Guidelines for Contributors

Submission of Manuscripts

1.1 Preference will be given to articles of about 4,000–6,000 words in length (excluding footnotes), although both shorter and longer articles will be considered. Reviews will normally be between 1,000 and 2,000 words in length, while research reports and composer/performer interviews will, of necessity, be of varying lengths. Article submissions must be accompanied by a 200–300 word abstract.

1.2 Context is a fully refereed journal. After initial screening by the Editorial Committee, all articles deemed suitable for review will be subject to a referral process by at least two qualified readers. The name of the author and the names of any readers will remain confidential until publication, at which time, if requested, readers may allow their names to be made known to the author.

1.3 Contributions will be acknowledged, and authors notified when readers’ reports have been received. This process may take several months. Authors will then be asked to make any revisions required and return an electronic copy, along with a fifty-word biography for inclusion in the journal.

1.4 Manuscripts accepted for publication are subject to stylistic editing.

1.5 Postgraduate and undergraduate students should submit contributions for publication only after such contributions have been approved by their supervisor or lecturer.

Manuscript Preparation

2.1 Articles submitted for consideration should be in electronic form, preferably emailed as a Microsoft Word or RTF file, double spaced, with margins of at least 2 cm.

2.2 Context employs a reference style in general use in the Humanities; it does not make use of bibliographies, as full bibliographic citations should appear in footnotes. Exceptions may be made for articles clearly from within other scholarly traditions, such as the Social Sciences, including Ethnomusicology and Music Therapy. References should be set out according to the Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed. or later), with the following exceptions:

2.2.1 All subsequent references to a source should use author’s last name and short title, removing any leading articles.

2.2.2 Single quotation marks should be used in all cases, except in the instance of a ‘quotation “within” a quotation.’

2.2.3 All dates should be expressed in the following format: 25 Dec. 1974 (June and July are given in full).

For music-specific matters Context uses: D. Kern Holoman, Writing about Music: A Style Sheet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014).

2.3 Pitch notation should follow the Helmholz system (with middle C as c’).

2.4 Musical examples, illustrations, tables and diagrams are to be set out with proper captions and with locations and sources of examples carefully indicated. Examples should be computer typeset and formatted to fit within a text area measuring 125mm wide by 205mm high. The original Finale, Sibelius or MuseScore files should be provided. Images should be sent as high-resolution (at least 300 dpi) scanned files, preferably in TIFF, JPG or EPS format. These should be provided as separate files even if embedded also in the main text.

Copyright and Reproduction

3.1 It is the author’s responsibility to obtain any necessary copyright permission and to provide the Editorial Committee with the original copy of such permission.

3.2 Articles in Context must not have been previously published elsewhere, and must not contain substantial sections of material previously published elsewhere. Articles should not be submitted to other journals while they are under consideration by the Context Editorial Committee, nor once they have been accepted for publication in Context, without obtaining the permission of the Editorial Committee.

3.3 Authors retain copyright of their published work.

3.4 Any article republished in whole or in part (including in altered form) in other sources should contain an acknowledgement that it, or sections of it, originally appeared in Context.