Strife Journal

The Academic Journal of the Department of War Studies, King's College London

Strife Journal Submission Guidelines

Strife welcomes submissions to the Strife Journal on a rolling basis by emailing your manuscript as an attachment to our editorial team at journal.submissions@strifeblog.org.

Please ensure that your submission follows our submission guidelines. If you have questions about the guidelines, feel free to contact the Managing Editor, Strife Journal, at journal.editors@strifeblog.org.

1. Peer review policy

Strife is a refereed journal. The manuscripts are reviewed initially by the editors and only those papers that seem likely to meet the required standards of the journal and fit within the aims and scope of the same, will be sent for peer review. Full drafts submitted upon first acceptance to publish should be fully and properly formatted according to the present guidelines for the peer review process to be initiated.

2. Submission types

Strife publishes articles on the theme of conflict, broadly defined. Submissions may include studies of conflict in history, art and media, of the relationship between war and state, of the interrelation of war and society, analyses of strategy, operations and military tactics, diplomacy and international relations, as well as more narrowly defined subjects. There is no restriction as to period or geographical focus.

As a rule, the topic selection is freely in the hands of the contributor, as long as it agrees with the thematic profile of the journal. From time to time, the editorial board may suggest topics, or set specific thematic boundaries for a given issue; however, this will not be binding, and where the submission is outside the theme of a dedicated issue, publication in the subsequent issue will be possible. If in doubt about the appropriateness of a topic, or for any other relevant question, please contact our editors.

In addition, Strife publishes review articles and book reviews of appropriate titles, as well as feature series of thematically related entries from Strife Blog, submitted originally under the coordination of a Series or Guest Editor and forwarded to the journal editors in a re-edited form in accordance with the present guidelines (see further under section 6).

Strife does not normally accept unsolicited book reviews from contributors, but the editors might agree to publish such reviews in exceptional circumstances. The editors are always pleased to receive suggestions of individual books for review, or proposals for larger review articles, as well as requests by authors and publishers for reviews of recently published titles.

3. How to submit your paper

All submissions to Strife should be made electronically, in MS Word, and e-mailed as an attachment to our editor. Your e-mail should be clearly marked with the words ‘Strife Journal Article’, ‘Strife Journal Book Review’ or ‘Strife Journal Feature Article’ in the title.

Please include five or six keywords with your submission and (for articles) an abstract of up to 100 words. Images are not to be inserted into the text, but are to be sent as a separate attachment. Please indicate their position in the text by [image 1: <caption>]. It should be noted that you are responsible for obtaining the publication rights for the images you want to submit with your work (see section 7 below). Images should be of high quality and appropriate for publishing.

Contributors should check that their submissions conform to the submission and formatting guidelines below. Please follow these guidelines as closely as possible, however no papers will be desk rejected for this reason alone. However, once the editors agree to publish, your draft should be reworked and formatted in accordance with the present guidelines before submission for further editorial review and for subsequent peer review.

Only submissions which pass the initial editorial review stage are forwarded for peer review.

4. Formatting and other conventions

Accessibility:

Bear in mind that Strife covers a wide range of topics related to warfare. For this reason, submissions should be accessible for a non-specialist International Relations audience. This means (a) that the texture should not be too technical, and (b) that the arguments and linkages between them should be clear. Jargon should be translated, but technical language, though it needs explaining, is not jargon. This also applies to key IR and economic concepts.

Length:

Articles should be between 4,000-6,000 words in length, including footnotes but excluding addenda (abstract, appendices, etc).

  • Articles shorter than 4,000 words will not normally be accepted.
  • Articles longer than 6,000 words will be considered on a case by case basis. Publishing articles that far exceed the word limit remains a matter of editorial discretion of the Managing Editor of the Journal in consultation with the Coordinating Editor of the Journal.
  • Where a submitted article is double the size, publication is still possible, although the editors reserve the right to request such submission to be split into two parts and submitted as two separate, albeit sequential articles.

Book reviews should be between 800 – 1000 words.

  • Book reviews shorter than 800 words may still be considered for publication, although shorter pieces are normally published on the Strife blog.
  • Book reviews should have a short descriptive summary of the book but primarily be focused on a critical analysis of the book.
Required information for all submissions:
  • Title of the article, set in bold, ranged left and unjustified.
  • Name of the author or authors directly below the title, followed by institution affiliation, if applicable.
  • Five or six keywords.
  • Abstract of up to 100 words.
  • For book reviews, full bibliographical data, including ISBN and price (for paperback, hardback and electronic edition, where applicable), set in bold, ranged left and unjustified.
  • All the above should be separated from the main text of the submission by two carriage returns.
General Formatting:
  • Submissions should contain a finalised, fully formatted text.
  • The text should be double-spaced, with the margins on both sides set to 4 cm.
  • The preferred font is Times New Roman.
  • The preferred font size is 12 for the main text and for footnotes.
  • Roman, bold and italic type can be used, but use of typeface and size should be consistent throughout the paper.
  • The text should be ranged left and unjustified, with no hyphenation.
  • Indents, underlining and tabs should be avoided unless absolutely necessary.
  • Chapter/section headings should be ranged left and in italics.
  • Paragraphs (and chapter headings, where applicable) should be separated by a full single carriage return (not just simple paragraph spacing as in the default MSWord2007 and later formatting).
  • Footnotes should be ranged left, separated from the text by a footnote separator and have no indents.
  • There should be only one space between words and only one space after any punctuation.
  • Please do not include headers or footers, except normal numeration of pages.
Spelling and Formatting Details:
  • UK spelling should be used for all articles. If in doubt, please refer to the Oxford English Dictionary. This excludes proper names, e.g. the names of US organizations where the spelling should be retained. Thus, for example ‘defence’ (UK spelling) is the preferred form, but ‘US Department of Defense’ (in its original, US spelling).
  • ‘First World War’ NOT ‘World War I’, and ‘Second World War’ NOT ‘World War II’.
  • Dates (including ‘last visited/accessed’ references) to be written as ‘1 January 2000’, NOT ‘January 1, 2000’ or other formats.
  • ‘nineteenth century’, NOT ’19thcentury’ or ‘XIX century’.
  • Spellings in quoted texts should not be altered. If they are obviously incorrect, insert [sic] after the controversial spelling.
  • Imported foreign terms and expressions in Latin should be italicised where appropriate.
  • Quotations inside a narrative sentence should close with a full stop after the speech marks. Sentences which finish inside a quotation should be punctuated in the normal way, followed by speech marks. For example: Jill said, ‘it was a nice day’. BUTJill said, ‘it is now raining. It was a nice day.’
  • Titles of books, articles and other sources should be capitalised. For example: William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000, notWilliam H. McNeill, The pursuit of power: technology, armed force, and society since A.D. 1000
  • Established acronyms (e.g. CIA; KGB; NATO; BBC; CNN; RT) need little explanation, but authors should refrain from using acronyms where these are not widely established or remain limited for inside use (RHUL for Royal Holloway University of London; SJ/SB for Strife Journal/Blog, GWoT for the Global War on Terror, etc). When the use of an acronym is necessary, please spell out in full on first use followed by acronym in parentheses, e.g. Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
  • USA and US (not U.S.A. and U.S.); USSR (not U.S.S.R.); and UK (not U.K.).

 Speech/quotation marks:

Strife prefers single speech marks for quotations, and double speech marks for quotations within quotations.

5. Reference style guide
  • Authors’ names should be given as they appear on the cited publication at first mention. So, if ‘John Smith’ on the book referenced, then it should be at first mention written out ‘John Smith’, not‘J. Smith’. Subsequent references to the same work should retain only the surname and the shorter version of the publication’s title, as per normal practice.
  • All references to online material should be given with the url in full and accompanied by the date they were last accessed in parentheses.
  • All footnotes referring to a particular place within a source should include relevant page number(s) or page range. This is unnecessary if reference is made to a source as a whole, for example when suggesting further reading.
  • The number of the cited edition (6th/4th/ 12th edition) should be included in the reference only if the mention carries special significance, for example to highlight differences between editions or underscore the multiplicity of editions itself.
  • In footnotes, titles of books, articles and other sources should be written out in full upon first mention, with the exception of excessively long book titles (usually from the Late Medieval and Renaissance periods), where a shortened version of the title would be acceptable.
  • All references should be presented as footnotes, not endnotes or in-text parenthetical notes. Care should be taken to retain consistency in the reference style throughout the submitted work in accordance with the present guidelines. Seemingly minor details (punctuation, capitalisation, spacing, etc) are important and should appear as prescribed below.
  • Strife follows Chicago style referencing. Please see the Chicago Manual of Style for full details.
    ___
For books
  1. Zadie Smith, Swing Time(New York: Penguin Press, 2016), 315–16.
  2. Brian Grazer and Charles Fishman, A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 12.
Shortened notes
  1. Smith, Swing Time, 320.
  2. Grazer and Fishman, Curious Mind, 37.
For book chapters

Henry David Thoreau, “Walking,” in The Making of the American Essay, ed. John D’Agata (Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2016), 177–78.

Subsequently, Thoreau, “Walking,” 182.

For journal articles
  1. Susan Satterfield, “Livy and the Pax Deum,” Classical Philology111, no. 2 (April 2016): 170.
  2. Shao-Hsun Keng, Chun-Hung Lin, and Peter F. Orazem, “Expanding College Access in Taiwan, 1978–2014: Effects on Graduate Quality and Income Inequality,” Journal of Human Capital11, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 9–10, https://doi.org/10.1086/690235.
  3. Peter LaSalle, “Conundrum: A Story about Reading,” New England Review38, no. 1 (2017): 95, Project MUSE.
For newspaper articles
  1. Rebecca Mead, “The Prophet of Dystopia,” New Yorker, April 17, 2017, 43.
  2. Farhad Manjoo, “Snap Makes a Bet on the Cultural Supremacy of the Camera,” New York Times, March 8, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/technology/snap-makes-a-bet-on-the-cultural-supremacy-of-the-camera.html.
  3. Rob Pegoraro, “Apple’s iPhone Is Sleek, Smart and Simple,” Washington Post, July 5, 2007, LexisNexis Academic.
  4. Tanya Pai, “The Squishy, Sugary History of Peeps,” Vox, April 11, 2017, http://www.vox.com/culture/2017/4/11/15209084/peeps-easter.
For government or judicial documents, opinions and consultations

Generally the referencing conventions for books should be followed when such a publication appears in a book form, and referencing conventions for articles for shorter sources. In the case of an online publication without pagination, url and date last accessed should be entered instead of a page range.

For cinematic titles

1492: Conquest of Paradise, dir. by Ridley Scott (Paramount Pictures, 1992).
Subsequent citations: 1492: Conquest. If immediately subsequent: Ibid.

6. Acknowledgments and Permissions

Any acknowledgments other than references to scholarship or other sources should appear as an extra-footnote marked by an asterisk (*) after the title of your article. All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an ‘Acknowledgements’ section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support. Authors should disclose whether they had any writing assistance.

The authors are solely responsible for obtaining permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy excerpts of works previously published elsewhere.