Submissions

Prospective contributors to Film & History are urged to read this page carefully. Submission of work for potential publication in the journal will be taken as evidence of the author's awareness, understanding, and acceptance of the policies outlined here.

Questions about the content of this page may be directed to:

Loren PQ Baybrook, Editor
Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal
Lawrence University, Memorial Hall B5
Appleton, WI 54911

920-832-6649

editor@filmandhistory.org

 

Areas of Interest

Film & History welcomes article-length manuscripts of 4,000-7,000 words on the following topics:

Submission Requirements

Articles offered for publication should be sent as an email attachment to editor@filmandhistory.org and one hard copy mailed mailed to:

Loren PQ Baybrook, Editor
Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal
Lawrence University, Memorial Hall B5
Appleton, WI 54911

 

After the initial submission, all further transmission of manuscripts will take place electronically.

MLA style is preferred, but the editors will accept manuscripts in APA or Chicago style if this format is used in your scholarly discipline.

Simultaneous Submissions

Submitting an article to multiple journals simultaneously leads editors (and peer reviewers) to commit scarce resources of time and energy to papers that may be withdrawn because of acceptance elsewhere. It also leads to the possibility of duplicate publication, which diminishes the distinctiveness and originality on which academic journals depend for their survival.

Film & History does not, therefore, accept submissions of articles that are under consideration by other journals. All submissions become the exclusive property of Film & History for the duration of the time they are under review.

Collegial Support of the Journal

We consider the investment we make in the authors accepted for publication to be the principal advertisement for our journal. Subscription to Film & History is not required as a condition of submission or of publication. We prefer to keep the process open to the best scholarship. (We do, of course, encourage contributors to support the journal through a subscription and through participation in our annual conferences.)


Peer Review and Replies to the Author

Manuscripts undergo two stages of peer review, requiring approximately six months. The first stage is a screening report, indicating whether the manuscript is publishable in our journal--a manscript might be deemed publishable but not presently for our journal (see "Levels of rejection" below). The screening report is a feasibility assessment; it calculates both the degree of editing a manuscript would require and the value our readers would derive from the edited version. If deemed publishable for our journal, the manuscript is then forwarded to the second stage, a longer review, which measures the manuscript more deeply against current scholarship in the field. Because of scheduling constraints, a contributor must reply to F&H within 10 business days after transmission of the edited manuscript; otherwise, it will progress, at the editor's discretion, toward publication in its edited form.

After either the first or second stage of peer-reviewing, an author whose submission has been rejected may ask to receive the information--typically condensed and transferred to e-mail--from the reviewing report(s). (We do not automatically transmit reviews to rejected authors.)

In the case of acceptance, final decisions about the style of the published version of an author's manuscript represent a compromise between editors and authors. We lean, of course, toward our authors’ choices in most cases, but we reserve the right to edit any submission for greater economy of expression and elegance of language. This right extends to the compression and re-organization of the original argument and/or its examples.

Decisions about argument also represent a compromise whenever matters of clarity, accuracy, evidence, organization, logical flow, or any other matters related to efficacy are involved. We strive to make the author's argument as effective as possible. If any dispute should arise after publication, an author may, with editorial consent, publish limited correction(s), or the author may request a retraction of his or her name from the article (see "Fair Use," next section). Under no circumstances, however, may an essay that has not been edited according to the recommendations of peer review be published in the journal.

Levels of Rejection There are two forms of rejection: publishable and not-publishable. Many publishers prefer not to say that a manuscript is "publishable" if it has been rejected; they note its virtues but then emphasize its limitations, leaving an author to believe that the work had not reached a certain level of quality. Publishers are insulated in this way from charges of arbitrariness. As a result, however, some rejected manuscripts are never affirmed when they should have been. All publishers must make decisions based on space and money, not just on quality. If an author has written a publishable article (notes toward revision notwithstanding), the editors at Film & History believe that he or she should know this distinction--as should, perhaps, the author's department chair, college dean, or provost.

 

Fair Use and Copyright ("Work Made for Hire")

The author of any contribution to Film & History is entitled to reproduce his or her own work for use in the classroom, for inclusion in his or her own book, or for distribution within the author's institution of employment. Otherwise, upon receipt of a submission, Film & History retains the right of publication, by which any submitted manuscript, after acceptance and editing (see "Peer Reviewing and Replies to the Author"), may be printed in the journal (including its electronic format), at the discretion of the editor, to satisfy the publication needs for a scheduled topic or issue. By accepting publication, a contributor expressly agrees that his or her published work shall be considered a work made for hire; acceptance constitutes "a written agreement between the parties[,] specifying that the work is a work made for hire" by an "independent contractor." Please see part 2 of the statutory definition (available at http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf) :

Section 101 of the copyright law defines a “work made for hire” as

(1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment or

(2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire. For the purpose of the foregoing sentence, a “supplementary work” is a work prepared for a publication as a secondary adjunct to a work by another author for the purpose of introducing, concluding, illustrating, explaining, revising, commenting upon, or assisting in the use of the other work, such as forewords, afterwords, pictorial illustrations, maps, charts, tables, editorial notes, musical arrangements, answer material for tests, bibliographies, appendixes, and indexes; and an “instructional text” is a literary, pictorial, or graphic work prepared for publication and intended to be used in systematic instructional activities.

The journal, as first owner of the copyright, retains exclusive rights to publication of the edited/published manuscript thereafter. Please see http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf (1976 Copyright Act), page 2:

Who Is the Author of a Work Made for Hire?

If a work is a work made for hire, the employer or other person for whom the work was prepared is the author and should be named as the author on the application for copyright registration....

Who Is the Owner of the Copyright in a Work Made for Hire?

If a work is a work made for hire, the employer or other person for whom the work was prepared is the initial owner of the copyright unless there has been a written agreement to the contrary signed by both parties.

Film & History reserves its designation as "author" primarily for copyright purposes; otherwise, work made for hire is attributed to the individual contributor.

If a contributor should choose to retract his or her name from a published article, the journal usually will honor that request, but the edited/published article remains the exclusive property of the journal and may, at the editor's discretion, be retained online and in print and may be used in future publications by the journal.

Additionally, institutions or individuals seeking, without consent, to publish content from Film & History, even for noncommercial purposes, is a copyright violation because such unauthorized publication allows the public to circumvent payment for such content, which would be available exclusively through the journal's electronic distributors.

If the journal receives a request for duplication of any of its material for academic publication, we usually grant the request for the nominal charge of an institutional subscription ($90), although we ask that, as a courtesy, the publisher contact the author for his or her approval, as well.


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