Below are comprehensive submission guidelines for authors to follow. Questions regarding paper length, citation specifications, and manuscript organization can be answered below. Please read the list thoroughly prior to submitting. If you have further questions regarding manuscript preparation or the submission process, please consult our contact page.

1. Submission Conditions, Status, & Deadline

Submissions to L’Indécis au Précis (IP) are open to current undergraduates from any accredited university or college in the United States or abroad. Recent graduates may also submit manuscripts within two years of degree completion so long as their submissions were written during their time as an undergraduate.

 

Submissions are now OPEN for the journal’s second volume. The final submission deadline will be determined during AY 2020–21.

 

Please review the overview of the editorial process here. Any mention hereafter of accepted manuscripts refers to papers that have passed the three stages of editorial review required for publication.

 

2. Manuscript Preparation Guidelines

Manuscripts may be submitted in either English or French following the Chicago Manual of Style. See section 5 below for further details.

 

IP accepts papers with a body text that is not to exceed 3,500 words, and with a total maximum word count of 5,000, including: endnotes, bibliography, appendixes, and captions corresponding to images or visual aids. Remove any personal identifiers from your paper—including acknowledgements listing the names of university/college affiliates (professors, lecturers, etc.) or other individuals—to ensure total anonymity; any acknowledgments or specific mentions of persons personally connected to the author or to the paper’s production will be included, at the author’s request, prior to publishing accepted manuscripts. Format your paper in double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font with one-inch margins. The title of your paper should occupy the document’s first line, immediately followed by an abstract that is not to exceed 200 words, then followed by your paper’s main body. Your manuscript should organized in the following manner:

1. Title
2. Abstract
3. Body text
4. Endnotes
5. Comprehensive bibliography entitled “References”
6. Any appendixes (including reference images) 

Each page of the manuscript should be numbered in the upper right-hand corner with no additional text. Do not embed images into the body text of your paper (images will appear at the end of the article for accepted manuscripts).

 

3. Submission Specifications

Please submit all manuscripts via email eScholarship by clicking the “Submit” button at the top-right corner of this page. Follow the instructions to create an account and note the following guidelines:

 

All manuscripts should be organized as a single document with images provided separately. Manuscripts must be submitted as a Microsoft Word document (.doc or .docx) that is not locked for editing. Do not submit your paper as a PDF or an alternative file extension. Name your manuscript as follows: “IP Sub. (year) - Paper Title”; consider the following example for clarification: “IP Sub. 2018 - Frantz Fanon’s Peau noire, masques blancs and the Disassembly of Martiniquan Colonial Systems.” Your manuscript should have a cover page, including your full name, university/college affiliation, year of attendance, and verification of your contact email for further correspondence. If you are a recent graduate, indicate your undergraduate institution and your completion year. Attach any graphic aids (images, tables, graphs, etc.) as a separate Microsoft Word document arranged in the order in which they are referenced in the paper’s body. For manuscripts with images,  attach a separate image document that is titled as follows: “Paper Title - IMAGES.”

 

If a submission has multiple authors, please only send one submission per manuscript. The manuscript’s cover page should include all needed information, as listed above, for each author.

 

4. Images and Other Visual Aids

Authors should aim to provide high-resolution images and concise graphic aids if such illustrations are integral to forwarding their paper’s thesis. If graphs or tables are produced manually, authors are encouraged to follow procedures and formatting styles standard to their respective discipline; otherwise, please reference the History of Humanities guidelines for table formatting. For images or photographs that exist outside of the public domain, it is the author’s sole responsibility to ensure that they have obtained the permissions needed to reproduce the illustration(s) for non-commercial redistribution online. If you anticipate submitting permission grants for copyrighted images, please notify us in your submission by detailing the official creative parameters within which the copyrighted images referenced in your paper can be reproduced. IP cannot assist authors in obtaining image rights, therefore we recommend authors include images that are in the public domain or managed under open content programs whenever possible. To avoid complications during the editorial process, we cannot publish copyrighted illustrations unless you have obtained, with verifiable proof, the following permissions:

• non-exclusive world distribution rights in all languages, formats, and media.
• rights to reproduce in all publishing formats, and their derivatives, whether in print or electronic.

Note for authors of accepted manuscripts: if you must submit permission grants or requests, we strongly advise that all relevant documentation be submitted to the copyright holder(s) of your desired illustrations as soon as your article is accepted. If permission rights for copyrighted images critical to the understanding of your article are unobtainable by the time of our annual release, you risk delaying the publication of your paper until the following year. See section 7 below for our author rights/agreement notice.

 

a. Captions

All visual aids should be accompanied by a caption with appropriate information and clear identifiers. Each illustration or graphic aid should be referenced as a “figure” in your images document. For purposes of review, please follow the standard captioning standard for Chicago-style papers—for accepted manuscripts, IP editors may rephrase the specific language of your captions for consistency across several articles within a volume. Any reference to physical dimensions or measurements should include the units prescribed by the International System of Units (SI).

 

Examples of caption formats:

 

Figure 1. Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun, Self-Portrait with Daughter, Julie, 1789, oil on canvas, 130 x 94 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre. Photo: © Musée du Louvre/A. Dequier — M. Bard.

 

Figure 2. Detail of Giorgio Vasari, Cosimo I de’ Medici Seated Among Architects, Engineers, and Sculptors, 1559, showing profile portrait of Benvenuto Cellini (presumably).

 

Figure 3. Labor contract between Pompeo Leoni and Adriaen de Vries for production of figural bronzes at San Lorenzo de El Escorial, 19 July 1586. Archivo General de Simancas, Casas y Sitios Reales, ledger 262, fol. 365. Courtesy of the Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, Madrid.

 

Tables or graphs: Figure 4. Three panels showing, respectively, the values of Rⁱ (⍴), Φⁱ_∞, and | Φ¹_∞  - Φ²_∞| as ε → 0.

Note that credit lines generally appear at the end of captions for images sourced from third parties or outside institutions. Authors should familiarize themselves with the permissions agreements for the reproduction of their images to ensure that the language of credit lines is consistent with the requests of copyright holders.

 

b. Illustration Call-outs

All visual aids must be called out immediately after the first instance of discussion of an illustration. Call-outs appear as a parenthetical notation at the end of a sentence and are numbered sequentially in a manner consistent with the chronology of the paper’s images: (fig. 1) in reference to Figure 1, and so on. The total number of call-outs should match your paper’s total number of images. Call out each illustration only once.

 

As an example:

 

“One of the most famed 17th-century representations of Ovidian wit is found in Nicolas Poussin’s The Empire of Flora, presently located at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden (fig. 6).”

 

5. Documentation Style

Authors should follow the most recent edition of the Chicago Manual of Style for citations. Your citations should be consistent through the entire manuscript for ease of review—for accepted manuscripts, IP staff may make adjustments to the organization of your citations for sake of cohesion. For English submissions, IP uses American English punctuation, spelling, idioms, quotation methods, vocabulary, syntax, and other grammatical formalities. Submissions in French should follow the guidelines established by the most recent edition of the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française for all grammatical concerns. Our preferences concerning general documentation style are as follows:

• For English submissions, foreign-language quotations must be translated to English in the body of your paper. Provide the original quotation in the endnotes—see section 5a below for clarification. Foreign-language quotations that are used only in notes (as a side reference or citation for your argument) and not in the paper’s main body do not need to be translated into English.
• Regarding italics: italicize foreign words or phrases that do not require quotations. Uncommon foreign words or phrases should be immediately followed by a parenthetical translation: for example, théâtre de la foire (fair theaters). Well-known phrases or words to not need to be translated, e.g., commedia dell’arte. Latin or foreign-language words or phrases commonly used in English do not need to be italicized, e.g., in situ, de facto, a posteriori. Italicize English words when they are discussed as words or terms: for example, “The term modernity was frequently addressed by Charles Baudelaire.” Do not use italics for emphasis.
• Do not use scare quotes.
• Use the Oxford comma.
• Bracketed ellipses are used in a direct quotation to indicate omission.
• Spell out numbers one through ninety-nine unless referencing a date, page number, or titles/subsections within publications. Follow the European style of dating, including when the reference to a date is embedded within your paper: 13 April 1765 or “On the 5th of August, 1849 [...]”
• When quoting poetry, separate lines by a single virgule (/). Separate stanzas with two virgules (//).
• Strive for consistency with technical details not addressed here.

a. Endnotes

All citations should take the form of endnotes. IP does not use footnotes. Endnotes are placed after periods or after a closed quotation mark if a sentence ends with a direct quotation. If you are submitting a previously written paper, please convert all footnotes to endnotes prior to sending.

 

b. References

Bibliographic entries, or references, are a single alphabetical list appearing after your paper’s body text and should include all sources cited in endnotes. Our preferences for general bibliographic points are as follows:

• List multiple works by an author in ascending chronological order, from earliest to most recent. If the author has multiple works within a single year, add a lowercase a, b, c, etc. to the year. 
  
• Identify identical place names only when ambiguous: Washington, OH or Washington, PA; Bristol, England or Bristol, CT.
• Authors with use multiple works cited should be referenced by name only once. Subsequent entries for the same author may use the following notation in lieu of the author's name: ———.

 

6. General Instructions for Accepted Manuscripts

As noted above, we recommend that all authors familiarize themselves with the overview of the editorial process and the associated timeline for review and revision. This information is available here (include future link). Please note that accepted manuscripts are subject to three rounds of review from the comité de rédaction (editorial board)—your paper’s advancement to publication in our annual volume is contingent upon your compliance with the requests of editorial staff and the required style revisions indicated by copyeditors. It is important that you minimize the delay between correspondences to IP staff to ensure that revisions can be made in an efficient manner.

 

7. Author’s Rights & Permission to Publish

Prior to submitting, authors will be asked to digitally sign a document that details: (1) the total extent of your rights as a contributor to IP, and (2) allow for fair publication of your paper and its associated content. IP staff will contact editors prior to publication to review permissions agreements and resolve any editorial concerns.