Submissions
Prospective contributors to Film & History are urged to read this page carefully. Submission of work for potential publication in the journal will be taken as evidence of the author’s awareness, understanding, and acceptance of the policies outlined here.
Questions about submissions may be directed to the editor:
Loren PQ Baybrook, Editor, Film & History
Lawrence University, Memorial Hall B5
711 E. Boldt Way
Appleton, WI 54911
USA
920-832-6649
Article-Length Manuscripts
loren.baybrook@lawrence.edu
Book Reviews
Kevin Brianton
K.Brianton@latrobe.edu.au
Film Reviews
Rebecca Weeks
rebecca.weeks@mediadesignschool.com
Areas of Interest
Film & History welcomes article-length manuscripts of 4,000-7,000 words on the following topics:
The effect of historical events on films, genres, or cultural & aesthetic standards
The effect of films or film genres on historical or cultural events
The aesthetic or rhetorical construction of history itself, as rendered in film
The aesthetic premises or consequences of film-related media in historical context
Use of motion pictures, television, and related media in the classroom
The history, holdings, and current status of film and television archives
New or controversial ways of presenting history in film and television
Reviews of books and video/films and broadcasts addressing important themes or events
Submission Requirements
Articles offered for publication should be sent as an email attachment (in Word-compatible format) to loren.baybrook@lawrence.edu and one hard copy mailed mailed to the editor:
Loren PQ Baybrook, Editor, Film & History
Lawrence University, Memorial Hall B5
711 E. Boldt Way
Appleton, WI 54911
USA
After the initial submission, all further correspondence and transmissions of manuscripts will take place electronically.
The journal will accept manuscripts in MLA, APA, or Chicago style if this format is used in your scholarly discipline.
Simultaneous Submissions
Submitting an article to multiple journals simultaneously leads editors (and peer reviewers) to commit scarce resources of time and energy to papers that may be withdrawn because of acceptance elsewhere. It also leads to the possibility of duplicate publication, which diminishes the distinctiveness and originality on which academic journals depend for their survival.
Film & History does not, therefore, accept submissions of articles that are under consideration by other journals. (A manuscript submitted in breach of this policy forfeits the author’s right of publication or of withdrawal and may be published at the editor’s discretion.) All submissions become the exclusive property of Film & History for the duration of the time they are under review (at least six months, but no more than one year).
Collegial Support of the Journal
We consider the investment we make in the authors accepted for publication to be the principal advertisement for our journal. Subscription to Film & History is not required as a condition of submission or of publication. We prefer to keep the process open to the best scholarship. (We do, of course, encourage contributors to support the journal through a subscription and through participation in our annual conferences.)
Peer Review and Replies to the Author
Manuscripts undergo two stages of peer review, requiring six months. The first stage is a screening report, indicating whether the manuscript is publishable in our journal–a manuscript might be deemed publishable but not presently for our journal (see “Levels of rejection” below). The screening report is a feasibility assessment; it calculates both the degree of editing a manuscript would require and the value our readers would derive from the edited version. If deemed publishable for our journal, the manuscript is then forwarded to the second stage, a longer review, which measures the manuscript more deeply against current scholarship in the field.
After either the first or second stage of peer-reviewing, an author whose submission has been rejected may ask to receive the information–typically condensed and transferred to e-mail–from the reviewing report(s). (We do not automatically transmit reviews to authors whose manuscripts have been rejected.)
Once the manuscript is fully accepted, if the editor determines that the edited version requires further input from the contributor, the editor will contact the contributor, allowing 10 business days for a reply, after which the edited manuscript will progress toward publication in its edited form. If the editor determines that editorial changes are required and yet do not adversely affect the manuscript and therefore do not require intervention from the author, then the changes will be made, and the manuscript will progress without interruption toward publication.
Final decisions about the style of the published version of an author’s manuscript always represent a compromise between editors and authors. We lean, of course, toward our authors’ choices in most cases, but we reserve the right to edit any submission for greater economy of expression and elegance of language. This right extends to the compression or rephrasing of the original argument and/or its examples, especially in matters of clarity, accuracy, evidence, organization, logical flow, or any other matters related to effectiveness. If these decisions, in regard to either style or argument, are deemed by the editor to fall within the scope of editorial discretion, then the manuscript will proceed to publication as edited.
We strive, in summary, to make the author’s argument as cogent as possible. If any dispute should arise after publication, an author may, with editorial consent, publish limited correction(s), or the author may request a retraction of his/her/their name from the article (see “Fair Use,” next section), which remains, in its edited form, the property of Film & History and may, at the editor’s discretion, remain in print and online. Under no circumstances, however, may an essay that has not been edited according to the recommendations of peer review be published in the journal, and under no circumstances may an author publish the edited version–which is the legal property of the journal–without consent from Film & History.
Levels of Rejection
There are two forms of rejection: publishable and not-publishable. Many publishers prefer not to say that a manuscript is “publishable” if it has been rejected; they note its virtues but then emphasize its limitations, leaving an author to believe that the work had not reached a certain level of quality. Publishers are insulated in this way from charges of arbitrariness. As a result, however, some rejected manuscripts are never affirmed when they should have been. All publishers must make decisions based on space and money, not just on quality. If an author has written a publishable article (notes toward revision notwithstanding), the editors at Film & History believe that he or she should know this distinction–as should, perhaps, the author’s department chair, college dean, or provost.
Fair Use and Copyright (“Work Made for Hire”)
The author of any contribution to Film & History is entitled to reproduce his or her own work for use in the classroom, for inclusion in his or her own book, or for distribution within the author’s institution of employment. Otherwise, upon receipt of a submission, Film & History retains the right of publication, by which any submitted manuscript, after acceptance and editing (see “Peer Reviewing and Replies to the Author”), may be printed in the journal (including its electronic format), at the discretion of the editor, to satisfy the publication needs for a scheduled topic or issue. By accepting publication, a contributor expressly agrees that his or her published work shall be considered a work made for hire; acceptance constitutes “a written agreement between the parties[,] specifying that the work is a work made for hire” by an “independent contractor.” Please see part 2 of the statutory definition (available at http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf) :
Section 101 of the copyright law defines a “work made for hire” as
(1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment or
(2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire. For the purpose of the foregoing sentence, a “supplementary work” is a work prepared for a publication as a secondary adjunct to a work by another author for the purpose of introducing, concluding, illustrating, explaining, revising, commenting upon, or assisting in the use of the other work, such as forewords, afterwords, pictorial illustrations, maps, charts, tables, editorial notes, musical arrangements, answer material for tests, bibliographies, appendixes, and indexes; and an “instructional text” is a literary, pictorial, or graphic work prepared for publication and intended to be used in systematic instructional activities.
The journal, as first owner of the copyright, retains exclusive rights to publication of the edited published manuscript thereafter. Please see http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf (1976 Copyright Act), page 2:
Who Is the Author of a Work Made for Hire?
If a work is a work made for hire, the employer or other person for whom the work was prepared is the author and should be named as the author on the application for copyright registration….
Who Is the Owner of the Copyright in a Work Made for Hire?
If a work is a work made for hire, the employer or other person for whom the work was prepared is the initial owner of the copyright unless there has been a written agreement to the contrary signed by both parties.
Acceptance by the author of publication of the edited version of the manuscript constitutes a written copyright transfer of that manuscript to Film & History.
Film & History reserves this designation as “author” primarily for copyright purposes; otherwise, work made for hire is attributed to the individual contributor.
If a contributor should choose to retract his or her name from a published article, the journal usually will honor that request, but the edited/published article remains the exclusive property of the journal and may, at the editor’s discretion, be retained online and in print and may be used in future publications by the journal.
As sole copyright owner of the material it publishes, Film & History does not grant electronic distribution rights outside the domain of its official electronic distributors. No full-length articles or reviews (or significant portions thereof) may be reproduced in any digital or online format for either open-access or proprietary distribution to consumers. Portions may be used within scholarly writing, but the re-publication or online posting of content from Film & History, even for noncommercial purposes, is a copyright violation and a theft of the journal’s means of operation. A work may be indexed or deposited, but it may not be made available to the public except in printed form or through our online distributors. Each of these distributors will have its own policy, but, collectively, they constitute the sole legal means by which the journal may be distributed (apart from print subscriptions).
If the journal receives a request from an author of a Film & History article (or review) for print re-publication in a new work by that author (e.g., in a book-length compilation), we typically grant the request, although we ask that publisher representing the author contribute an institutional subscription ($90) as a courtesy. But the re-published work may not, under any circumstances, be made available online.