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The following manuscript submission guidelines
were prepared by Andrew Ritchie and Rob van der
Plas, who between them have spent well over
2,000 hours in the frustrating process of
editing the various papers submitted for the
International Cycling History Conference
Proceedings. They are equally important to
adhere to for any other manuscript submitted for
publication. Please follow them to the letter,
and if they're not clear to you, contact us
before proceedings.
The production of our
Proceedings takes a huge amount of time and
effort. We have estimated that a total amount of
about 200 man-hours of unpaid labour goes into
each volume: copy-editing, corrections,
punctuation, formatting, design, layout,
negotiating with the printer, proofreading, etc.
Please view your work for the Proceedings as an
important part of a collaborative effort. You
will help us considerably if you would read,
digest and do your best to adhere to the
following guidelines:
Deadline for Submission
The deadline for submission of typescripts
for Proceedings is 3 months after conclusion of
the conference to which they pertain.
This will be rather strictly adhered to. One
month before this deadline, all contributors
with outstanding papers will receive a reminder.
Any paper not received by a discretionary period
of about 1-2 weeks after the deadline will not
be included in the Proceedings. We want to have
an outstanding publication, but we cannot afford
the time to chase contributors who are late with
their submissions.
Presentation
Your papers must be provided as a manuscript
with separate illustrations (if applicable). The
manuscript must be presented in a common
word-processor format such as Word for Windows
or WordPerfect for Windows. If you use a Mac or
another computer (or another word-processing
program than Word or WordPerfect), you must
use the "save as" function and save the file in
the appropriate format onto the floppy disk that
you will send us.
Any illustrations must be separate (originals or
high-resolution scans)--do not ever embed them
in your text because that makes them unsuitable
for our use.
Do not present presentation files such as
PowerPoint or Filemaker. If you presented your
paper using such a format, you must
separate the text file as a word processor file
and the illustrations as TIF- or JPG-files at 300 dpi
resolution for photos or 1,000 dpi for line
drawings (please note those numbers and do not
assume what looks good on a computer screen will
be suitable for print reproduction) or
more before sending your materials to us.
Any tabular information must be submitted
using the "table" function of your wordprocessor.
We cannot deal with tables created using
tab-stops in text form.
Keep the text file as simple as possible.
Printed out, it should look like an
old-fashioned typescript: Do not use special
fonts (except italicized)
for any purpose. We do the text formatting here
and any formatting you apply makes our job much
harder.
Writing style / Checking Your Text
There is usually a big difference between
the verbal delivery of your paper and its
written/published version. Actually, they are,
and they should be, two different things. If you
read your paper at the Conference, it tends to
be stiff and over-formal; ‘chatty’ is generally
good. But for the written version, you need to
avoid being ‘chatty’, and formal considerations
become much more important.
The most important thing for the written paper
is a well-designed, well-expressed,
well-structured argument, which spells out your
points in a coherent, understandable form.
Equally important is your use of sources and the
accurate and persuasive documentation of your
assertions and arguments. Avoid comments or
asides in parenthesis, and try to avoid first
person as far as possible.
Assume when writing that you are addressing a
well-educated, general reader who is knowledgeable in bicycle history,
so don't start off with a general history of the
bicycle. On the other hand, you should not take
a knowledge of technical things for
granted, and you may have to explain some of them. We want to communicate
with non-specialist readers, and to widen the
scope of our approach, our inquiries and our
research. We welcome historians from other
disciplines, who will broaden and deepen our
investigations and our discussion.
Your Own Editing
Read through your paper several times before
submitting a final version. Keep asking yourself
— “Have I expressed this as well as it can be
expressed? Is it a well-organized, persuasive
argument?”
Correct spelling mistakes; punctuate (especially
with commas); put quotation marks around text
which is quoted from an original source, so that
the editor knows it is a quotation. For our
contributors whose native language isn’t
English, please try, if you can, to get a
native-English-speaker to check your text with
you - it makes our editing task easier.
Length of Paper
The length of the article should be not more
than 3,500 words. Please stick carefully to this
word limit, as otherwise the Proceedings becomes
too big and expensive to produce. Articles
submitted over this word limit will be cut
ruthlessly.
Endnotes / References / Acknowledgements
Our expectation of you all, as historians, is
that you document your text and your historical
account, and provide evidence of your sources.
An article submitted entirely without reference
material and/or notes is likely to be returned
to the writer to have them added, or it might be
excluded entirely.
Our ‘house style’ is to include notes and
reference material as endnotes (a number appears
in the text, and the relevant note is printed at
the end of the article). We don’t print
references in the body of the text, as is done,
for instance, in sociology and psychology
journals.
Endnotes should, if possible, be indicated in
your text with a raised numeral (which is done
automatically in most wordprocessors if you use
the footnote function correctly). Alternatively,
just put a number [(1), for example] in the
appropriate place in your text. Note numbers can
even be hand-written. But the notes should be
numbered and inserted as endnotes. It is very
time-consuming for the editors to have to take
reference material out of the main body of the
text and create endnotes. Sometimes, however,
when an article addresses one single issue, or
examines one object, a brief list of References,
without numbered endnotes, will be adequate. You
can use your wordprocessor’s footnote/endnotes
generation method because our software will pick
up those footnotes and we can convert them to
endnotes.
Acknowledgements should be included as a brief,
separate statement at the end of the main text
(but before the endnotes).
Illustrations / Captions
Illustrations should be submitted in as
good, clean and sharp form as possible. Good
quality color photocpies are usable, but they
must be made on a high-quality machine — it
makes a huge difference. Pictures should be
numbered, and a numbered caption sheet should
accompany them so the editors know which caption
belongs to which picture. Captions are very
important in explaining the picture and relating
it to the article — a caption can be several
sentences long as long as it gives the essential
information such as "who, what, where, when, and
why"). Just as with the text, the sources of all
pictures should be given.
Finally…
We need and want your articles. The value of
the Proceedings consists in their scope and
variety. We will struggle with your contribution
to improve it and try to make it as good as
possible. However, we also have editorial
standards to uphold, and we have an editorial
veto which we may occasionally have to use. The
fact that you delivered a paper verbally and
submitted a written version does not
automatically guarantee its publication. If we
withhold publication, it will be for a good
reason and we will explain why.
If you have more questions, please contact Rob
van der Plas directly by using the "contact us"
tab on the left.
IMPORTANT NOTE TO MAC
USERS
Despite our earlier warnings, we are still
getting files that are just copied straight from
your computer. That's not the way we can use
your files, because all sorts of information gets
corrupted that way. The correct way is to
proceed as follows:
1. Place an MS-DOS formatted floppy disk (or
Zip-disk or CD if you don't have a floppy disk
drive) in the appropriate drive to make the copy
you want to submit.
2. Select the wordprocessor program and the file
you want to submit.
3. Under "File," select "Save as" and then
select either Word 97 for Windows or Word
Perfect for Windows
4. Select the disk drive you will be copying to.
5. As a file name, enter the appropriate name of
the file you want to submit (e.g. the first
three letters of your family name and a number).
6. Save.
E-MAIL SUBMISSION
OK, the digital age has caught up with us, and
it is now possible to submit papers by E-mail.
However, for us to be able to use materials
submitted that way, you must do the following:
1. Do not make your text and images part of the
E-mail message. Use the E-mail for a note to us
and send the materials as attachments to that
E-mail message.
2. Create separate files for text (saved in MS Word
for Windows or Word Perfect for Windows format) and
images (saved as highest-quality JPG-files at
300 DPI resolution for photos, 1,000 DPI for line
drawings.
3. Send us an E-mail and attach these various
files. If there are more than 3 images, send
separate E-mails with no more than 3 images
attached to each.
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More Guidelines
For the efficient and accurate publication
of papers, it is critically important to
follow very specific guidelines in the
written presentation of your papers and
submission of illustrations:
To show you how the finished product you
submit should look, please click here [sample
manuscript] for a sample text in the
correct format. Then look at a printed copy
of the Cycle History 15 Proceedings to see how that
same text was finally included in the
printed book (it is the contribution
by Paul Rubeson, starting on page 87). This
is the way your manuscript must look before
you can submit it, and if it doesn't, it
will be returned to you for reformatting (if
you have sent it early enough) or will be
rejected altogether (if it is late)
All papers must be presented as a paper
printout and as a wordprocessor file on an
MS.DOS-formatted floppy disk (not as an
E-mail attachment) in a standard word
processing format for MS.DOS/Windows. You
must save your file as a either WordPerfect
or Word for Windows file. (Yes, even if you
have written your paper on a Mac, you’ll
have to save it in one of those formats
using the “save as” function—see your manual
on how to do that)
2. All illustrations must be provided
as original art or very high-quality color
photo copies (yes, even if the original is
black & white, the copy must be made as a
color copy to preserve the tonal gradations
that get lost in standard black & white
photocopying). If you do scan the
illustration yourself, it must be scanned at
1000 dpi if it is a line drawing or at 300
dpi if it is a halftone (photo). Believe me,
what looks fine on the Internet at 72 dpi
looks unacceptable in print. Attach a
caption sheet to the back of each
illustration (or as a separate file if it is
scanned) and give the following information
on it:
a. Your name
b. Identifying number for the illustration
if you submit more than one
c. Caption text, which must contain all
important factual information (date, place,
subject, source)
d. Source
If you present illustrations in the form of
color slides, make sure they are sharp and
bright enough for clear reproduction (very
important if you are copying art containing
large areas of white space from e.g. a book
using automatic exposure control: set the
film speed for half the actual speed of the
film used, to avoid the picture becoming
dark, muddy grey.)
3. The text must be typed straight
down the page, without use of indents
at the beginning of a new paragraph
(instead, use double spacing between
paragraphs).
Do not define your font or use different
fonts for any part of the text, except OK to
use italics for things that need to be in
italics for emphasis or as literature
sources.
Don’t center any text, don’t fully
capitalize any text, don’t make any text
bold, don’t select any differ
ent fonts.
If any text has to be presented in the form
of a table, do not try to make that
table with tab stops. Only use the word
processor’s “table” function for tables
(This is very important: we will have to
reject your paper if you do not adhere to
this)
For more details, please refer to the
following section, which is part of Vander
Plas Publications’s author guidelines for
general books
Van der Plas Publications Author
Guidelines
Your manuscript should look the way it
would look if it had been done on a
typewriter. Type the text straight without
any formatting (no bold type, no
centered type, no fully capitalized
words, no different font styles or
sizes). It’s OK to use italics where
appropriate (names of publications), but you
may only italicize by selecting the text
that has to be italicized and then clicking
“control” + “I”. If you think something does
need emphasis, you may use the underline
function, and we’ll convert it to an
appropriate type style when the book is
being typeset.
Do not indent the first
line of a paragraph and don’t use tab stops
for any other purpose either. Distinguish
between paragraphs by leaving an extra blank
line between paragraphs and between titles
and the first paragraph of a section.
Tabular information must be provided by
using the“ table” function in your word
processor, NOT by using tab stops. Even if
you can get something that looks good enough
for a manuscript using tab stops, it doesn’t
translate into typesetting and we have to
redo the entire table in tabular format,
which takes a lot of time and may introduce
errors.
All papers must include a 50-word summary
of its content ( emphasizing your findings
or conclusions, if any) and a bibliography
identifying all sources of the information
used in your paper—
The bibliography must adhere exactly to the
style shown in the
sample manuscript (Endnotes).
Since our books are sold both in the
U.S., in the UK, and in other
English-speaking countries, we use moderated
American English and we ask you to keep that
in mind when writing. Don’t use references
to American popular culture, whether sports,
television, or otherwise (expressions
derived from baseball analogies, such as
“step up to the plate” “fielding questions,”
etc. are meaningless outside the US.)
As far as style and form are concerned,
please strictly adhere to the following:
Use serial commas in lists with and
(apples, oranges, and bananas — NOT apples,
oranges and bananas).
Use only a single space after any
punctuation mark and never any space between
the preceding word and a punctuation mark
(“It is true: we blew it! Don’t you agree?”
— NOT “It is true : we blew it ! Don’t you
agree ?”)
Titles of books and periodicals are in
italics and without quotation marks.
Only titles of articles within books and
magazines are placed in quotation marks (and
then not in italics)—
Use only double quotes (“, “ — NOT ‘,‘) both
for verbal quotations and for the title of
an article in a book or periodical. Single
quotes are used only for quotes within
quotes. (e.g. He said, “There was an
interesting article titled ‘The End of the
World as We Know It’ in a recent issue of
Scientific American that I read at the
dentist’s.”
Place the closing quotation mark outside
(after) the final punctuation mark (He said,
“yes.” —NOT He said, “yes”.). British and
other non-U.S. authors, please note: this is
the style required for publication in the
U.S., which we follow and you can save us a
lot of work and trouble by doing it this way
in the first place.
Don’t use exclamation marks anywhere in
your text except when quoting a text that
contains one, and only use quotation marks
where you’re actually and accurately quoting
something said or written by someone else.
Don’t use abbreviations except for units
(m for meter, ft. for feet, sec. for
seconds) and always leave one blank space
between the number and the units ($ 100, 24
in., 60.2 m, 12 hp). Note that in US usage,
there is a period (full stop) after
non-metric units such as ft., sec., etc.),
whereas metric units never have a period
following them (except if they happen to be
the last thing in a sentence.). Spell out
units like “degrees” that would otherwise
require a special symbol. Do not abbreviate
anything else (no, not even the months of
the year or the days of the week when
referencing periodicals). Other commonly used
abbreviations, such as i.e. and e.g. are OK,
but please use the U.S. method with periods,
not the English method without periodns (NOT
ie, eg, Mr, Mrs, etc, and so on, but i.e.,
e.g., Mr., Mrs., etc.)
Any number with fractions must be
represented with a dash between the whole
number and the fraction part (1-3/8 — NOT
13/8). If you are using a PC, use the
correct code to create the most common
fractions (holding down the Alt key while
typing the code number (e.g. Alt-0188 for ¼,
Alt-0189 for ½, and Alt-0190 for ¾).
Unfortunately Macs are not good at creating
special characters like these, and other
special characters tend to get lost or mixed
when transferring from a Mac disk to Windows format, so in that case, you’ll have
to use the form 1-1/2 etc., even for these
common fractions.)
Represent punctuation dashes (called
M-dashes) as two hyphens with a space before
and after (“It is — at least so I think — a
matter of style.” NOT “It is-at least so I
think-a matter of style,” and NOT “It is - at
least so I think - a matter of style”).
Represent from-to dashes (called
N-dashes) as two hyphens without a space
before and after (23--38, NOT 23-38 and NOT
23 - 38). In the finished, typeset document,
these will be replaced by the respective
correct symbols.
When quoting a reference by its page
number, leave a space between the “p.” or
“pp.” and the number itself (and don’t
forget that period after the p or the pp,
which are lower case letters, not capitals:
“e.g. Roberts, p. 93,” NOT “Roberts, p93,”
“Roberts 93” or “Roberts P93.”) |
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