Submissions
History of Social Science welcomes submission via our web-based submission manager, Scholastica:
Any questions? Please email the editors at hss@hisress.org
Author Guidelines
Please follow these guidelines when submitting your article to History of Social Science. The editors reserve the right to make editorial revisions in articles and reviews. click to download
General
Please submit all manuscripts for consideration through our web-based submission system, Scholastica. If you are unable to do so, please contact the editors.
Submission types
- Research articles: Full-length articles, based on original research, typically 13,000 words or fewer, including footnotes. Research articles will undergo double-anonymous peer review.
- Classics revisited: Articles between 4,000 and 5,000 words that reconsider works of enduring importance. These may be standalone essays or organized as a symposium. Classics revisited will normally be invited and undergo single-anonymous review.
- Review essays: Review essays, covering more than one work, between 4,000 and 5,000 words. Review essays are generally commissioned and reviewed by the editors.
- Up from the archives: Significant archival materials, generally introduced by a contextualizing essay of about 3,000 words. Up from the archives will generally undergo single-anonymous review.
- Research notes: Essays that critically examine some aspect of the state of the field (3,000 to 4,000 words); reports on exploratory findings (500 to 1,000 words). Research notes, commissioned and reviewed by the editors, may undergo single-anonymous review.
- Book reviews: Single book reviews, generally 1,000 to 1,200 words. Book reviews will undergo review by the book review editor, Susanne Schmidt (bookreviews@hisress.org). Please see the journal’s Book Review Guidelines for more details.
Formatting your file
- Please submit your file as a Word document (.doc or .docx); it will be converted to a PDF when you submit it.
- Please be sure that your file does not have visible editorial markups; that is, if you have edited your file with “track changes” or have made comments, remove those markings before submitting your file.
Formatting your document
- The body of the text should be double-spaced, including quotations, using Times New Roman font in 12-point size.
- Left-align all pages (do not justify) and use 1-inch margins on top and bottom, as well as right and left.
- Place page numbers on each page in the top right corner.
- Notes should be numbered consecutively and formatted as footnotes, in Times New Roman font, 10-point size, single-spaced.
- When using quotation marks, periods and commas should be placed inside the closing quotation mark.
- Block quotations should be free of external quotation marks and indented 0.5 inches, flush-left.
- Inclusive page numbers and dates should be typed according to the following examples: 3–17, 23–26, 100–103, 104–7, 124–28, 1002–6, 1115–20, 1496–1504.
- Spelling, punctuation, and other conventions should follow standard U.S. American usage.
Images
- Authors should obtain permission to reproduce any copyrighted materials (e.g., photographs) they wish to include with their articles. Please submit 300 dpi TIFF files. Scholastica will accept all your files in series. Supply a list of figures and/or tables, including a caption for each, accompanied by a source line and such acknowledgments as are required. If you are unable to submit images in this format, please contact the editors.
Citations
HSS generally follows the current edition of the Chicago Manual of Style 17th, with full bibliographic information in footnotes and no bibliography. The following guidelines and examples apply for the first full reference; subsequent references should be shortened to author, short title, and page number.
Book
References to books should include author(s)’ names; complete title of the book in italics; place of publication and publisher’s name; year of publication; and page numbers cited.
- Example: Dorothy Ross, The Origins of American Social Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 200–211.
Chapter from an edited book
References to book chapters should include author(s)’ names; title of the chapter, in quotes; complete title of the book, italicized; editor(s)’ names; page numbers of the chapter; place of publication and publisher’s name; year of publication; and number of particular page(s) cited.
- Example: Craufurd D. Goodwin, “The Patrons of Economics in a Time of Transformation,” in From Interwar Pluralism to Postwar Neoclassicism, ed. Mary S. Morgan and Malcolm Rutherford, 53–81 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), on 78.
Journal article
References to articles in periodicals should include author(s)’ names; title of article, in quotes; title of periodical, italicized; year; volume number, italicized; number of issue; page numbers of article; DOI (if available); and number of particular page(s) cited.
- Example: Daniel Geary, “Children of The Lonely Crowd: David Riesman, the Young Radicals, and the Splitting of Liberalism in the 1960s,” Modern Intellectual History 10, no. 3 (2013): 603–33, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479244313000231, on 624.
Subsequent references
Succeeding citations of books, chapters, and articles should use an abbreviated version of the title with the author(s)’ last names.
- Example: Goodwin, “The Patrons of Economics,” 56.
Submission of final draft for publication
If your article is accepted for publication, you will be asked to submit a finalized manuscript, with all images as needed. Delays at this stage may affect publication date. To avoid delays in production, copyedited drafts and typeset page proofs will be sent to contributors on a strict schedule, in electronic format. The editors will take responsibility for editing and proofreading if they have not received a contributor’s corrections in time to meet production deadlines.
Ensuring an anonymous review
Authors are responsible for removing any information from their manuscripts that might lead a reviewer to discern their identities or affiliations, if the manuscript will be anonymously reviewed (see Submission types, above). Identifying information that will require masking is typically found on the title page, conclusion, acknowledgments, and in author(s)’ self-citations of prior work.
Copyright and permissions
HSS authors retain copyright to their articles, and are encouraged to post preprint and author(s)’ final manuscript (i.e., the post-review, pre-formatted) versions of their articles to noncommercial university and/or subject-based repositories with no embargo, in compliance with Plan S and other funder policies. See the journal’s Open Access Self-Archiving policies for more details.
It is the author(s)’ responsibility to obtain print and online permission to quote material from third-party sources and to cover any costs incurred in securing these rights. The editors should be alerted at the earliest opportunity as to any difficulty in securing these third-party rights.
Authors will be provided electronic access to their articles by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
Review process
All submissions are read carefully by the journal’s editors; some are then sent out for external peer review. Please be advised that we do not provide evaluative reports on submissions that are not sent out for external review.
HSS encourages reviewers to consider the following questions when evaluating a manuscript:
- Does this piece make a significant contribution to scholarship; and if so, what is the nature of that contribution?
- With what scholarly debates does it engage? Does it engage sufficiently with current scholarship; if not, what is missing?
- Are the sources appropriate for the argument? Should additional (or different) sources be used? Are appropriate editions cited? Are research articles grounded in original primary source research?
- Have significant systemically marginalized perspectives been overlooked?
- Does the author make the main argument successfully? Are there points that need fuller development?
- How might this article be improved? How substantial are your recommendations for revision? Might such revisions produce a version that would merit publication in HSS?
The first issue will appear in 2024.
Book Review Guidelines
Book Review Editor
Susanne Schmidt, Humboldt University Berlin – bookreviews@hisress.org
Guidelines
History of Social Science book reviews should be 1,000–1,200 words in length unless agreed otherwise with the editor. The ideal HSS book review selects the most important elements of a book and explains why they are relevant. It offers a balanced analysis of the book’s claims, course of action, and value. The book review addresses all or most of the following five aspects:
- first, what is the book’s topic or subject matter;
- secondly, what does the book intend to do and what are its main arguments;
- thirdly, how does it do it—e.g., what is the book’s structure, which sources does it rely on, and how is evidence used;
- fourth, assessment of the book’s strengths and weaknesses; and
- finally, the book’s place in the literature—e.g., how does it fit into existing paradigms and which new avenues does it open?
Balance
Be fair to the author. If there is a limitation to the book, recognize it but do not make a weakness the main focus of the review.
Quotations
Direct quotations from the book should be used sparingly and should always cite the page number.
Please cite other works only sparingly and if necessary; for references, include all publication details in parentheses as inline citations rather than as notes (see below).
Edited volumes
Please emphasize core themes and new or fruitful insights, focusing on the contribution of the book as a whole and on the most important chapters. Please do not additively summarize all chapters.
Book review submission checklist
- File named: <bookauthor>BY<reviewauthor>.docx
- Word limit observed (max. 1,200 words)
- Bibliographic information of the work(s) confirmed (see below, “Formatting details”)
- Institutional affiliation added
- Inline citations used if necessary (no notes or bibliography)
- Review submitted to the Book Review Editor
Formatting details
Please follow this general format for the bibliographical information of the book under review and to add your institutional affiliation:
Author. Title of Book: Subtitle of Book. 280 pp., figs., index. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021. $26 (paper).
Book review text. Book review text. Book review text. Book review text. Book review text. Book review text. Book review text.
Your Name
Institutional Affiliation
Word count: 1,000–1,200 words. Please adhere to the word count.
File name: Use the following format to name your file, which should be a Word document: <bookauthor>BY<reviewauthor>.docx (e.g., SimmonsBYSchneider.docx).
Citations: Give publication information in parentheses as inline citations, e.g.:
- for books: “As Elizabeth Lunbeck demonstrated (The Americanization of Narcisissm [Harvard 2014])…” and
- for articles: “As Christine von Oertzen argued (“Machineries of Data Power: Manual versus Mechanical Census Compilation in Nineteenth-Century Europe,” Osiris 2017, 32).
General points of style
Please refer to the History of Social Science Author Guidelines for full details, including on citation style.
- The body of the text should be double-spaced, including quotations, using Times New Roman font in 12-point size.
- Left-align all pages (do not justify) and use 1-inch margins on top and bottom as well as right and left.
- Place page numbers on each page in the top right corner.
Spelling
Spelling, punctuation, and other conventions should follow standard U.S. American usage.
Punctuation
When using quotations marks, punctuation (e.g., commas, periods etc.) should be placed inside the closing quotation mark.
Dashes
EN dash for page and year range, e.g., 3–17, 100–103, 1966–2004.
