Author Guidelines

If you intend to submit a manuscript please make sure that your account is labelled as “Author”. (If it is not, you will not be able to upload submissions). Standardly you will be registered as a reader, but for submitting an article you need to be registered as author too.

Format

Authors intending to publish with Aesthetic Investigations are encouraged to write their articles in LaTeX or Markdown. Authors may send their article in one of the following file formats:

  • Open Document Format (.odt)
  • Markdown (.md)
  • LaTeX (.tex) Note: make sure the .tex compiles
  • Word documents (.doc/.docx) are an acceptable alternative. Note, however, that Microsoft Word can also save your document in the Open Document Format.

Length

Contributions to the Articles Section should not normally exceed 7,500 words (including bibliography). An abstract should be added of no more than 150 words.
Contributions to the Fresh Section should not normally exceed 3,500 words (including bibliography). An abstract should be added of no more than 150 words.
Contributions to the Arts & Artists Section should not normally exceed 3000 words. An abstract should be added of no more than 150 words.
Contributions to the Review Section should not normally exceed 2000 words.

General guidelines

  • Articles must be written in clear, grammatical English. Aesthetic Investigations cannot provide any assistance with translating or language editing. Submissions in poor English will be rejected.
  • Use only italics for emphasis.
  • Do not use different colours for headings, block quotes, or any other part of your text.
  • Foreign-language quotations in both text and notes should be translated into English, unless the significance of the quotation will be lost. The original text may be included in a note if it is unpublished, difficult to access, or of special relevance to the article. Square brackets in quoted material indicate author's interpolation.

Punctuation

  • Quotation marks should be single quotes, except for quotes within quotes (which should be double).
  • Quotations longer than thirty words should be separated from the main text, indented, single-spaced and should have no quotation marks.
  • In-line quotations should include only punctuation that is included in the quoted source. Periods, commas, colons, semicolons, and question marks come after the quotation.
  • In general, use the serial comma (unless using it creates ambiguity).
  • Brackets within brackets should be square.
  • Diacritics (accents) should be added to all names or words where appropriate.

Referencing and footnotes

References should adhere to the guidelines set by the Chicago Manual of Style and should be in footnotes. In line with the Chicago Manual of Style's recommendation, please do not use "ibid.", but rather give a shortened version of the title. Please add corresponding pagenumbers wherever possible.

Bibliography

Instead of a plain text bibliography, authors must supply a BibTeX (.bib) file containing all entries cited and no more. Creating a BibTeX file is easy if you work with reference managers such as Zotero. The process is described below for Zotero (other reference managers will have a similar way of doing this):

  1. Select the bibilographic entries of your article, right-click (or command-click) and select "Export Items..."
  2. In the resulting menu, make sure to select "Western" for the character encoding, and click "OK"

If you do not work with a reference manager, instead of writing out your bibliography in plain text, please use the BibTeX Online Editor.

  1. Fill out the form for each entry in your bibliography, and click "Generate" next to the "Key" field to make sure your entry has an associated key.
  2. Once you are done entering all your bibliographic entries, click "File" > "Export". Make sure all the entries are checked and click the green "Export ->" button. A list of BibTeX entries now appears on the right. Select the list, copy, and paste it into a text editor (.txt) file on your computer. This is the file that you can send in.

Pro tip: publishers and journals often feature a "Cite this" button on their homepage which allows you to simply copy-paste a readymade BibTeX entry from their website.

Illustrations

  • Illustrations and pictures must be sent in separately and not be placed inside the text. Clearly indicate within the text the appropriate place of the illustrations and pictures.
  • Illustrations and pictures must be high-resolution (at least 300 ppi [300 dpi] at printable size) JPEG or TIFF files to be usable.
  • It is the author's responsibility to obtain permissions and to pay all reproduction fees.
  • Please begin acquiring images and clearing rights as soon as your article has been accepted. Delays affect the print schedules, and images will be dropped if permissions are not secured on time.

Fresh, Arts & Artists and Book Reviews

The contributions to the Fresh, and Arts & Artists Sections and to the Review Section are not reviewed anonymously by peers and so should include your name.

Translations

All texts submitted should be original, but we allow translations into English of articles and contributions to the Arts & Artists-section, with the provision that the quality of the English is the author's responsibility.

Authorship

All listed authors of the article should have made a significant contribution to the work. Others who have assisted in preparing the paper should be acknowledged in the article. 

Ensuring anonymous peer review

To ensure the integrity of the anonymous peer review for submission to this journal, every effort should be made to prevent the identities of the authors and reviewers from being known to each other. This involves the authors, editors, and reviewers (who upload documents as part of their review) checking to see if the following steps have been taken with regard to the text and the file properties:

  1. The authors of the document have deleted their names from the text, with "Author" and year used in the references and footnotes, instead of the authors' name, article title, etc.

  2. If you use LibreOffice, or Microsoft Word, you will also need to remove identifying information from the document properties.

Removing author identifying information is easiest using LibreOffice:

  • Under the File menu select: "Properties..."
  • A menu opens. In this menu, make sure "Apply user data" is not checked, then click "Reset Properties" and then click "Ok"
  • Then save the file.

Removing author identifying information can also be done using Microsoft Word (2016; 2019; Office 365) on a Windows computer, but for some reason it is a rather cumbersome process:

  • Select the "File" tab and choose "Info"
  • Click "Check for Issues" and select "Inspect Document" from the drop-down menu
  • Check the box that says "Document Properties and Personal Information" and click "Inspect"
  • After Word is done checking your document, a window opens with the results. There, you can click "Remove all" next to "Document Properties and Personal Information"
  • Click "Close" and save your document.

Removing author identifying information using Word 2016/Office 365 for Mac:

  • Go to the "Review" tab listed in the top menu. Select the option "Protect", and then "Protect document"
  • A menu opens. In this menu check the box that says "Remove personal information from this file on save", and click "OK".
  • Then save the file.