Aims and scope

Continuity and Change is published three times a year and covers the fields of social structure, law and demography in past societies. It is strongly committed to publishing work accessible to the broadest possible audience. The journal also has a strong commitment to comparative studies over a broad range of cultures and time spans.

Preparing your article for submission

1. Articles should be no more than 10,000 words, excluding endnotes. The paper must be accompanied by an abstract of no more than 200 words on a separate sheet, also showing the title, each author's name, affiliation, contact details, competing interest declaration (see below for guidance on what this should look like), and the word length of the paper with and without endnotes. The author's name should not be included anywhere else on the paper (except in footnote references), to ensure anonymity when the paper is sent to referees. Similarly, authors should take care that they cannot be identified from endnote references. Where necessary, articles should be divided into subsections designated by Arabic numerals and subtitles. Texts should be double-spaced throughout.

2. Text should be submitted with endnotes not footnotes. The endnotes should be numbered consecutively using Arabic numerals and be double-spaced on separate pages at the end of the text. They should be placed outside punctuation marks. Bibliographical references should be given in full in the endnotes when first cited; thereafter use author surname and short title. Avoid all Latinisms (op. cit., etc.), though 'Ibid.' may be used for citation of a single reference appearing in the preceding endnote. A separate bibliography is not required. The first citation of a book should give: Author's (or Editor's) forename or initials and surname, as specified on the title page; full title in italics (capitals for first word and proper names only); edition (if second or later); place and date of publication (in parentheses); any page number(s).

Examples:

E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The population history of England 1541–1871: a reconstruction (London, 1981).

J. Smith ed., Studies in English internal trade, 2nd edn (London, 1988), 417–30.

Christer Lundh, Swedish marriages: customs, legislation and demography in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Lund Papers in Economic History, 88 (Lund, 2003).

Subsequent citations should give: author's or editor's surname; short title (in italics); page numbers.

Example:

Wrigley and Schofield, Population history of England, 447–9.

Essays in edited volumes

The first citation of such an essay should give: Author's forename (or initials) and surname; essay title (in single inverted commas); forenames and surnames of the Editors, full title of the book in italics (capitals for first word and proper names only); edition (if second or later); place and date of publication (in parentheses); page numbers.

Example:

Noriko O. Tsuya and Satomi Kurosu, ‘Economic and household covariates of first marriage in early modern Japan, evidence from two northeastern villages, 1716–1870’, in Catharine Caplone and Muriel Neven eds., Family structure, demography and population: a comparison of societies in Asia and Europe (Liège, 2000), 131–57.

Subsequent citations:

Tsuya and Kurosu, ‘Economic and household covariates’, 133–5.

The first citation of an article should give: Author's forename (or initials) and surname; article title (in single inverted commas); journal title in italics (capitalized according to the style of the particular journal); volume number in bold (Arabic or Roman numerals according to the style of the journal in question ); part number (optional); date of publication (in parentheses); page numbers.

Examples:

Frans van Poppel, ‘Widows, widowers and remarriage in nineteenth-century Netherlands’, Population Studies 49, 3 (1995), 421–41.

Subsequent citation:

Van Poppel, ‘Widows’, 435.

The first citation of a thesis should give: Author's forename (or initials) and surname; title (capitalize as book title, in inverted commas); degree, university and date (in parentheses).

Example:

J. B. Post, 'Criminals and the law in the reign of Richard II with special reference to Hampshire' (unpublished D. Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1976).

Subsequent citation:

Post, 'Criminals and the law', 53.

The first citation of material from an archive should give the name of the repository in full, with location included. If there are subsequent citations of material from the same repository, an abbreviated reference can be used: e.g. The National Archives, UK (hereafter TNA), DL30.63.790; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (hereafter BN), MS lat. 5650. Citation of archival material should follow the conventions of the archive in question, but use the following: MS, MSS (pl.); fo., fos.; r (recto), v (verso)

Internet citations

Citations of websites should identify the site and (where applicable) when it was last updated or accessed.

Examples:

Jonathan Mane-Wheoki, ‘Strouts, Frederick 1834–1919’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, 

http//www.dnzb.govt.nz/  [updated 22 June 2007].

Satomi Kurosu, ‘Divorce and stem-family household organization in early modern Japan’, paper presented at the Population Association of America (Boston, 2004), available on http://paa2004.princeton.edu/abstractViewer.asp?su...

3. Maps and graphs (which should be referred to as 'figures' in their titles and in the text) and tables should not be included in the manuscript but be submitted, along with their titles and any accompanying notes or references to sources, in files marked 'figures' or 'tables' as appropriate and the text annotated to indicate where they should be placed. Please note figures and maps can only be represented in hardcopy in black and white or in gray scale. Colour figures can only be reproduced online. Tables must be numbered consecutively and referred to in the text as such: '(see Table 1)', not '(see table below)'. The table number and table title should be typed above the body of the table. Please make sure that the title indicates fully and clearly the contents of the table, and includes the geographic area, and time period to which it refers. The title should ‘stand alone’, so that the reader has no reason to refer to the text for clarification. Type a horizontal rule above and below the body of the table and below column headings, but avoid vertical rules. Notes, indicated by raised lower-case letters, and source(s) should be typed below the bottom rule. Notes should include a key to any abbreviations used within the table, and sources should be laid out in full, not in short form. If percentages are cited in the table give '%' as a column heading and do not repeat it within the body of the table. Tables should be in either Word or Excel format.

Figures should be numbered consecutively. Please ensure that your figures are saved at final publication size (110 x 175 mm) and are in our recommended file formats (tiff, jpeg, pdf, Excel or Powerpoint). Please be mindful of how your maps and graphs will look when reproduced at this size. It is the author's responsibility to ensure that typefaces and font sizes are legible.

Figure titles, notes and sources should be laid out as for Tables (see above). Following these guidelines will result in high quality images being reproduced in both the print and the online versions of the journal. If you require any further guidance on creating suitable electronic figures, please visit our guide for authors. Here you will find extensive guidelines on preparing electronic figures.

4. British conventions for spelling and punctuation are followed. Foreign words or phrases in an English sentence should be italicized, except for proper names or quotations and words in common usage, and an English translation provided (either in parentheses or in an endnote). Use single inverted commas for quotations, with double inverted commas only for quotations within quotations. Quotations longer than about 55 words should be broken off from the text and indented from the left-hand margin, without inverted commas. Use words for numbers up to ten, thereafter Arabic numerals, with the exceptions that (a) numbers are used for percentages and fractions, (b) words are used for numbers at the beginning of a sentence and (c) numbers and words should not be mixed, e.g. '9 men and 12 women', rather than 'nine men and 12 women'.

Use '1930s' not '1930's', 'the fourteenth century' not 'the 14th century', 1,000 not 1000, 'per cent' not '%' in main text (although % is acceptable in tables). Spans of numbers should be elided to the smallest unit, e.g. 23–5, 296–8, 216–18. But dates should be in full, e.g. 1914–1918.

5. The journal is published in English and the Editors reserve the right to request authors to meet the costs of major correction to the English that are considered necessary after the articles have been reviewed and resubmitted by the authors. The Editors advise all authors whose native language is not English to have their revised papers read by a native speaker of English who is familiar with the subject area and with academic standards of prose prior to resubmitting their articles.

6. It is the responsibility of contributors to obtain permission to reproduce any material in which they do not hold copyright (illustrations, tables, extensive quotations). Please ensure that the appropriate acknowledgements are included in figure captions, etc. Copies of any permissions correspondence should be sent to the Editor. Submission of an article will be taken to imply that it is unpublished and is not being considered for publication elsewhere.

7. If the editors or copy-editor have any queries about your article these will be sent to you by email in the form of a list. Please return your answers to the editors or copy-editor within one week of receipt.

Preparing your article for double-anonymous peer review

Potentially identifying information that should be removed from manuscripts to allow for double-anonymous review includes:

• The title of the article
• Names and affiliations of all authors
• Authors’ contact details such as mail and email addresses
• Acknowledgements
• Funding information
• Details of any ethical approvals relevant to the manuscript
• Disclosure statements such as competing interests or data availability statements

Further things to consider when anonymising your manuscript:

• Ensure any additional files that will be available to peer reviewers (for example figures and supplementary materials) are also anonymised.
• Avoid using first-person pronouns (I/we) when referring to previous research by the author(s); use third person instead.
• Do not omit references to previous publications by the author(s), as this may draw attention to these references. It is also important for reviewers to be able to check all references.
• For revised manuscripts, ensure the response to the review comments does not contain any author details (name, affiliation).

Seeking permissions for copyrighted material

You can read more about rights and permissions here: http://www.cambridge.org/gb/about-us/rights-permissions/

Ethics and transparency policy requirements

Please ensure that you check the journal's Publishing ethics policies when preparing your materials.

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.

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)].