Aims and scope
Contemporary European History covers the history of eastern and western Europe, including the United Kingdom, from 1914 to the present. By combining a wide geographical compass with a relatively short time span, the journal achieves both range and depth. It is open to all forms of historical enquiry—including cultural, economic, international, political and social approaches—and welcomes comparative and transnational analysis.
Research articles
The journal welcomes submissions which meet its geographical and chronological focus as stated above, strengthens its broad intellectual aims, and make a clear contribution to the field of European history. Submissions of research articles are expected to meet standard academic practice, which includes: emphasis on archival research and primary sources; critical engagement with and discussion of the historiography and methodology; appropriate referencing and use of footnotes; acceptable grammar and written English. Authors must clearly state if the content and/or arguments of the submission are reproduced elsewhere in the same, or a similar, form. The Editors reserve the right to reject any submissions which do not meet those standards.
Contributors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce any material in which they do not hold copyright and for ensuring that the appropriate acknowledgements are included in their text.
Contributors are to keep to the stylistic conventions set out below. For those submissions which reach the final stages of the review process, the contributor will be asked to verify that their manuscript meets these conventions. Editors will return any contribution which does not follow the conventions for correction and re-typing.
Review articles and other essays
The journal only publishes review articles, not individual book reviews. Review articles usually cover 2-8 recently published books that fall within the chronological and geographical remit of the journal. Reviews articles can be up to 5,000 words long, not including footnotes. The books for review can be in any language, but most review articles are written in English.
All review articles are commissioned by one or more of the reviews editors. Review articles undergo a rigorous process of internal peer review, which may involve other editors or board members; the decision to commission an article does not commit the journal to publishing the final manuscript, although the reviews editors will work with authors to address any problems that may arise. Prospective authors are welcome to contact the reviews editors with ideas for review articles, but the final decision about whether to commission a review article remains entirely with the editors. Authors of review articles are expected to have completed their PhD or an equivalent qualification.
From time to time, the journal also publishes other commissioned essays for specific series (eg. the Spotlight series). These are managed by the reviews editors in the same way as review articles.
Special Issue and Forum proposals
CEH usually sets aside one issue per year for the exploration of a particular theme or topic. There is no restriction on the kind of theme that can to be addressed in these issues, as long as it fits broadly within CEH’s remit of twentieth century European history.
CEH publishes special issues that are original and broad, in their coverage and/or conceptual approach, and addressed to a general European history audience. Special issues are an appropriate vehicle for scholars wishing to consider the current ‘state of the field’, to reflect on seminal events or processes that have shaped modern European history, or to explore different methodological approaches or potential avenues for future research. Workshops or conferences often provide the initial stimulus for a special issue, but usually require modification – for example by selection of the most relevant papers, and by broadened scope with additional contributions – before they can be turned into special issues. In any given year, a sizeable proportion of the journal’s most widely read papers come from its special issues, and some issues establish themselves as defining contributions to their respective sub-fields. Special issues usually comprise of seven to ten articles.
A smaller selection of articles on a shared theme can be published as a forum. Forums usually comprise of three to six articles, and will be published in the same issue with other, non-themed articles. The main difference between a special issue and forum is the number of articles that are included, and a shorter introduction.
Contributors interested in publishing a special issue or forum should contact one or more editors directly to enquire about the specific guidelines. After an initial contact, the guidelines would then be sent to the guest editor(s), including the proposal guidelines. The proposal will roughly include: summary of overarching theme and contribution; planned contents; abstracts; indication of schedule.
Once a full proposal (about 1,000 words) is received, it is reviewed by editors and board members before a decision is made. If a proposal gets accepted, the individual articles must still go through the peer-review process to be accepted for publication.
Preparation of text
Articles should normally be about 8,000 words long, not including footnotes. Review articles should not exceed 5,000 words. All articles must be submitted in Word format.
Abstracts should be no more than 250 words and should not have a heading. Please note that forums and review articles have no abstracts.
The journal is published in English, and contributions are normally submitted in that language. All articles, including commissioned ones, will go through a peer-review system.
Stylistic conventions
Basic text conventions:
- Text should be formatted double spaced throughout; wide margins should be left on all sides.
- Pages should be numbered consecutively.
- Footnotes (the required referencing style) should be formatted double spaced, placed at the end of the article and numbered consecutively throughout the article text. Arabic numerals should be used.
Please ensure that you consult the authors instructions in full prior to submission.
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”.
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 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.
Acknowledgements
Authors can use this section to acknowledge and thank colleagues, institutions, workshop organisers, family members, etc. that have helped with the research and/or writing process. It is important that that any type of funding information or financial support is listed under ‘Financial Support’ rather than Acknowledgements so that it can be recorded separately (see here).
We are aware that authors sometimes receive assistance from technical writers, language editors, artificial intelligence (AI) tools, and/or writing agencies in drafting manuscripts for publication. Such assistance must be noted in the cover letter and in the Acknowledgements section, along with a declaration that the author(s) are entirely responsible for the scientific content of the paper and that the paper adheres to the journal’s authorship policy. Failure to acknowledge assistance from technical writers, language editors, AI tools and/or writing agencies in drafting manuscripts for publication in the cover letter and in the Acknowledgements section may lead to disqualification of the paper. Examples of how to acknowledge assistance in drafting manuscripts:
- “The author(s) thank [name and qualifications] of [company, city, country] for providing [medical/technical/language] writing support/editorial support [specify and/or expand as appropriate], which was funded by [sponsor, city, country]."
- “The author(s) made use of [AI system/tool] to assist with the drafting of this article. [AI version details] was accessed/obtained from [source details] and used with/without modification [specify and/or expand as appropriate] on [date(s)].
Author Hub
You can find guides for many aspects of publishing with Cambridge at Author Hub, our suite of resources for Cambridge authors.