Submissions

Author Guidelines

Submission of Articles and Creative Work

Contributions must be original, unpublished work and must not be submitted to another publication simultaneously. However, translated material that is unpublished elsewhere in English may also be considered.

Authors are not charged for publication and all journal work undertaken is volunteer.

All contributions and correspondence should be submitted via the journal's online submission system, stating the relevant section of the journal at the top of the paper.  Articles should be submitted as a Microsoft Word document. Visual contributions should be submitted as preview files in JPG of less than 2 MB. A printed copy of the manuscript is not required. Neither of them should entail identifiable elements such as, name, address, email, so that we can easily maintain anonymous peer review.

The Editors reserve the right to edit or alter contributions, but authors will receive proofs for approval prior to publication.

Review Policy

Editors acknowledge receipt of all submissions. Submissions that do not correspond with the rationale of the journal, are insufficiently original, seriously flawed, or with poor English language may be rejected at this stage. Suitable papers are passed on to the relevant section editor who will pass the piece on to no more than two reviewers, selected for their interest and competence in the area of the submitted paper. Referees are asked to evaluate whether the submission:

-         Is original and has a clear scope

-         Is theoretically and methodologically sound

-         Is critically engaged with relevant work but uses a clear language

-         Contributes to the field of Anthropology at large

We aim to return reviews within four weeks. A decision on whether to accept or reject the paper, along with any recommendations and comments from the referee(s) will be sent to the author by the Editors, who hold the final decision on accepting or rejecting papers.

Content Guidelines

Articles, Visual and Creative Submissions

Contributions of up to 3,000 words (including references, captions and notes) are welcome, in line with the rationale of The Unfamiliar. However, longer articles may also be accepted at the discretion of the Editorial Board.

The first page should contain a title, acknowledgements (if any), and the corresponding author’s name, affiliation, e-mail address, postal address and telephone number. Affiliations and e-mail addresses of co-authors should also be included.

If the submission is longer than 3,000 words, the second page should contain an abstract of 180 to 250 words. This should indicate the scope of the paper and its main arguments. For contributions under the stated word limit no abstract is required.

The rest of the paper should contain the main body of the text and/or photographs and other visuals, references, appendices, tables, and necessary footnotes (numbered consecutively). Footnotes should be kept to a minimum.

Commentaries

Commentaries and responses to articles published by The Unfamiliar should adhere to the same style guidelines explained here.

Style Guidelines

Papers should be written concisely, but not at the expense of clarity. The text should be single-spaced (including References and Footnotes), typed in 12-point Times New Roman font. Page numbers should be entered at the top right-hand corner of each page.

Headings and sub-headings

Headings within the text should be positioned on the left-hand side of the text. Primary Headings should be typed in bold and have initial capital letters; Secondary Headings should be italicised and have initial capital letters; Tertiary Headings should be in normal font and also have initial capital letters.

Footnotes

Footnotes should be kept to a minimum. They should not be used for references, but for explanation and expansion of argument where appropriate. Footnotes reference numbers should appear as consecutive Arabic numerals and must be embedded in the text (so that any footnote additions or deletions will automatically change all the footnote changes throughout the paper). Footnotes should be placed after punctuation.

Referencing

The Harvard System of Referencing should be applied: citations in text should be referenced in parentheses (Author Year) as in (Eriksen 2006); (Author Year: Pages) as in (Eriksen 2006: 15). Visual material should be referenced in the text in parantheses (Title Year) as in (The Fall 2006).

References should be listed under a heading called References at the end of the document, and should appear in alphabetical sequence using the following style:

Journal articles

Boholm, Ǻ. (2003) ‘The Cultural Nature of Risk: Can there be an Anthropology of Uncertainty?’ Ethnos. 68 (2): 159–178.

Where possible the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) should be acknowledged, see example below: 

Leach, J. (2012) ‘Constituting aesthetics and utility: Copyright, patent, and the purification of knowledge objects in art and science collaboration.’ HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. 2 (1): 247-268. doi:10.14318%2Fhau2.1.012

Books

Eriksen, T.H. (2006) Engaging Anthropology: The Case for a Public Presence. Oxford: Berg.

Edited books

Broch-Due, V., Rudie, I.  & T. Bleie (eds.) (1993) Carved Flesh/Cast Selves: Gendered Symbols and Social Practices. Oxford: Berg.

Book chapters in edited collections

Kopytoff, I. (1986) ‘The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as a Process’. Pp. 64-91 in A. Appadurai (ed.) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Electronic sources

Sample, I. (2012) ‘Higgs boson: it's unofficial! Cern scientists discover missing particle’. The Guardian. [online] Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/04/higgs-boson-cern-scientists-discover [Accessed 10 July 2012].

Gaiman, N.  (2013) @neilhimself [Twitter] 31/December. Available from:  https://twitter.com/neilhimself [Accessed 20 March 2014].

luisgt2704. (2010) Hasta los huesos (complete)[online video]. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR_hPPV8td8 [Accessed 20 March 2014].

Theses/Dissertations

Cassidy, R. (1999) An Anthropological Study of Horseracing in Newmarket. PhD Thesis. University of Edinburgh.

Newspaper articles

Wilfred, V. (2003) Shoprite Group Set to Aid Farmers. Business Times (Dar es Salaam), 28 February, p. 1.

Magazine articles

Burke, D. & N. Farbman (1947) The Bushmen: An Ancient Race Struggles to Survive in the South African Deserts. Life 2, 4: 40-48. 3 February.

Films

Rebel without a cause (1983) Film. Directed by Nicholas Ray. USA: Warner Bros.

Grey literature

This type of literature includes, but is not restricted to, governmental and non-governmental reports, pamphlets, internal company documents, conference papers, working papers and unpublished material. Reference to grey literature should follow the author and title style for books, but without italics for the title.

Other conventions

Language

English is the working language of this publication, but we are willing to consider submissions in other languages, subject to our capacity to review and edit them. Words in other languages should be italicised.

Spelling

First preference spelling from the Oxford English Dictionary should be used (eg, ‘criticize’, ‘organization’,—but ‘analyse’, ‘incise’); as should British-English (eg, ‘aesthetic’, ‘learnt’, ‘labour’, ‘programme’, ‘skilful’, ‘unshakeable’).

Abbreviations and Acronyms

Abbreviations and acronyms should be explained at the first occurrence. They, and other conventions, should be used consistently throughout the paper, and typed without full points. Thus: GNP, PhD. Per cent is preferred to %, unless used frequently, but always percentage.

Dashes

Use an m-rule/em dash (–) with a character space either side.

Numbers, Dates and Measurements

Words should be used for simple numbers from one to ten, while figures should be used for numerals from 11 upwards. Exceptions are references to page numbers, and in sets of numerals, some of which are higher than ten (e.g. 18,9 and 2). Four-figure numbers should have a comma, and a further comma with each additional three figures (e.g. 2,000; 5,000,000.) Dates should be written in full (e.g. 9 November 1989), and decades in number, without abbreviation (e.g. the 1980s). Write 20th century, and use 21st-century ideas. Metric units are preferred for contemporary weights and measures.

Quotations

When in the text these should be in double quotation marks, and should be in single quotation marks when appearing as quotations within quotations. Quotations of more than three lines of text should be indented.

Tables, Illustrations and Figures

Tables, illustrations and figures should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals and placed in their appropriate location and caption marked in the text.

Illustrations may be provided in colour or greyscale and submitted as .jpeg files with a minimum quality of 300dpi. The online nature of this series means there is no additional cost for the inclusion of photographs, maps, etc and contributors are encouraged to use illustrations where appropriate.

Copyright

In addition, authors are required to make sure submitted content does not infringe 3rd party copyright. More information from the Intellectual Property Office can be found here: http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy.htm

Data protection is covered under 'Privacy statement' which appears at the foot of the author guidelines page.