essays

The Essays section of Scholarly Editing publishes peer-reviewed articles about the theory, methods, and critique of editing for scholarly purposes. Essays published with Scholarly Editing offer interventions for the use of editors and stewards of a wide range of cultural artifacts, from novels to letters, from oral histories to activist posters.

We seek essays that offer insights into issues such as best editing practices, justice-oriented preservation, new digital tools, and new archival sources for scholarly editors as well as interdisciplinary interventions that help readers of all backgrounds engage in new ways with archival and edited works. Essays are invited from across disciplines, time periods, and geographic borders. We especially invite works that feature rare or marginal texts, texts that dislodge the single-author model, oral histories and tales, community recovery, and creative works of “rememory.”

In addition to scholars within the academy, we welcome essays and proposals from independent scholars, archive and library professionals, and cultural stewards in community organizations, including those who are new to scholarly publications. We can work together on your vision. We especially invite essays on structurally neglected cultural records such as those regarding Black history, disability stories, and queer and trans experience, as well as those concerned with community-engaged cultural records like oral history.

§Voices and Perspectives: Interviews and Conversations

We publish transcripts of interviews connected to recovery, pedagogy, and editorial practice, making space for forms of knowledge beyond the conventional research article. We seek to move the interview beyond supplementary framing toward an intervention that documents lived expertise, preserves intellectual exchange, and makes visible the processes through which archives are interpreted, expanded, and activated. Potential areas of inquiry include:

Intervention in form: interviews foregrounding dialogue as a mode of scholarly knowledge production
Recovery in practice: preserving voices, experiences, and labor absent from the archives
Expanding the archive: generating new views of documentary records for future scholarship and teaching
Public humanities praxis: connecting editing practice to pedagogy, access, and intellectual communities

We invite those who wish to propose interviews to complete this form. For additional information, contact the Voices and Perspectives section editor, Julian C. Chambliss.

§Teaching and Learning

This section of the journal invites explorations at the intersections of recovery and pedagogy across educational contexts, including K–12 classrooms, higher education (undergraduate and graduate instruction), workshops, and community-based learning environments.

Potential areas of inquiry may include:

theoretical approaches to teaching scholarly editing and other forms of digital recovery
the integration of primary source materials into classroom instruction, workshops, and public outreach programs
strategies for teaching with print editions and/or born-digital projects at various levels of learning
accessibility in various classroom settings
novel approaches to incorporating students into recovery and editing workflows

Contributions might also examine approaches to scaffolding student learning, training student participants in editorial or recovery-based projects, and adapting these practices for diverse learners and settings.

Collaborative submissions are welcome, particularly those that advance their arguments through case studies drawn from classrooms, workshops, or other educational settings. Authors are encouraged to include teaching materials in the form of assignments, lesson plans, module/curricular units, course syllabi, or excerpts from student work (with appropriate permission).

§Uncovering and Sustaining the Cultural Record

Editing, preserving, and interpreting primary sources are not neutral acts; they are shaped by decisions about what is collected, described, made visible, and sustained over time. This section invites brief essays (1,250–4,000 words) that examine the practices, processes, and stakes of uncovering and sustaining the cultural record across disciplines and communities.

We welcome contributions from scholars, archivists, librarians, digital humanists, educators, students, and community practitioners. Submissions should be grounded in specific projects or initiatives and reflect on efforts to recover, document, or interpret archival materials, especially those that have been marginalized, obscured, or difficult to access.

Submissions should address questions such as:

How do projects engage with issues of access, ethics, power, or representation?
How are materials selected, organized, and framed?
What forms of labor sustain this work?
In what ways do these efforts intervene in or expand the cultural record?

§Reviews

Scholarly Editing publishes reviews of digital and letterpress editions, digital projects, and the digital tools that enhance recovery of, and expand access to, primary source materials. We also review materials that provide new ways of understanding, contextualizing, and reimagining editorial, archival, and publishing practices and their role in shaping the historical record and literary canon. In accordance with the journal’s mission, we review materials that amplify the work of diverse voices and celebrate the contributions of underrepresented and silenced communities.

Reviews in Scholarly Editing provide an opportunity to reflect on a book, digital tool, or digital project within a larger perspective or context. The journal’s reviews are written in the form of an essay rather than as a descriptive book review. Among the questions we ask reviewers to consider are the following: To what extent does the material contribute to, or challenge something in, the larger field? What questions does it pose for the field? What will be the book’s likely impact?

We especially welcome proposals for reviews of multiple books or projects that cover the same overall subject area or that are related to each other in a particular way. Such essays should compare and contrast the works under review and identify key themes and critical issues and discuss whether the materials taken together are illustrative of important developments in the field.

While we do not accept unsolicited reviews, we welcome proposals from readers who would like to serve as reviewers, as well as recommendations of work that may be appropriate for review. Please contact Silvia Glick if you would like to propose a review, recommend a work for review, or have questions about the reviewing process.

§Policy on the Use of AI Tools by Scholarly Editing Authors and Peer Reviewers

Scholarly Editing does not allow artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) to be listed as authors of our publications. The emerging consensus of scholarly organizations, including the Committee on Publication Ethics, is that AI tools do not meet the requirements for authorship since they cannot assume ethical and legal responsibility for their work.

Authors’ work must be original and authors must be responsible and scholarly in their use of material created by others. Authors who use AI tools to produce text or images/graphics, or to collect data, must inform the journal’s editors of this use and be transparent about it in their manuscripts so that readers understand the role of these tools in the development of the work.

Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscripts, including any portions produced by AI tools, and are liable for any ethical breaches that may result from the use of such content.

Usage of large language models or other artificial intelligence tools to assist in the peer review process is strictly prohibited.

§Review Procedures

All essays and pedagogical materials published in Scholarly Editing are subject to a double-blind review process and are reviewed by at least two scholars with expertise relevant to the submission under review. The executive editorial team selects promising editions from submitted proposals. For selected editions, the journal’s technical editor works with the edition’s editor(s) to put the edition online at an unpublished URL. Thereafter, the edition undergoes a double-blind review. Reviewers evaluate the edition’s content in addition to its editorial theory and methodology. Reviewers of articles, pedagogical materials, and micro-editions recommend that the journal accept the submission as is, accept it only after satisfactory revision, or reject it.

All reviews are shared with contributors after evaluation by the editor-in-chief to ensure their compliance with the journal’s ethical standards for peer review. Submissions that are accepted as is or after appropriate revision are edited by one or more members of the editorial board as well as the journal’s copy editor before publication in Scholarly Editing.

In most cases, contributors will be notified of the status of their manuscript within 6 to 8 weeks.

§Submission Procedures

Contributions are accepted through the Scholarly Editing Open Journal Systems platform.
Contributors will first register with Scholarly Editing, which will permit them to submit their work and monitor the review process.
All contributors will receive written notification confirming receipt of their submission.

§General Submission Guidelines

Note that micro-editions only require a proposal and need not be submitted in a finished form. For all other submissions, follow the steps below.

To ensure double-blind peer review please remove all identifying information from submission.
Please consult the current edition of The Chicago Manual of Style for formatting and style guidelines.
Citations should be provided as footnotes and adhere to The Chicago Manual of Style notes system.

Examples:

Hans Walter Gabler, “Theorizing the Digital Scholarly Edition,” Literature Compass 7, no. 2 (2010): 43–56.
David Reynolds, “New Manuscript Images Available,” Roman de la Rose blog, accessed July 31, 2012, http://romandelarose.blogspot.com/2012/03/new-manuscript-images-available.html.

It is not necessary to use parentheses to enclose the bibliographic material to separate it from the discursive part of the note:
As Ed Folsom has written, Whitman “had an ongoing battle with genre,” asserting in titles and elsewhere that the units of text in Leaves of Grass were poems, but pushing the boundaries of that designation. “Database as Genre: The Epic Transformation of Archives,” PMLA 122, no. 5 (October 2007), 1572. Whitman also experimented in books like Two Rivulets with the juxtaposition of prose and verse and the provocation to the reader produced by the structural and semantic relationships between the two.

Essay submissions should include a 250-word abstract.
Contributors should provide a 500-word overview summarizing their work’s content, use of technologies if applicable, context of its place within the field, description of audience, and significance. This statement is a required element of the OJS submission process.
Essay submissions should be from 4,000 to 8,000 words, including abstract, notes, and captions. However, longer essays are also acceptable.

§Third Party Copyright Permissions

All contributors are responsible for ensuring that they have acquired any necessary permissions to use material created by a third party.

§Peer Reviewer Guidelines

Scholarly Editing welcomes contribution through participation in the peer review process. Individuals interested in serving as peer reviewers may register with the OJS platform: https://submissions.scholarlyediting.org.

Peer reviews are expected to adhere to the journal’s ethical standards. Review reports will include detailed and constructive assessments and recommendations. Reviewers are asked to avoid using unprofessional language, ad hominem arguments, and attacks of any kind.

§Formatting Guidelines

Formatting guidelines are organized below by manuscript and stylistic components. For additional formatting questions refer to the latest edition of The Chicago Manual of Style.

Abbreviations and acronyms

Spell out acronyms the first time they appear in the paper.
Enclose the acronym in parentheses after the spelled-out term only if the acronym is used later in the paper.
Spell out United States as a noun and use US (no internal periods) as an adjective.
Use two-letter capitalized state abbreviations in notes: Lincoln, NE.
Do not use periods in common abbreviations such as “BC.”
Time of day: a.m., p.m. (lowercase with periods).
Use “ll.” in parentheses; “lines” outside parentheses.
“ca.” [circa] is preferred to “c.” (for greater clarity).

Capitalization

In general, follow CMoS chapter 8 (“Names, Terms, and Titles of Works”).
CMoS 7.85 recommends “the web”; “website”; “the internet.”
When citing works published in the digital journal Scholarly Editing, all titles are treated as articles (roman within quotation marks).

Captions and callouts to figures and tables

Capitalize “Figure 1” and “Table 1,” etc., in text and in captions. Do not abbreviate as “Fig.”
A colon follows “Figure 1” or “Table 1” in the caption.
Number figures and tables even if there is only one in an article. (If there is only one appendix, however, refer to it as simply “the Appendix.”)
Figure captions are capitalized sentence-style.
Table captions are capitalized headline-style. The caption should not be punctuated with a period.
Generally, an appendix would be handled like a figure or a table, depending on its elements. Example of the caption of an appendix that is like a table: Appendix 2: Comparison of the Use of Journals, Editions, and Facsimiles from 2002 and 2011

Dates

Use the month-day-year style: July 31, 2012

Headings

Title of the article is headline-style: Medievalists and the Scholarly Digital Edition
A-level heads are headline-style: Introduction: A Brief History of Digital Medieval Studies
Book review headings:

Example of format:

Beverley, Robert. The History and Present State of Virginia. Edited by Susan Scott Parrish. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, VA, 2013. 384 pp. Notes, illustrations, index. ISBN 978-1-4696-0794-8. $45.

The Dividing Line Histories of William Byrd II of Westover. Edited by Kevin Joel Berland. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, VA, 2013. 528 pp. Notes, illustrations, map, chart, appendix, bibliography, index. ISBN 978-1-4649-0693-4. $59.95.

The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Vol. 2, The Human Rights Years, 1949–1952. Edited by Allida Black. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012. lxv + 1135 pp. ISBN 978-0-8139-3141-8. $125.

Hyphenation

Close up most words with prefixes, e.g., metadiscipline, interdiscipline (follow hyphenation guide at CMoS 7.96).
An en-dash is used to express range (e.g, 29–35) or to replace the hyphen in compounds where one part of the compound is two words (e.g., UNC–Chapel Hill).
antislavery
anti-war
pro-war
re-present, re-presentations
e-book

Numbers

Spell out numbers from one to one hundred; use numerals for 101 and above. (This is an adaptation of CMoS 9.2 through 9.4)
Use numerals with the word “percent” (not %): 42 percent
Spell out “dollars” when the number is spelled out; use ”$” with numerals.
Abbreviate inclusive page numbers (CMoS 9.63): Example: 110–29 (not 110–129).
Abbreviate a span of two years (1862–63) but otherwise repeat all digits (1824–1863).

Punctuation

Use the serial comma.
Ellipsis points (…) are normally not used before or after a quotation.
It isn’t necessary to change straight quotation marks and straight apostrophes to curly, or vice versa. Instead, seek internal consistency within individual articles and editions. (However, sometimes the editors will change curly quotation marks and apostrophes to straight ones for technical reasons; if in doubt about a particular article or edition, ask the editors.)
Use en dash to express range, as in page numbers: 110–15.

Quotations

Set off quotations that are longer than four lines.

Spelling

When words vary in the way they are spelled or hyphenated, follow Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary (12th ed.).

Examples: CD-ROM long-standing toward (towards is chiefly British) email, e-book website Wikipedia (see CMoS 8.193)

Titles of websites

General titles of websites should be set in roman, headline-style, without quotation marks: Canterbury Tales Project
Titled parts of a website should be placed in quotation marks.
Titles of the types of works analogous to printed works should be treated the same whether they are published in print or online: The Electronic Beowulf