Information for Authors
'The Year's Work in English Studies (YWES) is a narrative bibliography that records and evaluates scholarly writing on English language and on literature written in English' (Preface). Contributors should consult all journals in their field as well as books.
1. THE PRODUCTION PROCESS
Chapters to YWES will be published on-line at regular intervals throughout the year before the printed version is published at the end of the year. Therefore, contributors are asked not to delay in replying to any editorial queries or proof correction, and ensure that your Associate Editor has up-to-date contact information. Please note the following:
Year
(I) JANUARY-NOVEMBER
Contributors continue to request books, read current periodicals, review periodicals and books from the previous year. Remember to note ISBNs, prices of books, for your list and year of publication of Books Reviewed (these details can be gleaned from Books in Print), as well as the page numbers of articles and volume numbers of periodicals for your copy. It is very important that contributors provide these details as it is immensely time consuming for Associate Editors and Editors to supply missing details later. With YWES going on-line, it is important that contributors always include the year of publication in all listings or citations of books and periodical articles.
Space is at a premium in YWES and contributors are asked to be as concise as possible. We suggest c.300 words for books and c.50 words for significant articles, excluding titles (although especially important books and articles may be given more coverage). While preparing copy consult the most recent up-date of Style Notes for Contributors (revised September 2000). In particular, please note section 9 (Article References for Journals), section 10 (Article References for Collections of Essays), section 11 (References to Other Texts Referencing Books Reviewed) and section 12 (Referencing Books Reviewed). Getting these details correct is very important as it saves substantial amounts of time for Associate Editors, Copy Editors and the Editor during the editorial stage.
(II) JULY-AUGUST
Advance copy of the relevant sections of the MLA International Bibliography for the year reviewed will be sent to contributors. Contributors can use this as a checklist supplementing their other searches of the year's work in their area.
(III) DECEMBER
The deadline for copy is now 31 December of the year succeeding the year's work being reviewed (i.e. 31 December 2000 for 1999 material), although earlier submission, if possible, is always welcome. It is extremely important that your Associate Editor receives a printed hardcopy and the disk files of your contribution by this date.
Please keep the Associate Editor informed of any delay, remember to pass on any changes of address during the year.
(IV) JANUARY-APRIL
You are likely to receive editorial queries from your Associate Editor and, possibly, from the Copy Editor or Editor, from January to April when the detailed copy-editing is to take place, prior to printing. Please respond to any queries promptly. If copy is received later than this date contributors forfeit the right to be consulted about editorial changes.
The proofs of the first chapters to be sent to the printers should begin to arrive for correction; they should be checked against a copy of your manuscript. Avoid adding new material at this stage. It is your responsibility to ensure that your copy is accurate and free from errors. Late submission of copy can cause enormous problems with this stage of production, and may lead to its suspension. The correction of proofs is scheduled to take 10 days and proofs should be returned directly to your Associate Editor.
PDF PROOFS:
Where at all possible, authors will be sent PDF proofs by e-mail. These should be printed off and checked against a copy of your manuscript. Preferably, corrections should then be faxed back to the Production Editor at Oxford University Press. (It is advisable to detail corrections on a separate sheet, in case the fax is unclear.)
STANDARD PROOFS:
Please follow the notes above. Correction of proofs is scheduled to take 10 days and proofs should be returned directly to your Associate Editor.
(VI) DECEMBER
Publication date for YWES. It is important that contributors keep to the above schedule so that the volume will appear on time. Contributors receive payment. for their sections.
2. FINDING BOOKS AHEAD OF PUBLICATION
Publishers catalogues; the monthly issued of the Cumulative Book Index (also known as 'Wilson'); and The Bookseller. The TLS lists books as they are published.
3. ORDERING BOOKS
You will be sent by the English Association a block of slips and a list of publishers' names and addresses. Fill in the slips, adding your own address and the publisher and address on each one. Keep the last green copy for your own filing and send the white and yellow to the Secretary at the English Association. Apply for books as soon as you see them announced. Virtually all the major academic presses do send books to YWES, although sometimes lists of review copies may become exhausted if contributors request books sometime after they are published. It may take some time for books to arrive so do be patient. If a publisher repeatedly fails to provide review copies, please mention this to your Associate Editor and the Editor will write directly to the publisher concerned.
4. OVERLAP BETWEEN PERIODS\SECTIONS\GENRES
Overlap between periods and genres occurs all the time in YWES. With period boundaries it is best to consult your Associate Editor for guidance as to where boundaries conventionally occur and what to do about individual writers whose work spans such boundaries. Certain conventions have been established regarding particular authors, e.g. all Coleridge's works are reviewed in the Romantic Poetry section, all De Quincey's and Mary Wollstonecraft's work in the Romantic Non-Fictional Prose section, but Emily Brontës fiction and poetry are reviewed in separate sections, as are the fiction and poetry of Thomas Hardy. Individual contributors often have particular preferences, and arrangements are usually established by negotiation between contributors and Associate Editors rather than by rule. But please order only books which are relevant to your section.
5. GUIDANCE FOR ORDERING GENERAL COLLECTIONS OF ESSAYS AND GENERAL BOOKS
Deciding where general collections of period-specific essays and general works should be reviewed is an almost impossible task. In many cases individual essays in such collections and whole general books should be reviewed in several different sections, but publishers will only supply one copy for YWES and generally the first reviewer to request the book will receive it. If at all possible you should review the appropriate essays then pass the work on to other contributors or to your Associate Editor, or xerox the essays not relevant to your section. Understandably reviewers who have reviewed a substantial part of a book do like to retain the copy and, where this is the case, some arrangements can be made via Associate Editors as to who keeps what. This is one of the trickiest aspects of the reviewing process to deal with and if you are in any doubt about a particular collection of essays or a general book you think you should include in your section please consult
6. PERIODICALS
Articles in periodicals should be consulted in your own libraries or libraries you have access to. Articles in periodicals not obtainable locally may be ordered through interlibrary loan.
Usually individual schools and departments do support ILL requests for YWES work.
7. REVIEW ESSAYS PERIODICALS
Important or substantial review articles should be mentioned and where appropriate reviewed, especially if such articles are of bibliographical importance (e.g. the annual period reviews in Studies in English Literature). As a rule, reviews of individual books should not be mentioned except where the contributor feels that the review makes a significant contribution to the year's work in its own right.
8. BIBLIOGRAPHIES: BOOKS
CBI = Cumulative Book Index ('Wilson') you will find in four unbound numbers for the previous year. Entries work alphabetically mixing topics, titles, and authors. Take pagination and price from the book in your hand, not from CBI.
The 2-volume BNB British National Bibliography is arranged according to Dewey classification so it is best to start from the Index volume, which will give you a list of books and the Dewey number. The page(s) you then find in the Subject volume will include some items not relevant to the year in question, but details are given in full.
One of the most complete and helpful way of searching for books is to find the relevant Dewey classification number from BNB and use this classification to make an on-line search of the database of the US Library of Congress catalogue (your subject area librarian should be able to do this for you). Searching this way covers practically all books published in the area.
9. BIBLIOGRAPHIES: BOOKS AND PERIODICALS
The MLA International Bibliography comes out two years after the year it covers: it is now in two volumes. You will normally find five sections bound in each volume. The first volume consists of 5 sections of Classified Listings, and the second volume of 5 sections of Subject Index. Again, it is wise to begin with the Index volume which will give the main reference (changing every year) for the Classified section, there is at the back of the Classified volume a Document Author Index which works like YWES' Critics Index.
10. BIBLIOGRAPHIES: PERIODICALS
The Arts and Humanities Citation Index covers over 1,000 journals, with relevant items from about 6,000 science and social sciences journals. Before approaching AHCI you need to know that 'coverage includes articles, letters, editorials, notes, meeting abstracts, discussions, corrections, errata, poems, short stories, plays, music scores, excerpts from books, chronologies, bibliographies, filmographies etc.' You need to know also that AHCI works entirely on specifics: that is, items provide entries; there is not classification system and no subject heading list. And AHCI claims to draw attention to matters as small as a mere paragraph. Any year has three double volumes:
- The Permuterm Subject Index, in which any word in a title is linked with every other work and reference given.
- The Citation Index, which covers the same material, indexed differently. Noteworthy are the two sub-listings in this volume:
- the articles' own footnotes are given in reference.
- recent developments on earlier books are given.
- The Source Index is effectively an author-index like the YWES Critics Index on a vast scale.
- The Corporate Index, which lists periodical publication under Geography and organization.
NB The AHCI is available for free on-line searches via FirstSearch (see below) and the Bath Information Databases Services (BIDS). Ask your subject area librarian for more details.
Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory When you want to trace an unfamiliar periodical these are the volumes to search first. They include full details of periodicals which appear regularly and irregularly.
British Books In Print (Whittaker) will give pagination and prices of items you note unseen, or prices of books consulted in libraries. American Books in Print (Bowker) gives prices in dollars. Both include names and addresses of publishers. International Books in Print may be useful, backed up by the French and German national bibliographies.
FirstSearch is probably the best database to search for books and articles. it is a product of OCLC On-line Computer Library Center, Inc., a non profit membership organisation serving libraries and educational establishments world-wide. Searches are thus free. FirstSearch contains the Arts and Humanities Citation Index and the US Library of Congress databases and can be searched in a variety of ways (author, title, subject, Dewey Classification, period etc). Searches can then be downloaded and printed out via E-mail. FirstSearch can be used to see which libraries have a copy of an item described in the FirstSearch record. I have found that this facility provides the most comprehensive search which needs little supplementing.
BLAISE is the British Library's Automated Information Service. The BLAISE-LINE Search Service offers computer searches on a range of bibliographical databases covering all subject areas. You can ask for references to named authors and can limit the search to a particular year. The most useful databases for YWES are likely to be BNBMARC (the on-line equivalent of the printed British National Bibliography) and LCMARC (acquisitions of the U.S. Library of Congress). In both cases Dewey indexing can be used to search particular areas of study. The search results can be quite expensive but many university and polytechnic libraries are now subscribers to BLAISE, and contributors are advised to contact their subject area librarians in the first place. Further information can be obtained from BLAISE-LINE Search Service, Marketing, and Support, The British Library, National Bibliographic Service, 2 Sheraton Street, London, W1V 4BH (Tel: 0171 412 7000).
BIDS. The BIDS ISI service provides access to three multi-disciplinary Citation Indexes, including the AHCI (see above). The data is supplied by and owned by the Institute for Scientific Information Inc, USA. To use the service you must be a member of a subscribing institution and have access to the appropriate username and password for your institution. BIDS is the best database to search for journal articles in your area, which you can search by author, title, keyword, etc. but not by Dewey Classification. A combined search using BIDS and the US Library of Congress catalogue will provide you with almost all of the data needed for your review.
11. OTHER STANDARD BIBLIOGRAPHIES
Two standard bibliographies are worth keeping an eye on, though they tend to be late: ABELL (Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature) which comes from MHRA and has a British-European bias and can have things not in the American jumbos; and Abstracts of English Studies which comes from Calgary and therefore has a non-U.S. slant.
12. MEMBERSHIP OF THE ENGLISH ASSOCIATION
Contributors are encouraged to join The English Association at a special rate. An application form and brochure are sent to each new contributor.
13. SUMMARY LIST OF GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHIES THAT ARE USEFUL TO CONSULT
Publishers' catalogues
CBI (Cumulative Book Index)
The Bookseller TLS (Times Literary Supplement) - weekly lists
BNB (British National Bibliography)
MLAIB (Modern Language Association International Bibliography):
- advance proof ('typesims')
- current volume for titles missed
- on line for material behind hard copy.
New Contents
AHCI (The Arts and Humanities Citation Index)
Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory
GBIP Global Books in Print: available on CD-ROM
BBIP (British Books in Print, also known as 'Whittaker')
BIP (American Books in Print or 'Bowker')
ABELL (Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature)
Abstracts of English Studies - periodical reviews
BBN (British Book News)
Current Contents
BIDS LCMARC (University of Congress Library Database)
BLAISE (British Library Automated Information Service)
FirstSearch (On-line Computer Library Center, Inc.)
Revised: Oxford University Press (September 2000)
There is also a style guide for contributors available in PDF format.
Style Notes for Contributors
The Year's Work in English Studies (YWES) is prepared electronically. Consequently contributors are requested to send attachments of their work to their Associate Editor, some of whom may require hardcopies as well.
Professor William Baker (Northern Illinois University), fax +1 815 753 2003 (attention Professor W. Baker) wbaker@niu.edu
Professor Kenneth Womack, Co-Editor (Pennsylvania State Altoona) kaw16@psu.edu
Professor Janet Beer (Manchester Metropolitan University) j.beer@mmu.ac.uk
John Brannigan (Trinity College Dublin) jgmbrannigan@ukonline.co.uk
Doreen D'Cruz (Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand) D.Dcruz@massey.ac.nz
Dr Máire ní Fhlathúin (University of Nottingham) aezmnfn@unix.ccc.nottingham.ac.uk
Olga Fischer (Universiteit van Amsterdam) olga.fischer@let.uva.nl
Matthew Steggle (Sheffield Hallam University) M.Steggle@shu.ac.uk
Kirstie Blair kirstie.blairv@spc.ox.ac.uk
Steven Price (University College of North Wales) els024@bangor.ac.uk
Mary Swan (Univ
1. Work Presentation
Files should be saved in the appropriate program (Word, WordPerfect, etc.). Contributors should keep their own backup copy of all files.
2. Copy Presentation
All copy should be emailed to the appropriate Associate Editor, along with, in separate files: (a) a list of new abbreviations of publishers and journals, (b) your entry for the Table of Contents (name and institution), (c) an alphabetical list of all periodicals reviewed, with volume number(s) for the year under review. Contributors to chapters 4-7 should, additionally, include their nominees (if any) for the Beatrice White prize: the title of one book of outstanding merit in their sections.
Paragraphs should be indented one-half inch, with no additional line spacing.
Lines should be double-spaced and left-justified.
Each chapter should carry a separate opening page giving chapter number, chapter title, and author(s)'s name(s), together with an introductory paragraph listing the sections.
Section headings at the beginning of each chapter should be in roman type in all cases and not in italics.
Section headings within the chapter should be numbered in A
3. Spelling and Punctuation
For those words which have alternatives s/z spellings consult the Concise Oxford Dictionary. Please note that this means z as a rule although analyse, paralyse, advertise, advise, apprise, chastise, comprise, demise, despise, devise, enterprise, excise, exercise, franchise, improvise, incise, premise, revise, supervise, surmise, surprise do not take z.
Words having alternative x/ct spellings should be spelt with ct (connection, inflection).
Words which have alternative e/ae spellings should be spelt ae (archaeology, encyclopaedia) except for medieval which does not carry the optional a.
Judgement, acknowledgements, etc. should be spelt with the e included before the suffix.
Words which have an option of single or double s before es, should be spelt with single s only (syllabuses, focuses).
Words ending in ix or ex which have an x or c option in the plural, should be spelt with x (indexes).
Possessives formed from proper names should follow
4. Hyphens and Dashes
Compound adjectives should be hyphenated, e.g. eighteenth-century prose but prose of the eighteenth century; a well-written book but the book is well written. Compound adjectives take no hyphen when the first word ends in -ly e.g. badly written. Note that early seventeenth-century poetry takes one and not two hyphens.
Prefixes such as re- and de- should be hyphenated if followed by a repeated vowel (re-educate, co-ordinate, but reactivate, reorganize, coeval) with the exception of co-edit, co-exist, etc. (please refer to Concise Oxford Dictionary (10th edn)).
Please use a hyphen where a wrong pronunciation might be inferred (re-analyse, de-emphasize, co-operation, but redefine), or where the composite word has acquired a differing meaning (recreation, re-creation).
When typing a hyphen, no space should be left at either side. Where a dash is intended, insert an em rule or two closed hyphens without spaces between words.
5. Abbreviations and Initials
Style and titles do not take full point if the last letter of the abbreviation is the same as the last letter of the word (Dr, Jr, St, Mme, Ms etc.) but note Prof.
Etymological abbreviations do not take full points (EME, OF, OW).
Abbreviations of time carry no full point (AD, BC, [small capital], am, pm [lower case]).
Abbreviations of organizations do not carry full points, unless the PMLA standard listing indicates otherwise (USA, UK, NZ, BBC, ITV, UNESCO, RSC).
Common abbreviations from the Latin do take full points (e.g., i.e., etc., ibid., et al. but note circa [italic] and close up to number, i.e. c.1790).
Manuscript(s) abbreviated should be written MS or MSS, with no full point.
Degrees and other credits coming after a surname, or initials denoting rank, title or similar nature coming before a surname, carry full points and no spaces (Ph.D., B.A., S.J., R.S.M.).
In bibliographies, paperback and hardback are abbreviated pb, hb (n
6. Quotations
Quotation marks, whether used to indicate speech or the specialized use of a word, should always be single quotes in the first instance.
Where a quotation forms part of a longer sentence the closing quote precedes all punctuation except an exclamation mark, question mark, dash or parenthesis belonging only to the quotation: i.e. His conclusion is that Hardy is 'a disturbingly puzzled, sceptical, various modern poet'.
Where the quotation contains a grammatically complete sentence starting with a capital letter the full point precedes the closing quote: i.e. Richard Holmes comments on this statement of Coleridge's that 'It was an expressive exaggeration.'
Quotations within quotations take double quotes within single quotes.
All spellings, punctuation, abbreviations, etc. within a quotation should be rendered exactly as in the original, even if this differs from standard YWES procedure.
Where a short quotation is given (i.e. less than two full lines of verse
7. Italics, Underlining and Bold
Italics should be used for book titles, titles of journals, plays, etc.
Italics should also be indicated for foreign phrases inserted in the text:
Italic: circa/c., et al., fin de siècle, inter alia, mise en scène, sic
Roman: apropos, au fait, bricolage, cf. (NB= 'compare', not 'see'), de facto, dramatis personae, elite, exemplum/exempla, Festschrift, ibid., leitmotif, mimesis, oeuvre, per se, q.v., recherché, regime, résumé, role, status quo, stemma/stemmata, topos/topoi, tour de force, via, vis-à-vis, versus
Where bold type is indicated use bold.
8. Figures, Dates, Years etc.
In the main text (except for pagination of articles), spell out numbers one to ninety-nine, except where they are attached to percentages, units or sums of money (10 km, 3 m, 25 per cent [not %]). Use a hyphen in composite numbers (twenty-seven), unless they form part of a date, or volume number. Numbers over 100 should be shown in figures (101, 2,485) inserting a comma between the thousands and the hundreds.
Ordinals should be treated in like manner (seventh, twenty-third, 187th, 2,123rd).
Dates should be written in the sequence day month year with no ordinal suffix and no punctuation (13 June 1842).
Where a succession is referred to, repeat only those units which have changed (91-8, 103-5, 237-42), except in teens (12-13, 112-15, 317-19).
Years should be described as: 1956-7, 1913-14, not 1956-57 or 1956-1957, except in headings and captions, where use 1956-57. Use the 1960s (no apostrophe) or the sixties (not the 60s).
Please check accur
9. Article References for Journal
For each journal article reviewed, the appropriate reference, which should include the acronym for the journal, volume (and issue) number(s), year of publication and page numbers, should be inserted in parenthesis in the text, e.g. (JCL 36:ii[2001] 117-21). Please note that there is a space between the acronym and the volume number and another space before the page numbers. A colon separates the volume number from the issue number. All numerals are in Arabic apart from the issue number, which is in lower case Roman numerals. The issue number is to be included only when the pagination for a journal begins with 1 for each issue. When the journal acronym does not occur within parenthesis, then the parenthesis should surround the volume number (and issue number, if relevant), the bracketed date, and page numbers, e.g. (JHR 21[2001] 38-46). An alphabetical list of all periodicals which have been dealt with, together with their volume numbers, should be sup
10. Article References for Collections of Essays
Where a collection of essays is reviewed as a whole, there is no need to supply page references. The book should be reviewed as in section 12 below Referencing Books Reviewed.
Where an article from a collection of essays or from an conference proceedings is reviewed separately from the other articles or papers in the volume, the first instance citation should be explicit and indicate the author and title of the article and the reference should indicate the name(s) of the editor(s) plus the title of the collection and the page references:
Eric Reuland and Wim Kosmeijer deal with related topics in 'Projecting Inflected Verbs' (in Gisbert Fanslow, ed. The Parameterization of Universal Grammar, pp. 56-72). Later references in the same section need only indicate the editor and the page numbers: (in G. Fanslow, pp. 56-72).
11. References to Other Texts Not Under Review
When texts and manuscripts not being reviewed are referred to, the abbreviations used in the reference should be as follows:
folio - fo.; folios - ff.
page(s) - p. or pp.
line(s) - l. or ll. (with a marginal note to the printer explaining that this means lines and not the number 11, if confusion seems likely).
page and note references: p. 00 pp. 00-0 pp. 00ff.
use ff instead of et seq.
n. 30
nn. 30-1
p. 33n
vol. Vols
no. nos
In general text use, these abbreviations should also be used where one unit is referred to in isolation. Where a combination of these is mentioned, the relevant numbers only need to be used (III.ii.21).
In-text references as follows: see figure 3.2, chapter 1, table 6 (lower case initial, spelt out).
Biblical references should be written with initial number (if any) in Arabic style, book name in full, chapter number (Arabic), full point, (no space), and Arabic numbers for verse(s) (2 Corinthians 3.
12. Referencing Books Reviewed
Standard abbreviations are ed. (edited, editor); trans. (translated, translator); intro. (introduced, introduction); illus. (illustrated, illustrator); comp. (compiled, compiler), distr. (distributed). Note that contractions (edn) do not take full points.
References will appear in the printed volume at the end of each chapter in a single alphabetical list by author. There should be no numbering of references within the text. Therefore, the title and author should be included in the text. Within the chapter reference should be made to the title and author/editor. The List of Books Reviewed should refer only to books reviewed in the text.
The List of Books Reviewed should be arranged alphabetically by author. Each entry should be ordered and contain the following:
author/editor
title
additional credits if any (intro., illus., trans.)
edn, if not first
series (where this is helpful to the reader)
number of volumes
publisher's abbreviation (see
13. Names
When dealing with unusual personal or place names, foreign names, or names which are unusual variants of commoner names, please confirm the name by writing it by hand in block capitals in the left-hand margin. This saves time being wasted at the editorial stage in checking whether such a name may have accidentally been mistyped. (Recent examples have included the forename Raachel, and the surnames Charke and Ferster.) O M Brack Jr, for instance, does not use full points after his initials.
When referring to all but the most commonly known authors or critics for the first time in your chapter or section, provide first name or initials: e.g. 'Milton' but 'Roland Barthes'; Wordsworth' but 'Jerome J. McGann'; 'Shakespeare' but 'Stephen Greenblatt' This is useful for readers and indexers.
14. Journal, Serial, and Publisher Abbreviations, New Journal Titles, and New Publishers
Please check carefully the lists of abbreviations for journals, series, and publishers in the current YWES and employ in your copy and List of Books Reviewed.
In the case of a journal which does not have an acronym in the YWES list, check MLAIB for an acronym (if this fails please supply journal title in full).
If the text incorporates an abbreviation for a journal title, or publisher, that has not been used before and is consequently not in the preliminary lists of YWES, please type the abbreviation and its full meaning on a separate sheet of paper, indicating the chapter and page number on which it occurs. This ensures that it is added to the preliminary pages.
Remember to keep a record of year, page numbers or articles and volume numbers of journals consulted.
When special numbers of periodicals appear, they should be mentioned ['Pst has two special issues this year, one on travel (
15. Style
Aim for clear, standard English. Avoid beginning sentences with connectives ('and', 'but', etc.), the frequent use of colloquial abbreviations ('can't', 'don't', 'quotes' as a noun etc.), and avoid the excessive use of semi-colons, where commas or full stops would serve. Ensure that sentences are grammatically complete.
August 2004
Author Self-Archiving/Public Access Policy
For information about this journal's policy, please visit our Author Self-Archiving policy page.