Book History

Contributions are accepted on a rolling basis. Articles should be submitted in electronic form as a Microsoft Word file, in Times New Roman or a similar serif typeface, double-spaced (including notes and citations), and documented in accordance with the Chicago Manual of Style. All submissions will be subject to double-blind review: therefore, contact information (author’s name, telephone number, postal address, e-mail address) should be provided in the cover letter but should not appear anywhere in the article itself. 

Contributors are welcome to submit black-and-white illustrations and graphs with their texts. We also invite authors to include additional supplementary material to accompany their articles, such as color illustrations, web pages, database interfaces, slide decks, and/or videos; those will run in our companion publication BHUnbound.

The desired length for submissions is 8–11,000 words, but shorter and longer articles will be considered. Due to space considerations, in the case of exceptionally long articles, the editors may choose to run the notes or appendices in BHUnbound. Articles may not be submitted to any other journal while they are under consideration at Book History. 

Book History now has a fully electronic system for processing submissions.  The submissions portal is here:mc.manuscriptcentral.com/bookhistory
The editors of Book History award an annual Graduate Student Award, with a prize of $500, for the best essay in that year’s volume by an author who was pursuing a course of graduate studies at the time of initial submission. The winner of this prize is announced during SHARP’s yearly conference at the Annual General Meeting.

Queries concerning submissions should be sent directly to the editors: Greg Barnhisel (barnhiselg@duq.edu) for articles dealing with the Americas; Beth le Roux (beth.leroux@up.ac.za) for articles dealing with Africa, Asia (including the Middle East), the Pacific, and global issues; and Yuri Cowan (yuri.cowan@ntnu.no) for articles dealing with Europe.

The Hopkins Press Journals Ethics and Malpractice Statement can be found at the ethics-and-malpractice page.

Peer Review Policy

Book History, an official publication of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing (SHARP), accepts submissions of original, researched scholarly articles focused on issues in the history of the book, print or manuscript culture, authorship, and reading. We do not publish informal articles or reviews. Articles should not be merely case studies; they must contribute to a larger debate or comment on a broader question in the field and show a familiarity with current scholarship. The desired length for submissions is 8–11,000 words, but shorter and longer articles will be considered. Due to space considerations, in the case of exceptionally long articles, the editors may choose to run the notes or appendices in BHUnbound. We do not accept simultaneous submissions. We do not consider translations of articles that have been previously published in other languages; for those types of submissions, please consider Book History’s sister publication Lingua Franca. 

Book History uses double-blind peer review. Authors submit their piece through the ScholarOne portal to the editor responsible for the article’s area (for Europe, Yuri Cowan; for the Americas, Greg Barnhisel; for Africa, Oceania, Asia, and “State of the Discipline” pieces, Beth LeRoux), and upon initial submission all editors read the article and vote on whether it should be sent out for review. Having passed preliminary editorial review, all articles are sent to expert peer reviewers in a double-blind process (reviewers do not know the identity of the author, and the author is not informed of the identity of the reviewers), although authors are asked to provide names of possible reviewers. Reviewers return their reports within 4-6 weeks recommending acceptance, revision, or rejection. The reviews are advisory and the editors reserve the right not to follow a reviewer’s recommendation or even to find another reviewer if they deem a given review unacceptable. Authors have three months to revise and resubmit their articles but extensions can be given.

Criteria for review, both by the editors and the reviewers, are:

• Relevance, originality, plausibility, strength of the argument
• Contribution of the article to an ongoing topic in the field
• Quality of the research and engagement with other scholarship on the topic
• Quality of the writing and organization of the article

Edited by

Greg Barnhisel, Duquesne University
Beth le Roux, University of Pretoria
Yuri Cowan, Norwegian University of Science and Technology​

Advisory Editors

Guyda Armstrong, University of Manchester
Jan-Pieter Barbian, Duisburg Public Library
Ann M. Blair, Harvard University
Cynthia Brokaw, Brown University
Sarah Brouillette, Carleton University
Matthew P. Brown, University of Iowa Center for the Book
Archie Dick, University of Pretoria
Paul Eggert, Loyola University Chicago and University of New South Wales
Aileen Fyfe, University of St. Andrews
Anindita Ghosh, University of Manchester
Lisa Gitelman, New York University 
Robert Gross, University of Connecticut (Emeritus)
Faye Hammill, University of Glasgow
Barbara Hochman, Ben-Gurion University (Emerita)
Shamil Jeppie, University of Cape Town
William A. Johnson, Duke University
Joan Judge, York University
Andrew T. Kamei-Dyche, Aoyama Gakuin University
Matthew Kirschenbaum, University of Maryland
Alisha R. Knight, Washington College
Cheryl Knott, University of Arizona
Keith Manley, Exeter, UK
Elizabeth McHenry, New York University
Alicia C. Montoya, Radboud University Nijmegen
Eva Mroczek, University of California, Davis
Simone Murray, Monash University
Brigitte Ouvry-Vial, Le Mans Université and Institut Universitaire de France
Ruth Panofsky, Ryerson University
Birgitte Beck Pristed, Aarhus University
Benito Rial Costas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Dagmar A. Riedel, Columbia University
Jiřina Šmejkalová, Charles University and Palacký University
Lisa Z. Sigel, DePaul University
Erin A. Smith, University of Texas at Dallas
Robert Spoo, University of Tulsa College of Law
Andrew Thacker, Nottingham Trent University
Michele Troy, Hillyer College—University of Hartford 
Alexis Weedon, University of Bedfordshire

Abstracting & Indexing Databases

• Clarivate Analytics
  • Emerging Sources Citation Index
  • Web of Science
• EBSCOhost
  • Academic Search Alumni Edition, 1/1/2003-12/31/2009
  • Academic Search Complete, 1/1/2003-12/31/2009
  • Academic Search Elite, 1/1/2003-12/31/2009
  • Academic Search Premier, 1/1/2003-12/31/2009
  • Academic Search Ultimate, 1/1/2003-12/31/2009
  • America: History and Life, 9/1/1998-
  • Biography Index: Past and Present (H.W. Wilson), vol.9, 2006-vol.10, 2007
  • Book Review Digest Plus (H.W. Wilson), Jan.2006-
  • Current Abstracts, 1/1/2003-
  • Historical Abstracts (Online), 9/1/1998-
  • Humanities International Complete, 1/1/2003-12/31/2009
  • Humanities International Index, 1/1/2003-12/31/2009
  • Humanities Source, 1/1/2003-12/31/2009
  • Humanities Source Ultimate, 1/1/2003-12/31/2009
  • Library & Information Science Source, 1/1/2006-11/1/2011
  • Library Literature & Information Science Full Text (H.W. Wilson), 01/01/2006-
  • Library Literature & Information Science Index (H.W. Wilson), 1/1/2006-11/1/2011
  • Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA), 1/1/2003-12/31/2009
  • Literary Reference Center, 1/1/2003-12/31/2009
  • Literary Reference Center Plus, 1/1/2003-12/31/2009
  • MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association)
  • OmniFile Full Text Mega (H.W. Wilson), 1/1/2006-11/1/2011
  • OmniFile Full Text Select (H.W. Wilson), 1/1/2006-11/1/2011
  • TOC Premier (Table of Contents), 1/1/2003-12/31/2009
• Gale
  • MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association)
• National Library of Medicine
  • PubMed
• OCLC
  • ArticleFirst, vol.1, no.1, 1998-vol.12, no.1, 2009
  • Electronic Collections Online, vol.1, no.1, 1998-vol.12, no.1, 2009
  • Library Literature, vol.9, 2006-vol.13, 2010
• ProQuest
  • MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association)

Source: Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory.

0.5 (2023)
0.4 (Five-Year Impact Factor)
0.00038 (Eigenfactor™ Score)

Rank in Category (by Journal Impact Factor):
84 of 518 journals, in “History”.
 

© Clarivate Analytics 2024

Published twice a year.

Readers include: Scholars interested in any literary culture and any historical period

Print circulation: 682

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