CHESHIRE HISTORY
NOTES FOR CONTRIBUTORS
PROCEDURE
Contributions should be sent to the Editor at the Cheshire Record Office, Duke Street, Chester CH1 1RL. Tel. 01244 972559 Fax. 01244 973812, or by e-mail to: editor@cheshirehistory.org.uk. They are then read and judged by a member of an editorial committee or by a specialist referee. If they are not considered suitable, contributors will be notified with the reader's or referee's comments. If contributions are accepted in principle, authors will be told and any obvious editorial changes will be suggested. These might be errors of omission, ambiguities, length, style, referencing and suchlike.
Contributions should be original work and not have appeared or been published elsewhere. There is no absolute rule on length, but to maintain a range of papers a maximum of about 5,000 words is preferred. This can be exceeded where felt appropriate and contributors who wish to exceed it substantially should consult the editor in advance.
A final selection will be made from contributions which have been accepted in principle. If there are too many pieces for the current issue, some contributors will be invited to hold papers over for the following year or withdraw them, as they prefer.
SUBMISSION
As the aim is to send Cheshire History to members at the beginning of October, contributions should be sent to the Editor as early as possible and no later than the end of May, to give time for editing and printing before issue. In general, therefore, the earlier the better, to allow the maximum time for refereeing and amendment. Texts can be sent as paper copy, by floppy disc (formatted in Microsoft Word), or e-mail. Texts should not be sent in the body of an e-mail, only as a Word attachment, as formatting can be lost. Final texts are best received as disc or e-mail, as scanning paper copy usually introduces minor textual errors. Floppy discs will be returned. This request should not deter contributors who do not have access to a computer and other technological wonders. It is only a matter of convenience and we can cope with most formats.
Contributors are asked to provide an e-mail address if they have one, as this is not only faster for queries, but helps to reduce postage costs.
Photographs, drawing etc. must be submitted on the understanding that they are out of copyright, or that ownership/copyright belongs to the contributor, or that consent for reproduction has been given. Line drawings may be scanned into a computer text but original photographs, or at the very least, first generation photocopies, must be supplied for other illustrations. These may be black and white or coloured. Brief tables may be incorporated in the text but lengthy ones should be put as an appendix at the end of the contribution.
The layout of Cheshire History requires end-notes rather than footnotes, and we do not use Harvard. In the text, footnote numbers should be in superscript (ie, …as suggested by Professor Jones.1) It is also helpful if the automatic numbering facility provided by Word is used rather than manual footnotes. In the end-notes a full citation should be given at the first reference and an abbreviated one thereafter: eg. Ian W. Walker, Harold, the Last Anglo-Saxon King (Stroud 1997), p. xxx, but thereafter Walker, Harold, p. xxx. The same principle applies to references to the 'Cheshire Record Office', thereafter 'CRO', and similar bodies.
REVISED DECEMBER 2008