The IJMES editorial office welcomes submissions of full-length scholarly articles. Please review the following before submitting an article to IJMES. Submissions not conforming to IJMES guidelines may be returned.
· Our General Submission Information
· Manuscript Preparation and Style
· Peer Review and Publication
· Open Access
· Publication Ethics
· The IJMES Transliteration Guide, Chart, and Word List if your article contains words from non-Latin scripts.
General Submission Information
All articles should be uploaded as MS Word documents through our ScholarOne system.
IJMES focuses on the area encompassing the Middle East and adjacent geo-cultural regions from the seventh century to the present. This area includes North and Sub-Saharan Africa, the Arab, Turkic and Persianate worlds, the Mediterranean and Balkans, Central, South and Southeast Asia and areas to which peoples from these lands have migrated or settled. Essays on communities that have historical, political, cultural or religious ties to the Middle East and on transnational or trans-regional relations are encouraged. Particular attention will be paid to works dealing with anthropology, art and architecture, cultural studies, economics, gender and LGBQT studies, history, indigenous studies, law, literature, political science, religious studies, and sociology. IJMES does not accept technical or highly specialized material, nor does it publish in the areas of administration or training. Please look at articles in recent issues for an idea of what we publish.
IJMES editorial policy requires that articles be based on original research and the careful analysis of archival and other primary-source materials. IJMES evaluates manuscripts with the understanding that they have not been published elsewhere in any language and are not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
IJMES remains committed to combatting conscious or unconscious bias with regard to gender, sexual preference, class, ethnicity, religion, or nationality. The journal also remains committed to expanding the scope of international multi-lingual research that strives to interpret the lived and living experiences of peoples of diverse backgrounds and orientations.
The Editorial Office at the University of Arkansas maintains its website here.
Manuscript Preparation and Style
General
An article must be in English and may not exceed 10,000 words or roughly thirty-five double- spaced pages in 12-point font (including main text, footnotes, tables, and figure captions). The entire manuscript—including footnotes, tables, and references— should be double-spaced and numbered consecutively. IJMES follows a double-blind peer review process, so authors should avoid putting their names in headers or footers and avoid any references to themselves in the body or the endnotes that might betray their identity to referees. Selected citations of the author's well known published work may be included only if the absence of such citations would be conspicuous. Submissions should not include acknowledgments; these can be added later if the manuscript is accepted.
All submissions must include a 150-word abstract, 3-5 relevant keywords, and a cover email or letter that includes the author's name, academic discipline and institutional affiliation (if any), mailing address, telephone number, e-mail address, and competing interest declaration.
Competing interest declaration: All authors must include a competing interests declaration in their cover email/letter. 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 A is employed at company B. Author C owns shares in company D, is on the Board of company E and is a member of organisation F. Author G has received grants from company H.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none”.
Cambridge recommends that authors have their manuscripts checked by an English language native speaker before submission; this will ensure that submissions are judged at peer review exclusively on academic merit. Should authors need additional help with language editing prior to submission, Cambridge University Press partners with American Journal Experts to provide a high quality service to authors. More information can be found here. Use of this service is entirely voluntary and does not guarantee acceptance, nor does its use require authors to later submit to a Cambridge journal.
Style
The Journal conforms to the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition. Transliteration follows a modified Encyclopedia of Islam system, which is detailed on this page.
References
As of July 2019, IJMES has moved from the use of endnotes to the use of footnotes. In general, IJMES now follows the footnote citation guidelines laid out in The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition.
Footnotes should appear at the end of sentences, never in the middle. Additionally, footnotes should be consolidated in order to reduce their total number throughout the paper.
Whenever possible, cite print sources instead of electronic copies. Footnotes should be double-spaced. When citing multiple sources in a footnote, order them in accordance with their appearance in the paragraph. If the sources have no apparent order within the text, order them chronologically.
When prefacing additional references, use the phrase “See also.” When prefacing one or two examples of many, use the phrase “For instance, see”; “and” should always precede the final entry in such a list.
When citing a source published in a city with a common name, include the state or country after the city’s name (e.g. Cambridge, MA or Cambridge, UK). For state names, use the standard, two-letter code of the United States Postal Service.
For examples, please see the Chicago Manual of Style page.
When referencing specific pages of a text, do not use abbreviations (e.g. p., pp., ff., idem, para., esp.), with the exception of “ch” or “chs” to indicate a specific chapter or chapters.
Use “ibid.” to reference the same citation as in the previous footnote, but avoid it if there are several references in the previous footnote. Do not use “op. cit.” or “passim” in footnotes.
Internet citations must include a full URL and should include an author, title, and publication date if these are available. If there is no publication date in the citation, an accessed date (any date on which the URL was valid) must be included in parenthesis. This rule applies even (indeed especially) to URLs that are no longer active.
Archival citations are the responsibility of the author but must be consistent across the endnotes for each archive cited. They should follow any style requirements specified by the archive itself and Chicago rules for all other style decisions. The first reference must include the full name of the archive, as well as the location if it is not obvious from the name. The full name may be followed by "(hereafter XXX)" and that abbreviation used in subsequent citations.
Foreign Words and Transliteration
Please see the IJMES Transliteration Guide for further information.
Tables, Figures, and Images
Tables, figures, and images must be cited in the text, for example (see Table 1). They should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals, captioned, and tables should appear in an editable at the end of the article (in the case of figures, they should be submitted as separate figure files). They should not be interspersed in the text. For detailed information on figure preparation, please see the Cambridge Journals Artwork Guide
Supplementary Material
If the author has material that may be useful to the reader, but not essential to understanding the article, this can be supplied as supplementary material. Supplementary materials are peer reviewed but will not be copyedited or typeset, so they should be supplied exactly as they are to appear online – care should be taken to make them as comprehensible as possible. The supplementary material should be supplied as a separate file, and should be referenced in the article. Types of supplementary material include, but are not limited to, images, videos, podcasts, and slideshows. A statement should be before the Endnotes to read:
“Supplementary Material
For supplementary material accompanying this paper, visit cambridge.org/MES.”
ORCID
IJMES now requires that all corresponding authors identify themselves using their ORCID iD when submitting a manuscript to the journal. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration in 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’ve authored.
· Convenience: As more institutions, funders and publishers 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.
If you don’t already have an iD, you’ll need to create one if you decide to submit a manuscript to IJMES. You can register for one directly from your user account on Scholar One or via https://ORCID.org/register.
If you already have an iD, please use this when submitting, either by linking it to your Scholar One account or supplying it during submission by using the “Associate your existing ORCID ID” button.
Peer Review and Publication
Article review. Within two weeks of receipt, IJMES sends authors either an official confirmation email or a notification that the submission does not conform to IJMES guidelines. If you do not hear from us within two weeks of submitting an article, please inquire. Submitted manuscripts that conform to IJMES guidelines are evaluated by the editorial office, usually within 4-8 weeks of receipt. Those that show the greatest promise of being published in IJMES are then submitted to several anonymous reviewers who specialize in the area(s) most relevant to the manuscript. The first round of peer review is typically completed 3-6 months from the date of submission. In most cases, even articles recommended for publication are subject to a revision process, a second round of peer review, and several rounds of editing after acceptance.
Production. The publisher reserves the right to copyedit manuscripts to conform to the journal's style, which generally follows the rules found in the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition. Spelling will be edited to conform to American usage and Merriam–Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.
The lead author will receive a link to page proofs for the correction of typographical or factual errors only. No rewriting will be allowed in the proof stage. Authors are requested to return the material to the editorial office within 48 hours of receipt.
FirstView. Papers accepted for publication in IJMEs may be published online, in FirstView, ahead of issue publication. These papers are considered to be the Version of Record and can be cited using their DOI. No changes can be made to the FirstView version of an article with the exception of the addition of issue page numbers.
Offprints. The lead author of an article (but not book reviews) will receive a high quality PDF of the article suitable for printing.
Copyright and Originality. Submission of an article implies that it has not been simultaneously submitted or previously published elsewhere. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to publish any material under copyright. Contributors will be asked to sign an author publishing agreement with Cambridge University Press.
Open Access
For information on Open Access publishing with International Journal of Middle East Studies, please see this page.
Rights and Permissions
For information about rights and permissions regarding IJMES contents, please see http://www.cambridge.org/about-us/rights-permissions.
Publication Ethics
International Journal of Middle East Studies adheres to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines on research and publications ethics.
The journal and Cambridge University Press take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism, or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to uphold high standards of research integrity, and expect the same of our authors. Accordingly, we will always investigate claims of plagiarism or other research integrity or publication ethics allegations. Submitted articles may be checked using duplication-checking software. Where an article is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action. Any action would be in accordance with Cambridge University Press’s Research Publishing Ethics Guidelines and may include, without limitation, retracting the article, referring the matter to the author’s institution and/or other relevant academic bodies or societies, or appropriate legal action”.
For further information on Cambridge's Ethical Guidelines, please visit these pages: Publication Ethics and Ethical Standards.
Last updated 2 January 2020