Author guidelines

Preparing your manuscript

Authors are requested to follow these author guidelines before submitting to the journal. It is the responsibility of the author to ensure adherence to the style guide. Please note that editors will not undertake any extensive formatting to this extent, and anything not adhering to the guidelines might be returned for revision.

Radical Americas operates double anonymised peer review, where both the reviewers and authors are anonymised to each other during review. Authors should submit an anonymous version of the manuscript, stripped of all identifying references to the author(s) for peer review. The word count should be clearly indicated. All submissions must be in .doc or .docx format to facilitate the peer-review process.

The journal uses the Chicago Manual of Style Notes-Bibliography System (NB).

When you are ready you can submit here:

Start Submission

Covering letter

Covering letters are welcome to be submitted with the manuscript for the Editors reference. Should you wish to provide one, please briefly summarise your manuscript, its findings, major themes, relevant discussion points and any disclosures including conflicts of interest the Editor should be aware of.

File size and formatting

Please submit your manuscript main text/body as Microsoft word (DOC, DOCX). Any supplementary material should be submitted as separate files and referenced in the main text, or designated for review purposes only (including clarifying this in your covering letter to the Editor if relevant.) No one single file should exceed 20 Mb, should you require submitting a file exceeding this size, please contact the journal editorial office for further advice.

English language

All publications are in English (UK). In order to facilitate rigorous and high quality peer-review, all manuscripts should be submitted to a high and coherent level of English language. Should you require help when writing your manuscript, a native English language colleague may be well suited to help edit the level of English language in the manuscript. You may also want to consider using a professional English language editing service to improve the level of English language.

Please note that by using professional English language editing services does not guarantee manuscript acceptance in the journal, and you may be charged for these services.

Image permissions and copyright

Please ensure that where the copyright of any image or figure is used in the manuscript, appropriate permission to reuse in an open access journal publication has been obtained in writing and signed by the copyright holder. Please contact UCL Press for any questions, at uclpresspublishing@ucl.ac.uk.

Article types

Article type	Description
Original research article	Original research articles are detailed studies reporting original research classified as primary literature (usually around 8-12,000 words).
Review article	Reviews provide critical and systematic appraisal of the current research to provide authoritative judgement to its particular context, topic, and field.
Perspective and opinion article	Perspective and opinion articles are shorter scholarly articles that cover key specific concepts and ideas, aimed to present a well thought out personal critique of the field, topic, or research, to stimulate further discussion and debate. These articles are normally by invitation only, however unsolicited articles are welcome and prospective authors should firstly contact the Editors with their contribution before formal submission.
Commentary article	Commentary articles provide further explanation on a new or existing topic as well as an article published in the journal, aimed to specifically address the key topic or subject to provide further clarification to the journals audience and literature. Commentaries are usually shorter articles with concise and narrow narratives.
Book review	Book reviews are brief concise articles that provide an evaluation of a published scholarly book. Book reviews are generally invited only, however, suggestions are welcome and should be sent to the Editors of the journal. A book review might assess the importance of a book's contribution to a particular field covered by the journal’s aims and scope and should aim to objectively review the strengths and weaknesses that concern the journal’s audience. Please refer to the journal's aims and scope.

Please note, all word limits include citations, notes, and list of references. If authors wish to include more figures the number of words in the text may need to be adjusted.

Formatting

It makes a huge difference to the ease of production if you read and adhere to the author guidelines when preparing your manuscript. If your submission does not follow these guidelines it may be returned to you for modification.

Title page
The title page must be a single page and attached a the manuscripts first page and include all of the information below, in the same order. No further information should be included:
1. Title of the manuscript
2. Full name(s) of contributing authors including their institutions/affiliation and address, and their institutional email address (including ORCiD ID’s - see below note on ORCiD).
3. The corresponding author(s) should be clearly identified and include their contact email address (normally this will be your university email address).
Abstract
Present the abstract as an overview of your article (up to 250 words), giving a summary of the contents and major themes. (Note that this will ultimately be used by search engines, and it will form part of the meta-data that will be seen first by people searching your article.)
Keywords
All articles must list a maximum of up to ten key words.
Main text
The body of the submission should be structured in a logical and easy to follow manner. A clear introduction section should provide non-specialists in the subject with an understanding of the topic and a background to the issue(s) involved. Methods, results, discussion and conclusion sections may then follow to clearly detail the information and research being presented.
Headings and sub-headings
Up to three level headings may be present and must be clearly identifiable using different font sizes, bold or italics. We suggest using Headings 1, 2 and 3 in MS-Word’s ‘Style’ section.
Notes
The citation system used by this publication, requires the use of endnotes and a bibliography. Use endnotes rather than footnotes, for any additional notes and information. These appear at the end of the main text, before References. All notes should be used only where crucial clarifying information needs to be conveyed.
Funding and Acknowledgement statements
1. Funding: All sources of funding for the research reported should be declared, including any project and grant codes and details.
2. Acknowledgements: mentions everyone whose contribution to the work you wish to recognise.
Declarations and conflicts of interest statements
Clearly state the following in the article as sub-headings:
1. Conflicts of interest
  Clearly declare any possible conflicts of interest, including but not limited to financial and non-financial competing interests. Where there are no conflicts of interests or competing interests, authors must clearly declare this under the same heading. For further information, please refer to the journal’s Editorial Policy at https://journals.uclpress.co.uk/site/editorial_policy.
2. Ethics approval
  Authors are required to show in their articles that they have received ethical approval for their research from all relevant institutional review boards and that they have followed appropriate personal data protection regulations (e.g. EU General Data Protection Regulation and the UK Data Protection Act 2018) in the handling of personal data. Where such committees do not operate, authors are responsible for providing evidence of their adherence to relevant ethical guidelines for the subject. Where ethics approval is not applicable (e.g. due to the type of article) please indicate this as "N/A".
3. Consent for publication
  For all articles involving human subjects, including any images, videos, and any other personal and identifiable information, authors must have secured informed consent to participate in the study and to publication before submitting to the journal, and a statement declaring this must be included in the article. Where consent for publication is not applicable (e.g. no such data is included) please indicate this as "N/A".
Data and supporting Information (including supplementary information and appendices, see below)

References/bibliography
A full references list should contain all the sources cited in the text.

Data and supporting information

Data or information should not be submitted as supplementary information alongside the manuscript, but instead be included in the manuscript that forms part of the paper or deposited into a publicly available repository, depending on the type of data or information concerned. Where supporting information is included in the article that has no persistent identifier (for example, a Google survey), authors may be requested to deposit the information into a relevant data repository to ensure persistent access, have it registered to a DOI, and cite the DOI in the article.

Common errors to avoid

Radical Americas uses several stylistic idiosyncrasies that are often overlooked by authors when preparing their manuscripts. For your convenience, these are listed below. Please be aware that this list is by no means exhaustive and authors should consult the full guidelines if in doubt.

The use of ‘et al’ should be avoided. Please refer to these Author Guidelines for further guidance on correct referencing.
Multiple sources within single in-text citations should be separated with a semi-colon and arranged alphabetically. See the References section for further information.
Bibliographic entries referring to online resources (web pages etc.) should always be appended with a ‘last accessed’ date in the following format: [Last accessed numeric date text month numeric year]. See the References section for further information.
Bibliographic entries should always be appended with a DOI link, where it is available (this applies to nearly all journal articles and more recent chapters in edited volumes). You should obtain your DOI by searching for your source using https://www.crossref.org. This will provide you with a secure link. See the References section for further information.

ORCiD

ORCiD helps researchers record and report their work by providing researchers with a personal unique identifier that can be kept throughout their career. UCL Press journals now implement ORCiD in publications and authors are encouraged to register with ORCiD and enter their ORCiD details into their submission as a URL link or ORCiD number. To register, follow the instructions on the ORCiD web pages at https://orcid.org, or for UCL authors please visit the UCL Open Access pages http://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/open-access/ORCID.

Referencing style

All references should follow the Notes and Bibliography (https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html) of The Chicago Manual of Style (using British punctuation and spelling).

Notes and Bibliography

The Notes and Bibliography system of documentation presents bibliographic information in a reference list; notes should be excluded from the reference list and made available as endnotes. In this system, sources are cited in numbered endnotes. Each numbered note corresponds to a raised (superscript) number in the text. Sources are also usually listed in a separate bibliography. If the bibliography includes the full reference details, the note need not duplicate the complete information. It is acceptable to use the shortened form in the note, even at first use, e.g. ‘Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, 101’.

Avoid the use of ‘Ibid’, ‘As above’, etc. in endnotes when referencing. Please follow the examples below for style and punctuation (please note especially the use of capitals, italics and punctuation).

Important note: Please include the DOI for each referenced work as a full working link, for example:

Eichsteller, G., Cameron, C. ‘Editorial’. International Journal of Social Pedagogy, 2017, 6 (1), pp.1–5. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.ijsp.2017.v6.1.001

Book

Note

Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, 101.

Bibliography

Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A natural history of four meals. New York: Penguin, 2006.

Chapter or other part of a book

In the note, cite specific pages. In the bibliography, include the page range for the chapter or part.

Note

Kelly, ‘Seeing Red’, 81.

Bibliography

Kelly, John D. ‘Seeing Red: Mao fetishism, Pax Americana, and the moral economy of war’. In Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency, edited by John D. Kelly, Beatrice Jauregui, Sean T. Mitchell, and Jeremy Walton, 67–83. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.

E-book

For books consulted online, include a URL or the name of the database. For other types of e-books, name the format. If no fixed page numbers are available, cite a section title or a chapter or other number in the notes, if any (or simply omit).

Note

Austen, Pride and Prejudice, chap. 14.

Bibliography

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. New York: Penguin Classics, 2007. Kindle.

House style

Spelling

Authors should consistently adopt British spelling conventions (except in quotations from other sources, where the spelling convention of the original should be retained, or where stipulated specifically in by the journal – for example World Health Organization).

Punctuation

Systems should consistently follow British conventions (except in quotations from other sources, where the punctuation convention of the original should be retained). British style uses single inverted commas, except for quotations within quotations (which have double inverted commas).
Punctuation should follow closing inverted commas (except for grammatically complete sentences beginning with a capital).
Punctuation should precede closing quotation marks (except for dashes, colons and semicolons, unless these are part of the quoted matter).

Hyphenation

Please consult the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) for guidance. Hyphenation must be used consistently throughout your text.

Contractions and abbreviations

If you need to use them please write in full at the first appearance with the abbreviation in brackets. You may repeat an abbreviation if it reappears later in your article.
Abbreviations are usually expressed without full stops, e.g. GNP, USA, PhD
British style contractions will have no full points (e.g. Mr, St, edn), though abbreviated words, which do not end with their final letter, will (e.g. vol., vols., ed., eds.)

Capitalisation

Keep capitalisation to a minimum and use only for proper nouns and formal names of organisations, etc.

Numbers and dates

Spell out numbers up to but not including 10.
Elide numbers to minimum digits, e.g. 233-4; dates, e.g. 1993-4. Do not elide in titles and headings.
Centuries should be written as words not numbers, e.g. eighteenth century. Hyphenate if used as an adjective, e.g. eighteenth-century masterpiece.
Dates as British usage: 18 August 2015.

Quotations

Quotations should be indicated by single quotation marks but use double quotation marks for quotations within quotations.
Indent quotations of more than 50 words.
Quotations should remain exactly as they are in the original.

Acceptable language

Please be sensitive in use of terms that might cause offence or be interpreted as racist or sexist; for example, avoid gender-specific pronouns where possible.

Revisions

Should your manuscript be requested for revision to raise the acceptability for publication in the journal, please ensure that you follow below points when revising your manuscript and responding to peer review comments. Please provide your timely revisions along with a response letter to any reviewer reports, within the specified revision period to the Editor as instructed in your revision request email. Namely:

You should aim to address all points raised by the editor and reviewers, preferably sequentially and in a bullet point list.
Outline what revisions you made to your manuscript in your response letter.
Where applicable, perform any additional analyses or experiments the reviewers recommend (unless you feel that they would not make your paper better; if this is the case, explain why in your response letter).
Provide a polite objective rebuttal to any points or comments you disagree with.

Clearly show and/or highlight the revisions you have made in the text. This can be accommodated by making use of either a different colour text, highlighting the text, or by using Microsoft Word's Track Changes function.