Submissions

This page is designed to help you ensure your submission is ready for and fits the scope of the journal.

About

The journal aims to offer a venue in which to describe diverse historical and discursive settings of authorship, and to grapple with the complex issues of authorial authority, independence or interdependence, and self-fashioning. The Romantic or New Critical concept of the solitary genius or auteur (if indeed such an entity ever existed at all) has for decades now been the subject of intense critical scrutiny and revision; as a result, what the general public might once have thought of as authorial agency is now submerged in an elaborate tissue of critical feedback, textual instability, editorial intervention, and accidents of publishing, branding, and spin. And yet the Author persists, as a nomenclature, as a catalogue entry, as a biographical entity, as a popular icon, and as an assumed agent of creativity and innovation. In analyzing cultural formations of 'authoriality' as they developed historically, over a long period of time and in a variety of geographical locations, in relation to cultural networks and social change, to transformations of the media, as well as to changing perceptions of gender and personhood, Authorship hopes to foster a more refined and precise theoretical and historical understanding of the complex ideological, technological and social processes that transform a writer into an author. We therefore welcome articles in on the cultural performance of authorship in any contemporary or historical literary milieu. We try to accommodate all languages, and can handle submissions in Dutch, English, French, German, modern Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Scandinavian languages. If you have a submission for us in another language, please do contact us, so we may evaluate our ability to process it.

Focus and Scope

Topics include, but are not limited to:

Authorship across and within diverse languages, literatures, and geographical locations: colonial, transatlantic, transnational, translated, polyglot.
Varieties of authors: dramatists, novelists, poets, journalists, sages, critics, humorists; authors as entertainers, public intellectuals, moralists.
Authenticity, authority, agency, attribution.
Authorship and the canon.
Gender and authorship: interrogating putative "feminine" and "masculine" models of writing, self-fashioning, and getting published.
Fame, infame, disfame, lack of fame; the self-creation, branding and reception of authors.
Anonymity, pseudonymity, and authorial personae.
Authors and collaboration; single and multiple authors. Authors and cultural networks.
The quotidian activities of writers as they relate to the public image of authors.
Translation, editing, redacting, and reviewing considered as kinds of authorial performances.
Authorship and the marketplace; authors and patrons; authorship and intellectual property.
The textual re-creation of authors by editors, publishers, and printers.
Authorship and/in the material book; authorship & new technologies (film, digital media, the internet).

Submission Checklist

All submissions should be submitted online using the 'Start Submission' button at the top of this page.
Authors are strongly encouraged to submit their articles in electronic format (if illustrations are added, please use a 300 dpi resolution).
Although we do not want to impose a single style sheet and will evaluate submissions in any format, Authorship will expect finalized articles to have parenthetical references to a final bibliography, using either the MLA style sheet or the Chicago style sheet (Author-Date system). The journal will have footnotes rather than endnotes. These choices enhance online readability.
Authors who want to use illustrations must themselves take care of the necessary authorizations. In principle, we can only publish images for which the rights have been cleared (or which are in the public domain). Please use JPEG -files for illustrations.
As an average length, we prefer articles of more or less 5,000 words (notes and bibliography included), but slightly shorter ones are acceptable.
Authorship only publishes original material, which has not been submitted elsewhere.
All authors always keep the full copyright to their articles, which they can reuse or reprint without any permissions having to be obtained. However, a mention of their first publication in the journal will be highly appreciated.

Peer Review

Submissions to Authorship are sent out to one member of the Editorial team (Editors and International Advisory Board members) and to one ad hoc reviewer. Reviewers are asked to evaluate suitability paying particular attention to the following set of questions:

Does this article make a significant contribution to its field? Does it show a strong awareness of the relevant secondary literature? Is the writing of a consistently high standard throughout? Does this article speak to the journal's topical focus on authorship, as outlined in the editorial statement?

Reviewers are asked to return their evaluation within six weeks.

Publication Ethics

Authorship is committed to maintaining the highest standards in publication ethics. The journal adheres to the guidelines laid down by the Commission on Publication Ethics (COPE). The guidelines cover the following aspects:

The editors will take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others. In no case shall this journal or its editors encourage such misconduct, or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place. Any reasonable suspicion or allegation of misconduct that comes to the editors' attention will be investigated by the editors. The editors may also contact the author's institution, funding body, or other appropriate authority and propose an investigation.

The editors of Authorship undertake to publish all corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies as soon as possible, if and when they are required.

Authors are required to ensure that the submission adheres to the ALLEA European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity.

Authors are required to ensure that the submission has not been previously published, that permission has been obtained for the use of copyrighted material, and that they do not infringe on the rights of third parties.

To ensure a reliable and open publication process, all authors, reviewers, and editors are required to declare any interests that could appear to compromise, conflict, or influence the validity of the publication.

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site or any other database maintained by Authorship will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

Copyright Notice

Authorship allows authors to hold both the copyright and the publishing rights over their work without restrictions. However, a mention of their first publication in Authorship will be highly appreciated.

The journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. The content of this journal may be shared and adapted freely, provided that fair attribution is given. As such, Authorship is in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License.

Licences

Authorship allows the following licences for submission:

CC BY 4.0
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Publication Fees

This journal does not have article submission charges or article processing charges (APCs).

Publication frequency

Authorship is published at least once a year.

Archiving

Authorship is archived by UGent's library services on reliable servers and back-up systems. In addition, the journal fully supports and encourages author self-archiving of all content. As of January 2022, Authorship moves to a Janeway-based publication platform that enables searching metadata and stable archiving in CLOCKSS.

Advertising Policy

Authorship does not display advertisements.

Abstracting and Indexing Services

Authorship is covered by the following abstracting and indexing services:

MLA International Bibliography
Directory of Open Access Journals
Norwegian Social Science Data Services (NSD): Level 1
VABB-SHW (Vlaams Academisch Bibliografisch Bestand voor de Sociale en Humane Wetenschappen): VABB-1