Australian Journal of Jewish Studies – Guide for authors

The Australian Journal of Jewish Studies welcomes submissions of academic articles and book reviews relating to any aspect or theme of relevance to Jewish Studies. This includes but is not limited to:

• Jewish archaeology and history of any period
• Jewish-themed literature, film or other performing arts
• Jewish art or architecture of any period
• Learning or linguistics of Jewish languages including Hebrew and Yiddish
• National or international Jewish politics/international relations
• Sociological or anthropological studies of Jewish groups
• Biblical, legal or theological studies of Jewish religious texts or laws
• Jewish philosophy of any period
• Biographical studies of Jewish individuals or groups
• Holocaust Studies
• Jewish education

The publication language of the journal is English. Any original language quotes used should be accompanied by translation into English.

Biographical studies of Jewish individuals should have the subject’s Jewish life and identity as the focus of their exploration, not merely as a passing mention.

Acceptance of submissions is at the discretion of the Editors, and articles may be rejected at peer review. All accepted submissions will be available online.

Material published in the Journal is licensed under a Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial 4.0 International License. Journal material may not be reprinted by others without permission other than brief extracts for the purpose of a review in a book or journal.

Word length

Articles are up to 8,500 words long. Book reviews are 1,500 to 3,000 words long.

Submission

All submissions, and related queries, should be directed to the Editors: ajjewishstudies@aajs.org.au

When submitting articles, please provide the following:
1. in the body of the email: your article title
2. in the body of the email: a brief descriptive summary of your article: what it is about, and what discipline best describes your approach, for example, history, theology, philosophy, theatre studies, sociology. Indicate the major contribution your work makes – does it build on existing studies (which ones?); does it explore a new site, work, event, or subject; does it take a new angle or approach?
3. in the body of the email: details of at least three potential peer reviewers for your work. These should be scholars who are not involved with the research, and are not close colleagues, supervisors or friends, but who have suitable expertise in the discipline and subject area of the paper, for example, scholars you have cited. Please note that these will not necessarily be the reviewers who will end up reviewing your article, but providing these details will help the Editors secure the most suitable experts to review your article.
4. attached: a document consisting only of a title page. This should include, in the following order: title, author name(s) for publication, an abstract of between 50 and 200 words in length.
5. attached: a contributor biography. Please include a brief biography (‘bio’) of each of the submission’s named authors, up to 50 words in length, for inclusion in the relevant issue’s list of contributors.
6: attached: an anonymised/blinded manuscript for review, in Microsoft Word format. Your article will be sent out anonymously to experts in your field; it is important that there is no clear identifying information in the article. To make sure that your paper is anonymised, check that your name is not included anywhere in the manuscript, including the first page after the title, or the header or footer. You will also need to ensure that author information is not retained in the internal information of your Word document, by following these instructions. Please make sure that any mentions of your previous work do not state that they are yours, for example, instead of “my previous research has found…”, use “previous research has found”.

Guidelines for preparing article and book review manuscripts for submission

• Centre align the title.
• Justify the body of the text.
• Format text in size 12 Times New Roman font.
• Use single line spacing.
• Insert page numbering in the footer.
• Set 4cm margins on all sides.
• Format subheadings in sentence case (for example, ‘Literature review’, not ‘Literature Review’), bold type, left alignment, and without a full stop.
• Do not indent the opening paragraph of any section/subheading, but do indent subsequent paragraphs.
• Do not add an extra line between paragraphs.
• Referencing: the AJJS uses Chicago 17th edition, Author-Date style. For example, in-text referencing is in this format: ‘(Creese and Arnold 2021, 157)’. Please do not use the in-built referencing option in your Word program. If using an external citation manager, such as, Endnote, please ensure that your formatted document has been changed to plain text prior to submission.
• When you need to provide details or comments outside the text, do so using an endnote, not a footnote. End each endnote with a full stop. In the endnotes, when citing the identical work above, use Ibid. Add the page number(s) if different from those in the previous citation.
• The AJJS uses ‘antisemitism’ rather than ‘anti-semitism’/‘anti-Semitism’, and ‘antisemitic’ rather than ‘anti-semitic’/‘anti-Semitic’, in accordance with the IHRA recommendation.
• Transliterating Hebrew: Hebrew words must appear in transliteration and italicised. Keep transliteration consistent throughout (for example, Hasidic/Chasidic; herem/cherem; melekh/melech) except when directly quoting from somebody else’s text that differs from your transliteration approach.
• Do not italicise foreign-language institutional names (for example, Chevra Kadisha, Reichstag) or familiar foreign terms (for example, chutzpah, kosher, Reich). But do italicise Jewish festivals and holy days (for example, Purim, Rosh Hashanah) and foreign terms not in common use in English (for example, Kashrut, Kindertransport, Kristallnacht, mensch).
• Abbreviations: may be used for institutions, policies, theories, organisations, and so on. Use the full term followed by the abbreviation in parentheses on first use (for example, ‘Australian Labor Party (ALP)’ the first time you refer to that party, and ‘ALP’ thereafter). Avoid abbreviation of Australian or US states (for example, ‘New South Wales’ not ‘NSW’) or conflicts (for example, ‘World War Two’ not ‘WWII’) unless you are directly quoting their use in another source. Avoid ‘e.g.’ and ‘etc’ – instead use ‘for instance’, ‘and so on’ or similar. Use ‘percent’ rather than ‘%’ in text, though ‘%’ may be used in tables.
• Quotations: Put single quotation marks around a quotation consisting of up to three consecutive sentences, so long as no full sentence has been omitted. When quoting a quotation within a quotation, use double quotation marks within single. When quoting an entire sentence, place the full stop before the quotation mark; when quoting a partial sentence, place the full stop after the quotation mark. When quoting more than three sentences, do not use quotation marks. Instead, place the quoted passage on the next line, indenting the whole quote. Continue your paragraph on a new line after the indented quote, with no indent, unless you are starting a new paragraph. When quoting, indicate by an ellipsis of three points (…) when you have omitted some words from a quotation. You do not need ellipses at the beginning and end of quotations, unless they are necessary for retaining the sense of the passage.
• Numerals: Numbers one through ten should be written in full; for 11 onwards please use numerals.
• Dates: for date ranges, use ‘1870-79’, not ‘1870-1879’. For decades, use ‘1930s’ not ‘1930’s’. For centuries, use ‘nineteenth century’, not ‘19th century’. When ‘century’ is being used adjectivally, please use a hyphen, for example, ‘nineteenth-century music’. For full dates, use ‘14 May 1948’, not ‘14th May 1948’ nor ‘14.5.48’.
If your formatting question is not covered in this guide, contact the Editors for guidance, or take your discipline’s standard approach and apply consistently throughout.