Call for papers: The 20th international seminar on the Care and Conservation of Manuscripts

Language

All papers must be written in English. Please use British, rather than American, spelling (‘colour’ rather than ‘color’, ‘traveller’ rather than ‘traveler’ etc.); forms with ‘-ise’ should be preferred to ‘-ize’ where both are possible, e.g. ‘characterise’, ‘organise’, ‘digitise’. Punctuation should also follow British conventions. This principally requires marks of punctuation to appear outside inverted commas (quotation marks) – e.g. ‘“characterise”, “organise”, “digitise”.’ rather than ‘“characterise,” “organise,” “digitise.”’ Inverted commas should be single rather than double (except for quotations within quotations). Finally, do not put a comma before ‘and’ (or ‘or’) in series – the so-called Oxford comma – e.g. ‘rats, mice and other vermin’, not ‘rats, mice, and other vermin’. For the same reason there should be no comma before ‘etc.’.

Scholarly citations should be given in their original languages; a translation must be provided if the language is not one the majority of readers are likely to know.

When using terms relating to bookbinding, please follow the recommendations of the Ligatus ‘Language of Bindings’ Thesaurus.

Paper structure

The maximum length for a paper is 5,000 words including captions, endnotes and references. An example of how to structure a paper is given below. Other structures can also be used.

• The title should briefly describe the content of the paper. Titles should have the following form:
  • The conservation of alum-tawed bindings in the Bodleian Library
  • Limp parchment bindings in early-modern France: A preliminary assessment
  • New developments in multi-spectral scanning

Note that only the initial word of the title (and subtitle, if there is one) should be capitalised, along with any proper names. Title and subtitle should be separated by a colon, rather than a dash or other mark of punctuation. This applies also to section headings.

• The author’s name and affiliation should be as follows:
  • Charles Hunnicutt, Bodleian Library, Oxford.
  • Pierre-Yves Rameau, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.

Note that we do not use titles (Prof., Dr. phil., FRS etc.).

• The abstract should be less than 500 words and address the aim, methodology and principal findings. Do not cite references in the abstract.
• Keywords should include four to eight keywords representing the main content of the paper.
• The introduction should explain the aim of the study and provide an adequate background.
• The material and method section should provide sufficient details to allow the work to be reproduced by an independent researcher. Any modifications to existing methods should also be described. If commercial products are mentioned in the paper, the names and addresses, or URLs, of manufacturers or supplies should be given in a separate list of suppliers.
• Results should include the findings of the study and must be clear and concise.
• The discussion should discuss the implications of the findings in the context of existing research and highlight limitations of the study. For methodology paper, this section should include a discussion of any practical or operational issues involved in performing the study. The results and discussion sections may be combined when appropriate.
• The conclusion should clearly state the main conclusions and provide an explanation of the importance and relevance of the study to the field.
• Acknowledgement may be included to anyone who contributed to the paper who does not meet the criteria for authorship including anyone who provided professional writing services or materials.
• References (see template).
• Competing interests. All financial and non-financial competing interests must be declared in this section. If you do not have any competing interests, please state, "The authors declare that they have no competing interests" in this section.

Illustrations

All illustrations to appear in the printable version should be submitted separately as individual files (not as part of a Word document). Illustrations should preferably be submitted in .TIFF, .JPEG or .RAW format.

All illustrations must be in CMYK or greyscale colour space. Note that if RGB scans are submitted, they will be converted to CMYK, which may result in colour change. Advise the editor before submission if colour accuracy is crucial.

Resolution must be 300 dpi, width 80 mm as a minimum. If the resolution is lower, the size needs to be proportionally bigger, e.g. if a 150 dpi picture is to be printed at full width, it should be minimum 224 mm wide.

Figures should be numbered (Fig. 1, 2 etc.) and an indication should be given in the text as to their placement, e.g. (Fig. 7). Please be selective in your choice of images; normally 8-10 per article should suffice.

Tables

All tables to appear in the printable version should be submitted separately as individual files. Please submit tables as editable text and not as images.

Captions

Please provide a caption for each of your illustrations and tables. These should be short but informative, e.g.:

Fig. 1. Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS 1687, c. 1470, spine and left board of binding. Photo: Henk van der Ecke.

Picture credits, where required, should go at the end of the caption. Note that captions should begin with a capital letter and end with a full stop (period).

Numbers and units

Numbers up to 20 should be given in words, if they are not within a measurement, date, list or table, e.g. ‘fourteen quires of eight leaves each’, ‘the thirteenth century’ (not ‘the 13th century’). Please write e.g. ‘15 ºC’ (rather than ‘15º C’), ‘10 mm’ (rather than ‘10mm’ or ‘10 mm.’). Please use the International System of Units (SI) when possible.