Notes for Authors

Consult the UCL IoE Press Editorial Style Sheet it tells you everything you need to know, including perhaps much that you would prefer not to know and have to do.

General Information – Open Access Publishing

  • The History Education Research Journal is an Open Access publication in which new contributions are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence.
  • This means that authors retain copyright in their own work, but make it available for others to share (copy or redistribute in any medium or format) or adapt for any purpose (even commercially), provided that the author/s of the original work is/are acknowledged.
  • Authors may self-archive both preprint and accepted versions of their article at any time provided that, on publication, it is replaced by the final published version.
  • Authors also warrant that any work by third parties that they reproduce within their own work may be shared or adapted in the same way.
  • The History Education Research Journal considers all manuscripts on condition that they have not been published already and are not under consideration for publication or in press elsewhere.
  • Contributions to the History Education Research Journal must report original research and will be subjected to review by referees at the discretion of the editors.
  • UCL IOE Press makes no charges of any kind for submission to, publication in, or access to the History Education Research Journal. Once published, your article will be online on the ingentaconnect journals platform, where it will be available for anyone to read or download without charge.
  • Authors should submit manuscripts in Word electronically as email attachments.

General Guidance

Articles and similar presentations should be 6,000-7,000 words in length, excluding references, and must be written in clear, standard English, using British spelling (use the Oxford Concise Dictionary as an arbiter of preferred spellings).

They should also be double-spaced throughout with ample margins, and bear the title of the contribution and name/s of the authors.

Each such submission should include (in this order):

  • a title, chosen to succinctly reflect the content and using key words that are most likely to draw interested readers to the content through a search engine
  • author(s)’ name(s) and affiliation(s), and contact email for the author (or corresponding author if there is more than one)
  • an abstract of up to 150 words
  • the article text (including a note of where any figures and tables should be located)
  • acknowledgements (if any)
  • reference list
  • figures and tables (see guidance below).

Please do not use footnotes unless absolutely necessary. Instead, include possible footnote content in the text, turn it into a reference or delete the material.

Style – general guidance

  • Write clearly and concisely, using arguments that are fully substantiated with well-reasoned analysis and, where appropriate, empirical evidence.
  • All acronyms for national agencies, examinations, etc., should be spelled out the first time they are mentioned. Contributors are asked to take account of the international readership of the History Education Research Journal by explaining in full the use of terms that might be meaningful only to a particular local or national audience.
  • Authors are also urged to bear in mind that teachers and film professionals will also read the History Education Research Journal, which means that contributions should be accessible and comprehensible to a wide range of readers.
  • For all manuscripts, non-discriminatory language is mandatory.
  • Citations of other work should be limited to those strictly necessary for the argument. Any quotations should be brief, and always accompanied by precise references.
  • If you have any questions about references or formatting your article, please contact the journal’s commissioning editor at UCL IOE Press, Pat Gordon-Smith.

Tables, illustrations, and figures; copyright

The History Education Research Journal welcomes the inclusion of graphs, artwork, photographs, videos and sound files in support of submitted articles. They must be good quality and with full permission to publish in an open-access publication.

Authors are responsible for determining the copyright status of illustrations or other material they wish to reproduce in their article and, if necessary, obtaining permission to reproduce it. This applies both to direct reproduction and to ‘derivative reproduction’ (where authors create a new figure or table which derives substantially from a copyrighted source).

As noted above, by including such material in their submission, authors warrant that it may be reproduced or adapted under the terms of the CC-BY licence in the same way as their own work, so they must make this requirement clear to those whose permission they are seeking.

Please note that short extracts of copyright text (excluding poetry and song lyrics) for the purposes of criticism, discussion, or review may be reproduced without formal permission assuming that the quotation is reproduced accurately and full attribution is given.

Illustrations and figures should be included at the end in the article. Figures will not usually be redrawn by the publisher, so they should be submitted in a form that is suitable for publication (not less than 300 dpi resolution). The place at which a table, figure, or illustration is to be inserted in the text should be indicated clearly on the manuscript. Captions should include keys to symbols.