Submissions

Author Guidelines

Download HERE the Good Practice Code in PDF
Download HERE the Authorship Form in PDF

Al-Qanṭara is devoted to the civilization of classical Islam (up to the seventeenth century inclusive), with particular attention to the Islamic West. Two issues are published each year, containing different sections: research articles, short notes, a monographic section (in the second issue of each year), and reviews. Contributions will only be commissioned for the monographic sections and reviews. The journal appears in open access on Internet at the same time as on paper. The maximum length for articles is 12.900 words, for short notes 3.000 words, and for reviews 1.500 words. Submissions must be original and unpublished, and should not have been approved or submitted for publication in any other journal.

All originals, including those commissioned, will be peer-reviewed by at least two external referees, whose suggestions will be sent to the authors so that they can make relevant changes when necessary. Al-Qanṭara employs the "double-blind" method, so that both the author and the referee are ignorant of each other's identity. A list of external evaluators will be published every three years in the official Website. The Editorial Board considers all submissions and, taking the opinions of the external referees into account, decides whether to accept or reject contributions, as well as deciding which issue those accepted appear in. The Management of the journal may reject an article without needing to send it out for refereeing, if they consider that it does not conform to the norms or to the scholarly profile of the contents of the journal. Authors will be informed as to acceptance or rejection of their contributions within six months.

Al-Qantara publishes articles written in Spanish, English and French. For the transliteration of Arabic in Spanish texts the following symbols should be used:

* Alif in initial position is never transliterated: umma, aǧnās.
* Determined article is transliterated with /l/ [(a-)l /l-], even in solar consonants: al-šams, al-qamar, wa-l-bayt, bi-l-ḍabṭ, li-l-kātib, fī l-aṣl.
* Suffixed pronouns will not be preceded by a hyphen: anfusuhum, ʿilmihim, naḥwahum.
* A phonological transcription may be used in articles dealing with linguistic matters, especially those with dialectological content.

Dates may be expressed according to the hijri system, the Gregorian system, or preferably both (in this case the dates should be separated by a slash, without using A.H. or A.D.); the formulation of dates should be consistent within a single contribution.

The non-sexist, inclusive language guidelines in the journal’s website will be followed (About/Recommendations for inclusive language). Where relevant, it is recommended to include a gender analysis that addresses the relevance of this variable in the research design, methodological proposal, results, discussion, and limitations. In these cases, it must be mentioned, both in the conclusions and in the summary of the article, whether the research is affected by gender issues, to help in the identification of potential differences.

All material should be sent in separate files, with the following information:

1. Author details: title of the contribution, first name and surname, postal address, telephone number, e-mail address, academic position, name of the institution to which you belong, and date of submission. Signature: Spanish authors and others with two surnames should choose between signing with only one surname (recommended) or, if they wish to use both, they should be hyphenated.
Authors must include a valid ORCID identifier along with the authors’ filiation. Authors without this personal identifier can register free of charge in https://orcid.org to complete this data. When the article is signed by several authors, it is required to include the ORCID of all of them.

Authorship contribution statement: this journal applies the CRediT taxonomy for identifying authorship contributions based on the assignment of specific roles to research articles. For more information see "Submissions/Authorship identification". This information should be incorporated in the full version of the manuscript, under an "Authorship contribution statement" heading, located just before the bibliography, in the following format:

Authorship contribution statement

Name and Surname author 01: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.

Name and Surname author 02: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – review & editing.

2. Text in Microsoft Word file format: in the following form: Font Times New Roman; 12 point (10 point in notes, which should be placed at the foot of the page, numbered consecutively throughout using Arabic numerals), double-spaced (both text and notes) with side margins of 3 cm (= 1.2 inches). The first page should contain the title, the abstract and key words, all translated into English (or into Spanish if the article is in English). The abstract should be between 150 and 250 words, and should describe the aim of the study, the method employed, the most important results, and the main conclusions.

3. Text in PDF format: with exactly the same content as in the previous point (Text in Microsoft Word file format).

The metadata and the names of the files containing the text of the article (in Microsoft Word compatible file and PDF file) must not contain any information that could reveal the identity of the author.

4. Illustrations: should be identified with Arabic numerals and their place in the text should be indicated, but they should not be included there. Each image must be in a separate file, preferably in TIFF format or, failing that, in JPEG, with a minimum resolution of 300 ppp. Graphics and pictures should be submitted in vectoral files. All the images, illustrations and graphics should be submitted in an only ZIP or RAR compressed file. Every illustration should have a caption and each table an identifying title. Authors are responsible for obtaining the appropriate permission to reproduce material (text, tables, or illustrations) from other publications or other sources (libraries, archives, etc.), and for correctly attributing these sources.

5. Authorship Form: completed and signed by all authors of the article.

6. Other content: if the article has received public or private funding, the funding bodies should be listed briefly, including the identifying code if applicable. This information should be included in a separate section before the bibliography.

If the authors have used Artificial Intelligence tools, they must mention this in the corresponding section. For more information, see "About/Artificial Intelligence Policy".

Articles may, if necessary, be accompanied by additional files containing supplementary material (data files, multimedia files) the publication of which will be subject to the decision of the Editorial Board (EB hereafter). These files will be identified in the text and submitted along with the necessary metadata.

Bibliographical references and quotes

1. Bibliographical references

These should be listed at the end of the article in alphabetical order of author; the surnames and first names of the authors (except the first letter) should be in lower case (do not use capitals or small capitals). If several works by the same author are cited, do not use a dash to replace the name, but repeat the author's name for each of the works cited. Up to 4 authors' names are acceptable for each work; if there are more, put the name of the first followed by et al.

The bibliographical list should not include references to primary sources (archive material, newspapers and similar), which will be included in another separate list. The style of references for this list is as follows:

Monographs: author (surname, first name), title (in italics), edition (e.g. 2nd ed.), location, publisher, year, section or volume, series or collection. For example:

Cook, David (ed.), Jihad and Martyrdom. Critical concepts in islamic studies, London-New York, Routledge, 2010, 4 vols.

Editions and translations: author (surname, first name), title (in italics), surname and first name (ed./trans.), edition (e.g. 2nd ed.), place, publisher, year, section or volume, series or collection. For example:

Ibn 'Idari, al-Bayan al-mughrib fi akhbar al-Andalus wa l-Maghrib, al-Kattani, Muhammad Ibrahim (ed.), Bayrut, Dar al-Gharb al-Islami, 1985.

Contributions to meetings, tributes or collected works: author (surname, first name), title of the article or chapter (in double quotes), ‘in’ followed by first name and surname of the person(s) responsible for the work (ed., coord.), title (in italics), edition (e.g. 2nd edition), place, publisher, year, section or volume, series or collection, pp. (first and last page of the chapter. For example:

Crone, Patricia, “The Significance of Wooden Weapons in Al-Mukhtār’s Revolt and the ‘Abbāsid Revolution”, in Ian Richard Netton (ed.), Studies in Honour of Clifford Edmund Bosworth, Leiden-Boston-Köln, E. J. Brill, 2000, pp. 174-187.

Articles from journals: author (surname, first name), title of the article (in double quotes), name of journal (in italics), volume number (no vol.), issue (no comma) year (in brackets), pp. (first and last page of the article). For example:

Hakim, Avraham, "Al-Qādī al-Nuʻmān b. Muhammad al-Maghribī (m. 363/974). Risālat Dhāt al-Bayān fī l-Radd  ͑alā Ibn Qutayba ou L'épître de l'éloquente clarification concernant la réfutation d'Ibn Qutayba (I)", Al-Qanṭara, 31, 1 (2010), pp. 77-102.

Documents available on Internet: references are given following the style of the document concerned (see above), adding at the end [on line], available on: URL, [consulted dd/mm/yyyy]. If the document has a DOI this should be shown instead of the URL, without quoting the accession date.

Example with URL:

Marmon, Shaun, “Black slaves in Mamluk narratives: representations of transgression”, Al-Qanṭara, 28, 2 (2007), pp. 435-464, [on line], available on: http://al-qantara.revistas.csic.es/index.php/al-qantara/article/view/44/38, [consulted 05/02/2013].

Example with DOI:

Barceló, Carmen, “Lament for the loss of al-Andalus in two Zajal from Cútar”, Al-Qanṭara, 33, 1 (2012), pp. 169-199, [on line], doi: 10.3989/alqantara.2011.002.

2. Bibliographic quotes

These should be included in a footnote, showing only the author's surname (in lower case), abbreviated title, section and/or volume (s./vol.) and the page from which the quote comes (p./pp.). In no case will the use of ibidem, idem or op. cit. be accepted. For example:

García-Arenal y Rodríguez Mediano, "Los libros de los moriscos", p. 620.

Correction of proofs

The author will receive the proofs through the publishing management platform, and will have a limit of 15 days to correct them; this should be limited to possible misprints and minor corrections. Significant alterations or additions to the text will not be accepted.

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

Below you will find instructions for the following procedures:

- How to register at Al-Qanṭara

- How to send an original manuscript to Al-Qanṭara

- How to check a revision report and submit a revised version of a manuscript

How to register at Al-Qanṭara

1.- On the journal's website, click on the link "Register":

2.- On the registration page you will have to fill in all the fields (the "Family name" field is optional, although highly recommended) using lower case only for your email, username and password. After reading the Privacy Statement you will need to consent to the collection and storage of your data and complete the Captcha. Receiving notifications of new publications and notices is optional.

3.- You will receive a message with a link to activate your account at the provided email address. Once activated, you will be able to log in to your account with the credentials you created.

How to send an original manuscript to Al-Qanṭara

1.- On the magazine's website, log in by clicking on "Login":

2.- Enter your username and password. Once you return to the magazine's homepage, click on the "Make a Submission" button:

Before submitting, please review the "Submission Preparation Checklist" and read the "Author Guidelines", the "Copyright Notice" and the "Privacy Statement". When you have all the required documents ready, click on the link "Make a new submission".

In subsequent logins, you will be taken to your user dashboard. There press the ‘New Submission’ button to submit a new article. You will be shown any articles received and in process under the ‘My Queue’ tab):

3.- As you will see on the new submissions page, submitting a manuscript is a four-stage process, in addition to a final section with information on follow-up:

3.1.- "1. Start"

At this stage you must select the language in which the article is written and the section of the journal in which you think it would fit, you must indicate that you have prepared all the items on the "Submission requirements" list and, optionally, you may send comments to the editor. You must comply with the terms of the Copyright Statement and the collection and storage of your data as the author of the article in accordance with the Privacy Statement of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC).

Then press the "Save and continue" button.

3.2.- "2. Upload submission"

In this phase, the files that make up the article and its additional documentation will be uploaded to the management module.

There are three parts to upload each file. In the first one, we will select which component of the article we are going to contribute and we will upload the corresponding file. Once uploaded, click on the "Continue" button. In the second part we will see the file metadata, with the possibility to edit them, but we will click "Continue" without making this edition.

In the third part, select "Add Another File", going back to "1. Upload file" and, without modifying the default option "This is not a revision of an existing file", select the new "Article Component" identifying what it is and uploading the file. Click "Continue" until you reach, once again, step "3. Confirm". This process must be repeated until all the files have been sent, and only when all the material has been uploaded should the "Complete" button be selected.

If after "Completing" the submission we realise that we have forgotten to upload a file, we can do so by selecting the "Upload File" button located in the upper right-hand corner of the "2. Upload Submission" tab:

Once all the submission files have been uploaded, we will press the "Save and continue" button.

3.3.- "3. Enter Metadata"

In this phase the author will enter the metadata of the article according to the journal guidelines. These are:

- Title in Spanish and English. If the article is written in another language, it will be introduced first this language and then in English.

- Summary or abstract in the same languages as the previous item.

- List of contributors. Although it was not necessary when registering as a journal user, in this section it is compulsory for authors to have their ORCID identifier and affiliation correctly indicated. If necessary, the information of additional authors will be added using the link "Add contributor":

- Keywords. The article keywords will be inserted in both languages. The entire list cannot be copied, must be entered one term at a time pressing "Enter" after each one.

- Funding data. The entities that have supported the research published in the article must be indicated. After selecting "Add funder", the name of the funder should be inserted again, which will trigger an internal search that will return the institution standardised name and DOI. If the institution does not have a DOI, it will not be able to register in this field. After entering the grant numbers, click on "Save".

To finish this phase of entering metadata, click on the "Save and continue" button.

3.4.- "4. Confirmation" y "5. Next steps"

In this last phase we will confirm the submission metadata recording linked to the uploaded files. Before clicking on the "Finish Submission" button, we can go back to the previous phases and review the information and files provided to check that they are all correct.

Once we click on the "Finish Submission" button, the article will be sent to the journal and its staff will contact you to continue with the process, as indicated in the "5. Next Steps" section.

How to check a revision report and submit a revised version of a manuscript

Once your submission has been reviewed, the journal's staff will send you a review report. Once received, you must log in to the journal and, in the "Submissions" section of your dashboard, you will be able to check that your submission is in the Review phase and, if the editorial staff has requested, whether it is necessary to make any modifications or revisions to the manuscript:

By clicking on the title of your submission, you will be taken to the workflow of your submission and you will be able to check the information related to the its review. You will find the notifications that the editorial staff has sent you, the attachments that the reviewers may have attached and, if requested, the possibility to provide a new version of the manuscript with the requested modifications by clicking on the "Upload file" button:

Research data policy

We recommend authors depositing data obtained from the research developed for the preparation of their article in repositories of recognized prestige, specific to the discipline or of a generalist nature. In any case, it must be a FAIR repository (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), preferably in open access.

There are several repositories destined to conserve and disseminate concrete data such as results of surveys, observations, interviews, simulations, automatically collected data, samples, models ... If necessary, authors can consult the Registry of Research Data Repositories re3data taking into account that each repository has its own deposit rules.

Those CSIC authors who would like to deposit their datasets in Digital.CSIC may do so by following these guidelines. They can use the Servicio de Archivo Delegado made available by the Technical Office of DIGITAL.CSIC and the Red de Bibliotecas CSIC.

DIGITAL.CSIC generates DOIs for datasets and associated software and is certified as data repository in re3data and Repository Finder. More information at Política de datos en Digital.CSIC.

If the author has deposited datasets in a repository, he should mention it in the article providing a brief description of the type of data deposited, the name and URL of the repository, the identification code and the data of the license for use and distribution. This information must be included at the end of the article, immediately before the bibliographic listing, under the heading "Data availability".

Download HERE the Good Practice Code in PDF
Download HERE the Authorship Form in PDF