Preparing your materials

Aims and scope

Computational Humanities Research (CHR) is an open access journal in the computational humanities, publishing transdisciplinary papers that are grounded in humanities research questions and use computational, quantitative methodologies to analyse humanities data in its various forms.

CHR publishes research that tackles big questions and solves problems pertaining to the humanities through advanced computational methods, contributing empirically to major theoretical, cultural, and historical inquiry. It seeks papers that spotlight quantitative and computational methods and applications, including the practical use and impact of computational techniques, in humanities research.

For more details about the journal’s aims and scope, please visit the Author instructions page.

Article types

The following article types are available for submission at CHR:

Article type	Length	Abstract required	Notes
Research Article	6,000-10,000 words (12-16 pages)	Yes
Replication Study	6,000-10,000 words (12-16 pages)	Yes
Registered Report Protocol (Stage 1)	2,000-4,000 words (4-8 pages)	Yes	Please consult the journal’s guidance on ‘Registered Report Protocols’ below.
Registered Report (Stage 2)	6,000-10,000 words (12-16 pages)	Yes	Please consult the journal’s guidance on ‘Registered Reports’ below.
Rapid Communication	Max. 6,000 words (12 pages)	Yes
Short Article	Max. 6,000 words (12 pages)	Yes
Software Paper	Max. 6,000 words (12 pages)	Yes
Position Paper	Max. 6,000 words (12 pages)	Yes	By invitation/enquiry only – if you have a submission proposal or query, please contact the CHR Editorial Office (chr@cambridge.org).
Tutorial	Max. 6,000 words (12 pages)	Yes	By invitation/enquiry only – if you have a submission proposal or query, please contact the CHR Editorial Office (chr@cambridge.org).
Survey Paper	6,000-12,000 words (12-30 pages)	Yes

Registered Reports

Registered Reports are a two-stage publication format, in which a research study design is submitted and peer-reviewed as a Registered Report Protocol before the research is actually conducted. For more information, please see the Cambridge guidance on Registered Reports.

Registered Reports may be novel studies or replication studies.

Registered Report Protocols (Stage 1)

Registered Report Protocols outline a planned study design for research that has not yet been started: reviewers will assess the study proposal before data are collected. For details on how Registered Report Protocols are peer reviewed, please see the Cambridge reviewer guidelines for Registered Reports.

If the Registered Report Protocol is accepted following peer review, it will be published online in the journal immediately upon acceptance.

The cover letter for a Registered Report Protocol should include:

A brief scientific case for the proposed research.
An anticipated timeline for completing the proposed research.

Registered Report Protocols should be organised into the following sections:

Introduction
Methods (written in future tense)
Potential results section (optional).

Registered Reports (Stage 2)

Completed Registered Reports should consist of the original Registered Report Protocol plus full details of any Results, Analysis, and Discussion.

Peer review of completed Registered Reports will assess whether the original study design as reported in the Registered Report Protocol has been followed, and whether any deviations from the original study design have been satisfactorily explained. Where possible, completed Registered Reports will be assessed by the same reviewers as the original Registered Report Protocol. For more details, please see the Cambridge reviewer guidelines for Registered Reports.

If the completed Registered Report is also accepted, it will be published online immediately upon acceptance. A link to the original Registered Report Protocol will be included within the completed Registered Report, once it has been published.

The cover letter for a completed Registered Report should include:

A statement confirming that no data used in the study was collected prior to the date of Registered Report Protocol acceptance, and no analysis was carried out prior to this date.
Confirmation that the manuscript contains a full citation to the Registered Report Protocol (including its DOI).

Completed Registered Report manuscripts should include:

Introduction and Methods – any changes to these sections as they appeared in the Registered Report Protocol must be clearly explained. The Methods section should be converted from future tense to past tense.
Results and Discussion – these must cover all the results of all analyses planned in the original Registered Report Protocol, and explain any deviations from the original study design.

Rapid Responses

Readers will have the opportunity to submit Rapid Responses to CHR to provide comments, questions and/or responses on articles published in the journal. They will be a tool to foster debate among the computational humanities (CH) community and provide up-to-date commentary on any notable advancements in the field, by enriching research impact and fostering dynamic discussions within the CH field and beyond.

Rapid Responses don’t have a DOI and form part of a post-publication discussion for a manuscript. They undergo moderation (by the Editors-in-Chief), but do not undergo peer review.
If deemed appropriate, they will be published in the journal alongside the article they are commenting on.

Authors that wish to submit a Rapid Response to a CHR article can do so by clicking the ‘Submit a response button’ on the relevant article. The article’s authors will also be able to reply to any comments by clicking the ‘Write a reply’ button.

Preparing your article for submission

Main document file type

For the initial submission, authors should upload their (anonymised) manuscripts in PDF or MS Word, selecting the file designation 'Main Document' and embedding all figures and tables within the Main Document file. Authors are strongly encouraged to compose their manuscripts in LaTeX, using the style file provided below. A PDF of the LaTeX file should then be generated and submitted via the submission site. If not using LaTeX, authors should use double-spacing throughout.

Upon acceptance of the manuscript, the LaTeX source files, along with individual figure files and a PDF of the final version, will need to be submitted for typesetting purposes. You can use the style files available on Overleaf or linked below to prepare your manuscript:
CHR LaTeX Files

For more information about how to submit your manuscript directly via Overleaf, please see the further guidance in the 'Overleaf' section below.

Peer review and anonymisation

CHR operates on a double-anonymous peer review policy: authorship of submitted articles must be anonymised. Citations to work conducted by the author(s) need not be anonymised but should be talked about in third person to preserve anonymity. Please ensure that all materials in online repositories are also anonymised (e.g., use anonymised view-only links on OSF and make sure that scripts contain no author-identifying information).

Manuscript requirements

All articles submitted to the journal should include:

Abstract: maximum 300 words.
Plain language summary: a brief (maximum 500 words) ‘plain language summary’ should be provided alongside the Abstract, explaining research goals, methods, and findings in non-technical terms.
Keywords: 3-6 relevant keywords.
Word/page count: see full article list above.
Cover letter: making, in brief, the case for your research and why it would be relevant for CHR.

Authors are encouraged to use one of the following article organisational structures depending on the article type selected and relevant subject matter:

Research Articles covering empirical studies: Introduction – Methods – Results and Discussion (i.e., IMRaD default structure).
Research Articles based on modelling and simulations: Introduction – Model – Initial Result – Analysis Method – Results – Conclusion.
Short Papers: Introduction – Results – Discussion (optional Methods in Appendix).

Papers published as Proceedings of the CHR Conference

Computational Humanities Research encourages authors that have submitted and published their paper as Proceedings of the CHR Conference (see 2023, 2022, 2021 and 2020 Proceedings of the Computational Humanities Research Conference) to submit their extended and/or re-worked article to the journal.

Authors who wish to submit their CHR Proceedings paper the journal should:

Fully cite the paper published in the Proceedings of the CHR Conference.
Include a link to the original proceedings paper and explain the differences between the two papers in the cover letter.
Substantively extend, re-work and/or expand the data, analysis and/or published results included in the previous proceedings paper.

Language accessibility guidelines

Authors are encouraged to contextualise computational techniques within humanities research areas (e.g., language, history, arts) ensuring that the significance and implications of the research are clear to readers not versed in computational methods.

Authors are further encouraged to make the language and writing style used in their manuscript as accessible as possible:

Include a Glossary – authors are encouraged to include a glossary of technical terms and acronyms, making the articles more accessible to interdisciplinary readers and those new to the field.
Use clear and concise writing – e.g., avoid overly complex sentences and writing in short and clear sentences instead; avoid jargon, acronyms, or abbreviations; providing explanations for technical terms; provide a Glossary of terms (see above) or a list of abbreviations, if appropriate; use the active voice, where possible.
Structure paragraphs clearly – e.g., use unique titles/headers; use keywords in headings and subheadings; use bullet lists, where appropriate.
Use inclusive language – and avoid using language that might be perceived as offensive or insensitive.

Referencing system

CHR follows the Chicago Manual of Style (Author-Date).

Examples:

Book chapter

In-text citation: (Thoreau 2016, 177–78)
Reference list entry: Thoreau, Henry David. 2016. “Walking.” In The Making of the American Essay, edited by John D’Agata, 167–95. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press.

Journal article

In text citation: (Keng, Lin, and Orazem 2017, 9–10)
Reference list entry: Keng, Shao-Hsun, Chun-Hung Lin, and Peter F. Orazem. 2017. “Expanding College Access in Taiwan, 1978–2014: Effects on Graduate Quality and Income Inequality.” Journal of Human Capital 11, no. 1 (Spring): 1–34. https://doi.org/10.1086/690235.

Website

In text citation: (Bouman 2016)
Reference list entry: Bouman, Katie. 2016. “How to Take a Picture of a Black Hole.” Filmed November 2016 at TEDxBeaconStreet, Brookline, MA. Video, 12:51.

Book

In text citations: (Smith 2016, 315–16)
Reference list entry: Smith, Zadie. 2016. Swing Time. New York: Penguin Press.

Formatting requirements

Author affiliations, where applicable, should adhere to the following conventions:

Department/school, university/institution, city, state/province, country (abbreviate USA and UK)
Use two-letter postal codes for state/province names
If an author has multiple affiliations or if there are multiple authors, use superscript Arabic numerals to differentiate affiliations.

Spelling: either American- or British-English spelling can be used, but either should be used consistently throughout the paper.

Quotes: “double” quotation marks should be used, with periods and commas inside marks and ‘single’ quotation marks for quotes within quotes. Quotes of more than fifty words should be set as extracts with no quotation marks.

Title: the title should be written in sentence case, with subtitle run in and separated from the title by a colon.

Order of parentheses in text: ([])

Commas: the serial comma should be used.

Abbreviations and acronyms: authors should spell out in full any abbreviations used in their manuscripts the first time that they use it.

Measurements and units: percentages should always be expressed as numerals, even when they are less than 10. However, you should spell out percentages if they begin a sentence. For example: Sales increased 5 percent. Fifty percent of this was due to Aitha. Only use the percent symbol (%) in figures and tables and parentheses.

Numbers: numbers less than 10 should be spelt out. Numerals should be used for numbers of 10 or larger. Exceptions to this rule:

Numbers of years are always spelled, as in “two to three years.”
Numbers beginning a sentence are always spelled out, as in “Fifteen different models were used…”
When a number is spelled out according to one of the rules above and is associated with another number, that second number is also spelled out in order to maintain a consistent appearance. For example, “Fifteen of the twenty-two plans…” instead of “Fifteen of the 22 plans…”.

Punctuation: place punctuation inside the quote if the quote is mid-sentence. For example: “You may confirm this,” said Smith (2008).

Figures and tables: All figures must be called out in the body of the text, in sequential order. All titles and notes to figures and tables must be self-explanatory and sourced (with full references provided as outlined above).

Figures may have sources, and tables must have sources.
Table column and row headings should be written in sentence case.

For more information how to submit figures and artwork, visit the Cambridge Journals Artwork Guide.

Note: If your article contains any material in which you do not own copyright, including figures, charts, tables, photographs or excerpts of text, you must obtain permission from the copyright holder to reuse that material. For more details, see the Cambridge guidance on seeking permissions for copyrighted material.

Reporting requirements

All articles submitted to the journal should include the following statements:

Acknowledgements (optional) – including a statement disclosing the use of AI during manuscript preparation, if relevant (see ‘Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools’ section below).
Authorship contribution statement (CRediT) (mandatory) – see ‘Authorship and contributorship’ section below
Conflict of interest statement (mandatory) – see ‘Competing interests’ section below
Funding disclosure statement (mandatory)
Data availability statement (mandatory) – see the journal's research transparency policies.

Please read the CHR's research transparency requirements before submitting your manuscript. For more information about sharing CHR Notebooks using CoCalc, also see the journal's guidance on CHR Notebooks.

Preprinting

CHR encourages submissions of articles previously preprinted on a public repository (e.g., ArXiV; OSF Preprints; etc.). CHR also encourages authors to preprint their article (if they haven’t done so already) upon submission to the journal.

For more information, please read the Cambridge Preprint Policy.

Policy on prior publication

When authors submit manuscripts to this journal, these manuscripts should not be under consideration, accepted for publication or in press within a different journal, book or similar entity, unless explicit permission or agreement has been sought from all entities involved. However, deposition of a preprint on the author’s personal website, in an institutional repository, or in a preprint archive shall not be viewed as prior or duplicate publication. Authors should follow the Cambridge University Press Preprint Policy regarding preprint archives and maintaining the version of record.

Overleaf

Overleaf is a free online tool for writing and submitting scholarly manuscripts. An Overleaf template is available for this journal, which allows authors to easily comply with the journal’s guidelines.

Benefits of using Overleaf include:

An intuitive interface, in which authors can write in LaTeX or rich text and see a preview of their article typeset in the journal’s style
Features enabling collaboration with co-authors (the ability to share, highlight and comment on versions of articles)
Sophisticated version control
Clean PDF conversion and submission into the journal’s online manuscripts system (supporting materials can also be added during this process)

Overleaf is based on LaTeX but includes a rich text mode. An author writing in Overleaf would need to have some knowledge of LaTeX, but could collaborate through the tool with an author who is not a LaTeX expert. Overleaf’s tutorial pages include a two minute video and an introduction to LaTeX course, and Overleaf also provides support for authors using the tool.

Note: authors should flatten their image files before uploading them to Overleaf and the journal’s submission system. This can be done by using Photoshop or GIMP, an open source Photoshop equivalent, both of which have a ‘Flatten Image’ option in the Layer menu. If you are using a locally installed LaTeX editor, it’s also possible to use in-line commands to do a round-trip conversion – see this Overleaf help page for more information.

Competing Interests

All authors must include a competing interest declaration in their title page. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and may be published in the article.

Competing interests are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the content or publication of an author’s work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations.

If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting must include competing interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors.

Example wording for a declaration is as follows: “Competing interests: Author 1 is employed at organisation A, Author 2 is on the Board of company B and is a member of organisation C. Author 3 has received grants from company D.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none”.

Authorship and contributorship

All authors listed on any papers submitted to this journal must be in agreement that the authors listed would all be considered authors according to disciplinary norms, and that no authors who would reasonably be considered an author have been excluded. For further details on this journal’s authorship policy, please see this journal's publishing ethics policies.

CRediT taxonomy for contributors

When submitting a manuscript, the corresponding author will be prompted to provide further details concerning contributions to the manuscript using the CRediT taxonomy. CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) is a high-level taxonomy, including 14 designated options, that can be used to represent the roles typically played by contributors to scholarly output. All parties who have contributed to the scholarly work, but do not meet the full criteria for authorship, should be recognised with their contributions described in terms of the CRediT taxonomy.

Our default position is that the corresponding author has the authority to act on behalf of all co-authors, and we expect the corresponding author to confirm this at the beginning of the submission process. When preparing your manuscript you should also ensure that you obtain permission from all contributors to describe their contributions using the CRediT taxonomy.

Author affiliations

Author affiliations should represent the institution(s) at which the research presented was conducted and/or supported and/or approved. For non-research content, any affiliations should represent the institution(s) with which each author is currently affiliated.

For more information, please see our author affiliation policy and author affiliation FAQs.

Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools

We acknowledge the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the research and writing processes. To ensure transparency, we expect any such use to be declared and described fully to readers, and to comply with our plagiarism policy and best practices regarding citation and acknowledgements. We do not consider artificial intelligence (AI) tools to meet the accountability requirements of authorship, and therefore generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and similar should not be listed as an author on any submitted content.

In particular, any use of an AI tool:

to generate images within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, and declared clearly in the image caption(s)
to generate text within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, include appropriate and valid references and citations, and be declared in the manuscript’s Acknowledgements.
to analyse or extract insights from data or other materials, for example through the use of text and data mining, should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, including details and appropriate citation of any dataset(s) or other material analysed in all relevant and appropriate areas of the manuscript
must not present ideas, words, data, or other material produced by third parties without appropriate acknowledgement or permission

Descriptions of AI processes used should include at minimum the version of the tool/algorithm used, where it can be accessed, any proprietary information relevant to the use of the tool/algorithm, any modifications of the tool made by the researchers (such as the addition of data to a tool’s public corpus), and the date(s) it was used for the purpose(s) described. Any relevant competing interests or potential bias arising as a consequence of the tool/algorithm’s use should be transparently declared and may be discussed in the article.

ORCID

We require all corresponding authors to identify themselves using ORCID when submitting a manuscript to this journal. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration with key research workflows such as manuscript submission and grant applications, provides the following benefits:

Discoverability: ORCID increases the discoverability of your publications, by enabling smarter publisher systems and by helping readers to reliably find work that you have authored.
Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your iD or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID record, and will enable you to share this information with other systems and platforms you use, saving you re-keying information multiple times.
Keeping track: Your ORCID record is a neat place to store and (if you choose) share validated information about your research activities and affiliations.

See our ORCID FAQs for more information.

If you don’t already have an iD, you will need to create one if you decide to submit a manuscript to this journal. You can register for one directly from your user account on ScholarOne, or alternatively via https://ORCID.org/register.

If you already have an iD, please use this when submitting your manuscript, either by linking it to your ScholarOne account, or by supplying it during submission using the "Associate your existing ORCID iD" button.

ORCIDs can also be used if authors wish to communicate to readers up-to-date information about how they wish to be addressed or referred to (for example, they wish to include pronouns, additional titles, honorifics, name variations, etc.) alongside their published articles. We encourage authors to make use of the ORCID profile’s “Published Name” field for this purpose. This is entirely optional for authors who wish to communicate such information in connection with their article. Please note that this method is not currently recommended for author name changes: see Cambridge’s author name change policy if you want to change your name on an already published article. See our ORCID FAQs for more information.

Supplementary materials

Material that is not essential to understanding or supporting a manuscript, but which may nonetheless be relevant or interesting to readers, may be submitted as supplementary material. Supplementary material will be published online alongside your article, but will not be published in the pages of the journal. Types of supplementary material may include, but are not limited to, appendices, additional tables or figures, datasets, videos, and sound files.

Supplementary materials will not be typeset or copyedited, so should be supplied exactly as they are to appear online. Please see our general guidance on supplementary materials for further information.

Where relevant we encourage authors to publish additional qualitative or quantitative research outputs in an appropriate repository, and cite these in manuscripts.

English language editing services

Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, may wish to have their English-language manuscripts checked by a native speaker before submission. This step is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the Editor and any reviewers.

In order to help prospective authors to prepare for submission and to reach their publication goals, Cambridge University Press offers a range of high-quality manuscript preparation services, including language editing. You can find out more on our language services page.

Please note that the use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge-published journal.

Author Hub

You can find guides for many aspects of publishing with Cambridge at Author Hub, our suite of resources for Cambridge authors.

Last updated July 2024