General Guidelines

1. Research articles should make a novel contribution with respect to methodology, content, interpretation, and/or critique, and should use unpublished sources and/or an adequate range of literature. Critical or analytical reviews of existing work should open up new perspectives. Works that include new theoretical approaches should present convincing evidence of their originality.

2. The style should be straightforward and focused, unburdened by jargon. Clarity is of the essence. The content should be accessible to readers outside of a narrow specialization, given the PSR's interdisciplinary emphasis and audience. If new terminology is being introduced, it should not be frivolous, should not be introduced in the article's title, and should be suggestive. The use of acronyms is to be avoided whenever possible, and otherwise acronyms should be defined when used for the first time.

3. Authors should avoid including extensive surveys of the literature within research articles. The proper venue for these is the section of Review Essays. None the less, manuscripts should be briefly positioned within the context of current research. In case of significant delays (more than six months) in returning a revised manuscript to the Editors, authors will be expected to have updated their notes and references to take into account any relevant recent publications.

4. The PSR discourages proposals to publish serial installments of a long work. This policy applies to all sections of the Review.

5. Research Notes: Complete original contributions that are too short to qualify as a full research article. The manuscripts will be refereed. Progress reports and reports of preliminary research results should not be submitted as Research Notes, but reserved for the section of Research Reports.

Comments and Responses: Contributions that engage in a critical manner a single work (book or article), or group of works, with respect to a unified theme open to controversy. These contributions will not be refereed. The works under discussion should be clearly identified. Both comments and responses should be written at the level of Research Notes, and must be equipped with notes. The comments should obey the norms of scholarly collegiality, should avoid polemic, should not be defamatory or prejudicial to individuals or groups, and should deal exclusively with scholarly issues, not with personal or political attitudes. They must be pertinent and free of error or deliberate distortion. Responses are expected to follow the same rules. The maximum length of a Comment or Response is 1,500 words.

Archives and Media: Short reports on the state of the archives, research conditions, technical facilities, new research technologies, and new publishing and presentation technologies. The reports should be factual, accurate, and free of polemic. They will not be refereed. This section also aims to explore and promote the educational, scholarly, and cultural potential of the World Wide Web (Internet) and of publications on CD-ROM or DVD.

Review Essays: Critical reviews of the literature describing and/or analyzing the development of a research field, or covering a representative body of recent literature, films, or multimedia works. These will not be refereed. The authors should preferably have published in the field. The Editors may invite specific contributions from established scholars, with a sustained publication record in a given area. Review Essays should not exceed 4,000 words and should not have more than 60 notes.

Reviews: Reviews, solicited by the Editors, should report in a critical manner on recently published books, periodicals, CD-ROMs, dissertations, and theses.

Dissertation and Thesis Abstracts: The PSR will consider for publication abstracts of dissertations and theses defended to obtain advanced degrees, unless they have already been disseminated in other scholarly periodicals.


Back to Guidelines for Authors

Made for 1024 x 768
Screens