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Submission Guidelines

Basics

  • Authors: RIHA Journal invites submissions from researchers in the history of art and related disciplines, both from members of the RIHA institutes and from any other researchers.

  • 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 and visual culture are welcome. However, articles should be original and innovative, offering new research material and/or new perspectives.

  • Languages: Articles 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, are strongly preferred. However, if authors, or the relevant RIHA institutes, have difficulties with arranging appropriate translations, articles in other languages used at the RIHA institutes are also welcome.

  • Length: Preferred article length (text, including footnotes) is between 30.000 and 120.000 characters (including spaces), i.e., between c. 10 and 40 pages à 3.000 characters (including spaces). However, both shorter and more comprehensive articles as well as articles including appendices are also welcome.

  • Publication Status: Only unpublished manuscripts are accepted. Exception: Translations of important recent articles originally published in a non-CIHA language.

  • 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.).

  • Peer Review: Manuscripts undergo a double-blind peer-review process by at least two experts. Peer reviewers are selected by the editors of RIHA Journal. Authors are kindly asked to prepare their manuscripts for blind reviewing. In particular, any first-person references to their own publications should be removed. If an article is accepted for publication, the names of the approving reviewers will be published as well.

  • License: Unless otherwise arranged with the author, articles are published under the terms of the Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0.

  • Dates: Articles are released, not in periodical issues, but one at a time. In addition to single contributions, from time to time RIHA Journal also publishes Special Issues on particular research topics. Suitable manuscripts are usually published within three to four months from submission. Submissions of manuscripts and proposals for Special Issues are welcome any time.

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How to Submit Your Manuscript

  • Submissions are welcome any time.

  • Please send your submission to the relevant local editor or the managing editor (see list of contacts), preferably by e-mail:

    • Staff members, visiting scholars or fellowship holders at the RIHA institutes are asked to contact the local editor of their respective institute.

    Authors who are not affiliated with any particular RIHA institute are asked to contact the RIHA institute of their country and/or their field of expertise, if applicable. Otherwise, they are asked to contact the managing editor at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich (ZI) who will refer them to a relevant institute.

  • Submissions should include:

    (1) Contact details, including name, e-mail address, and institutional affiliation (if applicable)

    (2) manuscript, preferably as Word document

    (3) English abstract (c. 400-700 characters, including spaces)

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

    (5) list of 3-8 keywords for free subject indexing

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

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

    (8) image files, numbered according to the intended sequence of illustrations in the text.

    If your article is accepted for publication, please also provide:

    (9) a signed declaration that permission for image use has been obtained, if applicable; please use the prepared declaration form

    (10) short academic CV (c. 80-120 words)

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Manuscript Preparation

General Guidelines

  • Length: Preferred article length (text, including footnotes) is between 30.000 and 120.000 characters (including spaces), i.e., between c. 10 and 40 pages à 3.000 characters (including spaces). However, in exceptional cases, both shorter and more comprehensive articles or articles including appendices are also welcome.

  • Subheadings: The main text should include subheadings of one level.

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

  • Illustrations: Manuscripts should be clearly marked to indicate where the images are to be inserted.

Style Guide

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

Electronic Formatting of Manuscripts

  • 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.

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Illustrations

General Guidelines

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

  • Please clearly mark in the text, where you wish the images to be inserted.

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

  • Please deliver separate image files, preferably JPEGs (*.jpg) in high resolution (~300dpi).

  • 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 is available here.

Copyright Issues

Please note: The following is only a brief Quick Guide. For details, 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.

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

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

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

  • Authors are asked to send a signed declaration to their local RIHA Journal editor that permission for image use has been obtained before giving their Permission to Publish. A prepared declaration form is available here.

  • Any costs incurred for the article, including photography and permissions expenses, are to be paid by the author. License fees to be paid to collecting societies 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.

  • Due to the location of the journal's server, the German Copyright Act (Urheberrechtsgesetz, UrhG) applies.

    This includes, e.g., that copyright protection for a work of art expires 70 years after the death of the artist. Copyright protection for photographs of two-dimensional works of art expires 50 years after the photograph's publication. If the photograph is of a tri-dimensional work such as a sculpture or architecture, the photograph counts as a work of art in its own right; hence copyright protection expires only 70 years after the death of the photographer.

    For further details, esp. regarding the right to "quote" images of works of art within scholarly publications, please see the detailed RIHA Journal Copyright Guidelines.

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

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