Submissions

This page is designed to help you ensure that your article fits the scope of the journal and is ready for submission. Before submitting, you should read over the guidelines below and then register for an account (or login if you have an existing account).

Alongside your submission, please include a brief abstract (300 words) and a list of keywords (maximum 5). When you register as an author, please provide a brief bio statement (200 words).

About

Welcome to Brief Encounters, an open-access peer-reviewed postgraduate journal that showcases the interdisciplinary research of scholars, staff and non-Higher Education partners affiliated with the Consortium for the Humanities and Arts in South-East England.

Focus and Scope

Brief Encounters showcases research undertaken by CHASE-funded and affiliated individuals, as well as non-HEI partner members. As an open-access journal, Brief Encounters supports the dissemination of knowledge to a global readership, with the intent that the research it publishes encourages the exchange of ideas outside of traditional academic circles. All articles published by Brief Encounters are free to read and accessible to all with no registration required.

The Editorial Team welcomes contributions in a variety of formats. This includes:

Academically rigorous and original articles (500 to 5,000 words).
Reviews of new publications, films, theatre productions, documentaries, and major exhibitions (500-1,500 words). We are particularly interested in emerging scholarship and innovative or interdisciplinary publications and productions.
Creative work, such as short stories, poetry, videos, posters and photography. The journal website includes a digital exhibition space for creative work. Creative work featured on the website must be accompanied by a critical commentary (500 to 4,000 words), which will be published in the journal.

Who can submit to Brief Encounters?

CHASE-funded doctoral researchers
Postgraduate students or doctoral researchers at CHASE institutions (regardless of funding status)
Alumni of CHASE institutions
Staff at CHASE institutions
Representatives of non-HEI CHASE partners

Submission Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors and contributors (hereafter ‘authors’) are required to check their submission's compliance with all of the following items. Submissions should conform to the journal Style Guide and may be returned if authors do not adhere to the guidelines.

The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
Any third-party-owned materials used have been identified with appropriate credit lines, and permission obtained from the copyright holder for all formats of the journal.
The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format. Please do not submit your article as a PDF.
All DOIs for the references have been provided, when available.
Tables, figures, and images are all cited in the text. Tables are included within the text document, whilst figures and images are uploaded as supplementary files.
All tables and figures must have captions within the text. All supplementary files must be labelled (Figure 1, Figure 2, etc).
Figures/images have a resolution of at least 150dpi (300dpi or above preferred). Each file is no more than 20MB per file. The files are in one of the following formats: JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, EPS (to maximise quality, the original source file is preferred). Please download our Artwork Guide for more detail specifications.
The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Style Guide. Please note that Brief Encounters publishes content with citations and bibliography according to the MHRA Style Guide.

Articles

Articles should be between 500 and 5,000 words in length (including footnotes, excluding bibliography).

Reviews

Reviews can cover new publications, films, theatre productions, documentaries, and major exhibitions engaging with any aspect of the arts and humanities.

Reviews should be between 500 and 1,500 words in length (including footnotes, excluding bibliography).

These submissions should adhere to the ethical standards set out below and should consider the following:

The context of the material being reviewed.
The intended audience for the material being reviewed and who would find it useful.
The main ideas and major objectives of the material being reviewed and how effectively these are accomplished.
The suitability and effectiveness of methodology and sources used.

Where appropriate, the following information should be given about the text(s) being reviewed at the start of each review: Author / Editor Name, Book Title, Publisher, Year of Publication, ISBN: 000-0-00-000000-0, Number of Pages, Price.

Creative Submissions

The journal website includes a digital exhibition space for creative submissions, submitted under Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0. Creative submissions might include, but are not limited to:

Short stories
Poetry
Videos
Posters
Photography
Musical interpretations

Authors of video and multimedia texts are advised that submissions should be between 5 and 30 minutes in length, in an edited and polished form, and capable of being uploaded to an online file storage system.

Creative work should be accompanied by a critical commentary (500 to 4,000 words), which will be published in the journal.

Copyright Notice

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

Hosted on Janeway, Brief Encounters provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

If a more restrictive license is required (for example, if you are reproducing third party material that cannot be reproduced under more open licenses), please make this request upon submission, stating the reasons why. The usage of licenses that are more restrictive than Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 is at the discretion of the editorial board and will be considered only in exceptional circumstances.

The author is responsible for securing permissions and paying any associated fee for their submission.

If including artwork in your submission that is not your own, you must obtain and (likely) pay for permission to reproduce those images. You must also supply credit/source information with your captions. Forward all original, signed permissions to your Editor as soon as you have them; they must be submitted no later than when you submit your final draft. Remember to make copies of the permissions for your records. Without permission or a clear indication that the work is in the public domain, we will not be able to use the art. Remember, you should treat web content like you would print content. Do not assume any images you find on the web are public domain, and make sure to research and acquire all permissions necessary. If you have any questions regarding permissions, contact your Editor as soon as possible. Please also see our Artwork Guide for more information.

Peer Review

Brief Encounters adheres to a rigorous peer-review policy to ensure the integrity of the scholarship we publish.

All submissions to Brief Encounters will undergo double-anonymous peer-review by researchers with the relevant expertise, meaning that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed throughout the review process. The only materials exempt from peer review are editorials/introductions, front matter and other non-article pieces.

All communication with authors will be undertaken through the journal’s online submissions platform, Janeway, by the relevant Section Editor to which the submission is designated.

All submissions to Brief Encounters will be reviewed by the Submissions Editors and checked using Turnitin anti-plagiarism software. This system compares incoming articles to a large database of academic content, and alerts editors to any possible issues.

Those submissions that successfully fit within the remit of the journal will then be reviewed by the relevant Section Editor. Your submission may be rejected at either of these stages, before being sent for peer-review. Section Editors will inform you if this is the case.

Successful submissions will be sent for peer-review by two reviewers. You will be informed of this. These reviewers will recommend one of the following options:

Accept without revisions: Your submission has been accepted without revisions
Minor Revisions: Your submission has not been accepted until revisions are made according to the recommendations of our peer-reviewers
Major Revisions: Your submission requires major revisions. It is recommended that you significantly revise your work according to the recommendations of the peer-reviewers and re-submit it to the journal. Upon re-submissions, your submission will undertake a second round of peer-review.
Decline/Reject: Your submission has not been accepted for Brief Encounters. (The journal retains the right to reject submissions without sending them for review.)

Section Editors and Submissions Editors will then assess the review and make a final decision. Section Editors will inform you of this decision and communicate any revisions if recommended. The anonymity of reviewers will be ensured.

To facilitate this, authors need to ensure that their manuscripts are prepared in a way that does not reveal their identity.

To help with this preparation please ensure the following when submitting to Brief Encounters:

Remove any information in your manuscript (including footnotes and acknowledgements) that could identify you, and disguise all references to personally identifiable information such as the institution where your work was carried out.
In the text, you can replace any information that would identify the author(s) by substituting words such as: [name deleted to maintain the integrity of the review process].
Avoid or minimise self-citation. If it is necessary to cite your own work, delete the names of authors and other identifying information and place substitute words in brackets, such as: [name deleted to maintain the integrity of the review process]. In the reference list, you should delete the citation and add it before submitting your final draft.
Do not mention a grant awarded to a named person.
Do not add any running headers or footers that would identify authors.
Refer to your own references in the third person. For example, write Smith and Black (2007) have demonstrated, not I have previously demonstrated (Smith & Black, 2007).
Check that all identifiers have been removed from electronic files.
When you submit the final draft of the manuscript for publication, you will need to put back any references to yourself, your institution, grants awarded, etc.
You may find it helpful to follow the Open Library of Humanities’ guidance on ensuring an anonymous peer review.

Conflicts of Interest

Whilst the Editorial Board endeavours to ensure that all peer-reviews are double-blind (the author and reviewer are kept anonymous and are not known to each other), we are aware that within specialist fields of research this may not always be possible due to interactions at conferences and subject specific events etc. All peer-reviewers are therefore expected to notify the Editorial Board of any conflicts of interest - i.e. if a reviewer knows or believes that they know the author in question on a personal or professional basis, or recognises the research that therefore indicates the author's identity, and whether this may impact upon their peer-review comments and recommendation. The Editorial Board will then make a decision as to whether an alternative reviewer should be found. All conflicts of interest will be taken into account when making a final decision on submissions. The Senior Editor/Co-Founding Editors are not permitted to submit to Brief Encounters. Should Editorial Board members wish to submit to the journal, decisions regarding articles will be made by the CHASE Training and Development Group.

Publication Fees

Brief Encounters does not charge authors to publish their papers. All article workflow publishing and hosting costs are covered by CHASE DTP.

Publication Cycle

Brief Encounters publishes one issue annually, usually in the summer.

Open Access Policy

The journal strives to maintain the open access of XML and PDF files for all articles, which are openly available for download from an article’s webpage if such files exist. Prior to issue 7, only PDF files are available to access due to the journal’s migration from Open Journal Systems to Janeway.

Ethics Policies and Responsibilities

Brief Encounters expects all authors to adhere to the ethics policies and responsibilities as prescribed by the Open Library of Humanities – detailed in the ‘Ethics policies for our journals’ section of this webpage.

The policies detailed here include:

Complaint and appeals process
Options for post-publication discussions and corrections
Policies on conflicts of interest/competing interests
Policies on data sharing and reproducibility
Policy on ethical oversight

The responsibilities detailed include:

Responsibilities of the publisher

Upholding complaints of misconduct
Neutrality and fairness
Confidentiality and theft of intellectual property
Editorial decisions
Compliance with investigations
Citation manipulation, coercive citation manipulation and data falsification

Responsibilities of reviewers

Academic best practice
Disclosure of competing interests
Confidentiality and theft of intellectual property
Conducting reviews
Coercive citation manipulation

Responsibilities of author(s):

Academic standards
Original research and theft of intellectual property
Disclosure of competing interests
Manuscript revisions and editorial compliance
Allegations by a third party, investigations, and notification of errors
Citation manipulation, coercive citation manipulation and data falsification

Authorship and contributorship

Articles should list names of all those who contributed to the published work, to ensure transparency and the academic integrity of the research. Authors take collective responsibility for determining who should be listed as an author and the order in which they should appear. Individuals who have contributed to the article, but do not meet the full criteria for authorship, should be credited by name and affiliation in the ‘Acknowledgments’ section.

The journal strongly encourages all authors to register for an Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) prior to submitting their work. ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier that authors own and control (an ORCID), which distinguishes them from every other researcher. ORCIDs will be displayed on published articles when they are provided by the author.

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following criteria for authorship:

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
Final approval of the version to be published; AND
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Where an article has multiple authors, there should be one primary author contact responsible for dealing with all editorial and publishing queries prior to and after the article’s publication. They must consult with their co-editors and contributors about editorial and publishing queries where appropriate, in order to facilitate an article’s publication. Post-publication, co-authors may wish to include their corresponding email address so that it is visible on the article.

All authors must give their approval before being attributed to the submitted article. The primary author must ensure that other co-authors have consulted the above sections; in particular, ‘Responsibilities of the Author(s)’.

The ‘Acknowledgements’ section of an article must include the involvement of research groups or organisations and any funding sources. All named figures and sources must give their permission to be acknowledged by the author(s) as this can be construed as an association with, and endorsement of, the research.

Authors cannot be added or removed at any point prior to publication unless an adequate reason is given to editors for why this is necessary. Unjustified addition or removal of authors will be considered a case of malpractice and will not be tolerated by the journal and publisher should an investigation prove this to be true.

Author name changes post-publication

In accordance with the journal’s values of inclusivity and openness, we acknowledge that an author may change their name during their career. Brief Encounters will therefore support post-publication author name changes where we have the technical capacity to do so (i.e., access to PDF source files). This will be actioned without publicly announcing these changes via a correction notice. Requesting authors will not be asked to provide legal evidence or documentation, nor the reason for a name change. However, they may be asked to provide evidence that they are the author of the article in question (for example, email correspondence relating to the submission or revisions).

Authors requesting a name change should contact the journal’s editor by email, which can be found on the journal’s ‘Contact’ page.

Licences

Brief Encounters allows the following licences for submission:

CC BY 4.0
This means that users accessing the work must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. They may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses them or their use of the work. No additional restrictions, however the user may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Sections

Public Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Indexed

Reviews

Articles

Front Matter

Creative Encounters

Introduction