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Submission Guidelines

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Basics

  • Authors: RIHA Journal invites submissions from researchers in the history of art.

  • Type of Articles: Only research articles are published, no book or exhibition reviews (exception: comprehensive research reviews).

  • Topics: Contributions on any topic in the history and theory of art are welcome. However, articles should be original and innovative, offering new research material and/or new perspectives. Also, contributions of broader and international art historical significance are preferred to those with an extremely specialized focus.

  • Languages: Articles may be in one of the five languages authorized by the Comité International d'Histoire de l'Art (CIHA), i.e., in English, French, German, Italian, or Spanish.

  • Length: Article length (text, including footnotes) should be roughly between 45.000 and 120.000 characters (including spaces), i.e., roughly between 15 and 40 pages à 3.000 characters (including spaces).

  • Publication Status: Only unpublished articles are accepted. Exception: Translations of important articles recently published in a non-CIHA language are also permitted.

  • Costs: In general, it is the author's responsibility to pay any costs incurred for the article, including photography and permissions expenses (e.g., the production costs of an image, archival or museum fees, photographer's fees, etc.).

  • Reviewing: Manuscripts undergo a double blind review process. Before the reviewing process starts, the responsible local editor removes the author name from the manuscript files. In addition, authors are asked to omit any references that would identify them as authors, such as, e.g., first-person references to their own publications within their texts.

  • License: Unless otherwise arranged with the author, articles published in RIHA Journal are provided under the terms of a Creative Commons license.

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How to Submit Your Manuscript

Initial Contact

    • Before sending your submission, please contact your local editor. (See list of contacts.)

    • Staff members, visiting scholars, fellowship holders, etc., contact the local editor of their institute. Authors who are not affiliated with any particular RIHA institute contact the local editor of the RIHA institute of their country, if applicable; otherwise, they contact the managing editor at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte (ZI) in Munich who will refer them to a relevant institute.

    • For initial contact, please provide the local editor with (1) your contact details, (2) information about your institutional affiliation, if applicable, and (3) an abstract of your manuscript.

    • Please, only submit the full manuscript when asked by your local editor.

    Submissions

    • Submissions should be sent by e-mail to the relevant local editor.

    • Submissions should include:

      (1) Manuscript, saved in a separate file, including an English abstract,

      (2) list of captions, numbered according to the sequence of illustrations in the text,

      (3) list of 5-7 keywords for free subject indexing,

      (4) contact details (including full name, institutional affiliation (if applicable), postal address, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail address),

      (5) name of the software used to produce the manuscript (e.g., "Word 2002 for Windows XP"),

      (6) illustrations (each illustration saved in a separate file),

      (7) if the article is accepted for publication: a signed declaration that copyright for all relevant material has been obtained. Please use the prepared Declaration Form.

    • Please note:

      Submitting correctly formatted manuscripts will significantly accelerate the reviewing and editing process. Please follow the guidelines for (electronic) Manuscript Preparation below and the RIHA Journal Style Guide.

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    Manuscript Preparation

    General Guidelines

    • Length: Length of texts (including footnotes, appendices, etc.) should be roughly between 45.000 and 120.000 characters (including spaces), i.e., roughly between 15 and 40 pages à 3.000 characters (including spaces).

    • Title etc.: At the head of your manuscript, include – as shown in the RIHA Journal Sample Article – title, subtitle, your name, the name of the responsible RIHA institute, and city and country of the institute.

      If applicable, give the name of the institute in both its national language and in English; add the name of the city and the country in English spelling.

    • Abstract: Manuscripts should include an abstract, inserted between header and main text. Abstracts should be in English. Abstract length should be 400-700 characters (including spaces).

    • Subheadings: The main text should include subheadings of one level (without numeration).

    • References: Bibliographic references should be given in footnotes (for the format of references, cf. the RIHA Journal Style Guide).

    • Illustrations: Insert image files in the document before submitting it (for details, see below). Below each image, include the caption (for the format of captions, cf. the RIHA Journal Style Guide).

    • Preferred Formats: MS-Word documents (*.doc) or OpenOffice documents (*.odt).

    Electronic Formatting

    • Texts should be saved as a Word document (*.doc) or OpenOffice document (*.odt).

    • Insert notes as footnotes (not as endnotes), using your software’s built-in footnotes feature. Footnotes should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, ...).

    • Do not use your software's automatic hyphenation feature, and do not manually hyphenate words at the end of lines.

    • To emphasize words, use italics.

    • Use italics also for foreign language terms, and for titles (of, e.g., works of art or exhibitions).

    • Do not use underlines and bold letters.

    • Use straight quotation marks ("") instead of curled (“”, „“) or French («») quotation marks.

    • Do not include additional blank lines between paragraphs.

    • Set up the document in A4 format.

    • Please note:

      To format the styles of your text, please use the prepared RIHA Journal Template which can be downloaded below. This is all-important for the correct display of your article on the journal's website. In particular, do not modify styles by simply customizing them locally within your text. This won't properly change the formatting and might cause technical trouble.

      Besides the template, below you will find further tools that may be helpful to you when applying the template to your manuscript.

      If you need to make use of formats not included in the RIHA Journal template, please contact your local editor and ask for her/his advice.

      Tools for Electronic Formatting:

    Style Guide

    • For the preparation of bibliographic references, captions, quotations, etc., please consult the RIHA Journal Style Guide.

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    Illustrations

    General Guidelines

    • The number of illustrations should generally not exceed 20 per article.

    • Please insert the images where you wish to have them in the text. Below the image, include the caption.

    • In addition, please also deliver separate image files.

    • Please also send a numbered list of captions, corresponding to the sequence of images in the text.

    • If you have difficulties with inserting images in the document, please clearly mark in your text where they should be placed.

    • Electronic images are strongly preferred; please provide either scans or pictures taken with a good digital camera.

    • Images should be saved as JPEGs (*.jpg).

    • Resolution should be 300 dpi.

    • Width of inserted images: ca. 10 cm (3.94 in)

    • File names of illustrations should contain the author's name, a figure number keyed to the text, and a title keyword of the illustration, separated from each other by _.
      Sample: smith_ 3_primavera.jpg

    • If you wish to include media other than images (e.g., audio or video files), please contact the managing editor at the ZI in Munich.

    Image Databases

    • A list of image databases can be found here.

    • In particular, we recommend starting your image or media research with Europeana (http://www.europeana.eu), a joint European virtual library, aiming "to make Europe's cultural and scientific resources accessible for all." The platform offers more than 6 million digital items from museums and galleries, archives, libraries and audio-visual collections.

    Copyright Issues

    • It is the author's responsibility to obtain written permission to reproduce copyright-protected material in her/his article.

    • Written permissions have to be obtained before publication of the article. Authors are strongly encouraged to procure images and permissions as early as possible, preferably before submitting their manuscripts. Please be aware that tracing copyright holders and obtaining permission for image use can be time-consuming.

    • Authors have to send a signed hard copy of the copyright declaration to their local RIHA Journal editor before granting imprimatur (permission to publish). A prepared declaration form is available at RIHA Journal's website or can be requested from the responsible local editor.

    • Any costs incurred for the article, including photography and permissions expenses, are to be paid by the author. In rare cases, license fees may be paid by RIHA.

    • In order to avoid problems (and costs) connected to licenses and copyright permissions, we strongly recommend using – whenever possible – material that is not under copyright and to which no license fees apply.

    • Please be aware that both works of art and photographs of works of art may be under copyright.

    • Due to the server location of RIHA Journal, the German Copyright Act (Urheberrechtsgesetz) applies: Copyright protection for a work of art expires 70 years after the death of the artist. Copyright protection for photographs of works of art expires 50 years after the death of the photographer – unless the photograph is of a tridimensional work such as sculpture or architecture; in that case, the photograph is generally treated as a work of art in matters of copyright.

    • The relevant collecting society in Germany, responsible for copyright protection and licensing, is VG Bild-Kunst.

    • Please carefully read the full RIHA Journal Copyright Guidelines. They will inform you in greater detail about the relevant conditions of copyright and about how to proceed when you wish to use copyright protected material.

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