The following guidelines will help you prepare your article for publication in the Journal of Economic History (JEH). Your careful compliance now will forestall future delays.
The JEH maintains a strict limit of 14,000 words for all articles, including references, tables and figures. Online appendices can be any length. Initial submissions can be pdf files or in other formats, but final manuscripts must be submitted as Word documents.
Your typescript should be arranged in the following order: title page, abstract, text, references, tables, figures, and appendix. It should be double-spaced throughout, including block quotations, footnotes, and appendices. Use standard margins and fonts. Do not use automatic hyphenation or right-justification. Italics are permitted in JEH articles; boldface and underlining are not.
The title page should contain the title, author name(s), institutional affiliation(s), mailing address(es), and e-mail address(es). Any acknowledgments should be included as a separate paragraph on this page.
The abstract should be typed at the head of the first page of the text. The title should be typed again above the abstract, but authors’ names should not appear on this page. The abstract should be double-spaced, indented from both margins and maintain an absolute maximum of 99 words, counting all segments of hyphenated words. Do not recapitulate the abstract word for word in the text. Shorter articles (e.g., “notes” and “comments”) should be submitted without an abstract.
Main Text
1. Do not use contractions in any portion of the manuscript.
2. Do not use indented or “bulleted” outlines or numbered lists of hypotheses, alternatives, conclusions, and so forth.
3. Surnames are usually sufficient for reference to authors in the text (e.g., in citations). Full names may be used in cases where the reference might otherwise be ambiguous, or in references to historical figures.
4. Section heads should have titles only (no numbers). Specific references to section titles (e.g., “In the section Results of the Estimation . . .”) should be avoided, except in footnotes (e.g., See the section “Results of the Estimation”).
5. Dates and numbers: Successive years treated as a unit should be separated with slash marks: 1812/13, 1920/21, and so on. Ranges of dates in the text may use prepositions (e.g., “from 1820 to 1835”) or dashes (e.g., “1820–1835”). Specific dates should be written day-month-year: “May 1949” or “14 December 1956.”
Numbers one to ten are, in general, spelled out. Arabic numerals are used for numbers above ten (11, 200, 1,253). The main exceptions are percentages (a 4 percent change, 0.5 percent, 1 percentage point), fractions of measurement (1- to 1.5- franc range), series of similar units in which one figure exceeds 10 (“3, 12, and 22 days, respectively . . .”), and centuries (twentieth century [noun], nineteenth-century farmers [adjective]). General estimates of round numbers are spelled out (“forty years ago . . .”; “more than a hundred workers . . .”; “one million people. . .”; but $1 million, 60,000, and $1-billion increase [adjective]). Decades should be referred to without apostrophes (the 1950s or the fifties, not the 1950’s). Insert zeros before all decimals less than 1 (0.015).
Inclusive numbers for pages and dates should be treated as follows: For ranges of pages, use the MLA system. For numbers through 99, the second number should be given in full: 5–7, 12–16, 74–96, and so on. For numbers of 100 and above, give only the last two digits of the second number unless more are necessary: 88–103, 101–07, 486–502, 919–1007, 1007–09, 1480–623, and so on. Ranges of dates in footnotes, tables, and figures should be typed in full: 1840–1860, 1790–1814, and so on.
6. Italicize all variables that receive formal mathematical treatment anywhere in the text. All equations should be typed in their proper location in the text, appendix(es), footnotes, and table and figure notes.
7. Footnotes should be kept to a minimum and, where necessary, kept as short as possible. They are not vehicles for extended discussions or tangential information. They should not appear in the middle of sentences unless this serves a specific purpose. Do not footnote the titles of the article and appendixes or the headings of sections.
8. Always spell out cf. (compare), etc. (and so on), e.g. (for example), and i.e. (in other words). Please do not use ibid., op. cit., or loc. cit.
9. Each appendix should have a brief title. If there is more than one, specify “Appendix 1, Appendix 2,” and so on. Most JEH appendices are published online in a separate file from the main text. Therefore, the text should refer to “Online Appendix 1” and so on. Material that is essential to the paper’s argument belongs in the main text. Avoid extended discussion of appendix material in the main text.
10. Citations and bibliographical references in the text and footnotes should follow the “Harvard” or author-date system, for example (Persson 1993, p. 105). A maximum of three authors may be used and connected with the word “and,” such as (Bogart, Collins, and Sztrecska 2019). When more than three authors are cited use “et al.”: (Smith et al. 1992). For citing multiple references use (Persson 1993, p. 105; Deane and Jones 1991).
11. Archival data citations should contain all necessary elements to locate the item in the archive named in the REFERENCES. The location number, if available, should always be included. A suitable abbreviation or acronym should be part of the first citation of an item if citations of other items in the same archive are to follow. Subsequent citations should employ the abbreviation or acronym. The archive name or abbreviation/acronym should be the first element of the citation. For instance, American Telephone and Telegraph Corporate Archive [hereafter AT & TCA], Fish/Burt, 14 February 1903, Presidential Letter Books [hereafter PLB], vol. 26 (quote); and Fish/Glass, 23 March 1903, PBL, vol. 27. Or, France, Archives Nationales, Minutier Central [hereafter FAN MC], Étude 70 (1751–1758).
12. Citations of legal cases are provided in footnotes but not the reference list. Court cases can be cited by name only, for example, “See Quill Corp. v. North Dakota” or can be cited more completely in a footnote, for example, “Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, 504 US 298 (1992).” All subsequent references should simply refer to an abbreviation of the name of the case (e.g., Quill); please do not use op. cit., ibid, etc.
Reference List
1. Only sources cited in the main text and footnotes should be included.
2. The JEH style for reference lists, with the exception of the numbering of ranges of pages, generally follows the bibliography style found in Chapter 15 of the Chicago Manual of Style (14th edition, 1993). Give authors’ names as they are commonly known, which in most cases includes the first name: for example, Fogel, Robert W., but Crafts, N. F. R.
3. For successive works by the same author(s), use a long dash in place of the author’s name in succeeding entries after the first. If an additional author (editor, etc.) is added, however, the originally listed author(s) name must be repeated. Order publications by the same author(s) by year of publication, not alphabetically.
4. Foreign-language citations: transliterate if necessary; follow the rules of capitalization for each language; for less familiar languages, provide a translation in brackets following the original.
5. Use Arabic (not Roman) numerals for volume and similar divisional numbers (vol. 1, sec. 2, pt. 3, etc.).
The following are examples of the most frequently used types of reference entries.
Examples
Journal articles and collections
Metzler, Lloyd. “Tariffs, the Terms of Trade, and the Distribution of National Income.” Journal of Political Economy 57, no. 1 (1989): 1–29.
Calomiris, Charles W. “Do Vulnerable Economies Need Deposit Insurance? Lessons from U.S. Agriculture in the 1920s.” In If Texas Were Chile: A Primer on Bank Regulation, edited by Philip L. Brock, 237–349, 450–58. Washington, DC: Sequoia Institute, 1992.
Articles published in electronic journals
Warr, Mark, and Christopher G. Ellison. “Rethinking Social Reactions to Crime: Personal and Altruistic Fear in Family Households.” ###i
Working papers and unpublished manuscripts
Ferrie, Joseph P. “‘We Are Yankeys Now:’ The Economic Mobility of Antebellum Immigrants to the U.S.” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1992.
Deaton, Angus. “Saving and Liquidity Restraints.” NBER Working Paper No. 3196, Cambridge, MA, December 1989.
Chichilnisky, Graciela, Geoffrey M. Heal, and David Starrett. “International Markets with Emission Permits: Equity and Efficiency.” Working Paper, Stanford Institute for Theoretical Economics, Stanford, CA, 1993.
Goldin, Claudia, and Robert A. Margo. “Downtime: Voluntary and Involuntary Unemployment.” Unpublished Manuscript, date.
Diamond, John W. “Houston’s Pension Shortfall.” Unpublished Manuscript. Baker Institute for Public Policy, Houston, TX, 2016.
Books
Eichengreen, Barry. Elusive Stability: Essays in the History of International Finance, 1919–1939. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
_____. The Collapse of the World Financial System, 1919–1939. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Eichengreen, Barry, and Peter Lindert, eds. The International Debt Crisis in Historical Perspective. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990.
Marx, Karl. Capital. 3 vols. Edited by Friedrich Engels. New York: International Publishers Company, 1967–1985.
Cotula, Franco, ed. Collana storica della Banca d’Italia–Contributi. Vol. 2. Ricerche per la storia della Banca d’Italia. Rome: Laterza, 1990.
Books published online
Sirosh, J., R. Miikkulainen, and J.A. Bednar. “Self-Organization of Orientation Maps, Lateral Connections, and Dynamic Receptive Fields in the Primary Visual Cortex.” In Lateral Interactions in the Cortex: Structure and Function, edited by J. Sirosh, R. Mikkulainen, and Y. Chloe. Austin, TX: UTCS Neural Networks Research Group, 1996. http://www.cs.utex.edu/users/nn/web-pubs/htmlbook96/ (accessed 27 August 2001).
Book published in printed and electronic forms
Kurland, Philip B., and Ralph Lerner, eds. The Founder’s Constitution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Also available online at http://presspubs.uchicago.edu/founders/ and as CD-ROM.
Series publications
Engerman, Stanley L., and Robert E. Gallman, eds. Long-Term Factors in American Economic Growth. NBER Studies in Income and Wealth, vol. 51. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.
Newspapers, News magazines
Printed news media should be cited by the name of the publication, not by article (unless this is of special importance). Specific articles with dates and pages should be cited in the footnotes. If only one issue is footnoted in the text, the date should be given in the REFERENCES. If more than one issue is cited, “various dates” should follow the name of the publication. If a publication is no longer published and is available only in a single or a few special collections, a collection should be cited. Publications that are not well known should be identified by place of publication.
New York Times, 9 May 1928.
Woonsocket Evening Call [RI], various dates.
Newsweek, 14 November 1994.
United Telephone Voice, various dates. Museum of Independent Telephony, Abilene, KS.
Government documents
Government documents should include all elements, in the proper order, needed to locate them in a library catalog. The publisher for U.S. (other than congressional) documents printed by the Government Printing Office should be entered as GPO.
U. S. Committee on Banking and Currency. Operations of the National and Federal Reserve Systems: Hearings on S.R. 71. 71st Cong., 3rd sess., 1931.
Bureau of the Census. Median Gross Rent by Counties of the United States, 1970. Prepared by the Geography Division in cooperation with the Housing Division. Washington, DC: GPO, 1975.
U.S. Bureau of the Census. Census of the Population. Vol. 1. Characteristics of the Population: 1970. pt 35: North Carolina. Washington, DC: GPO, 1973.
Illinois. State Auditor. Biennial Report of the Auditor of Public Accounts of the State of Illinois to the Twenty-Third General Assembly. Springfield, 1863.
United Kingdom. House of Commons. “Present and Future Role of the Assistant Chief Education Officer.” Sessional Papers, 1982-83, Prison Education. 25 April 1983. Vol. 2.
Archives
Ordinarily, specific items in archival collections should only be cited in footnotes. The name and location of the archive itself should be entered in the REFERENCES with an appropriate acronym or abbreviation when it is cited more than once in the footnotes.
American Telephone and Telegraph Corporate Archive (AT & TCA). Warren, NJ. Vanderlip, Frank. Collection (VC). Columbia University. New York, NY.
United Kingdom. Patent Rolls, Philip and Mary. C.66/870. London.
France. Archives Nationales. Minutier Central (FAN MC).
Legal Cases: Legal cases should be cited in full in the footnotes. They should not be cited in any form in the REFERENCES. See Main Text #12.
Tables
1. Every table should be preceded by a number and title. The title should describe what is in the table; “Regression Results” is not a useful title. The table should be “self contained,” meaning that the reader should not have to refer back to the text for definitions, units of measurement, and so on.
2. Below every table, the author should report “Sources:…” There should be sufficient information for readers to understand where the data/information originated. The author may also add “Notes:…” to facilitate interpretation of what is presented in the table (e.g., if there are differences across columns or rows that are not obvious, or if symbols are used to indicate statistical significance). Both sources and notes should be written in complete sentences.
3. Columns should be numbered if, but only if, this facilitates discussion in the text.
4. Type out period dates in full (1813–1822; 1900–1920; and so on).
5. Only the first word of variables in the first column (the “stub”) should be capitalized (Value of exports, Southern farms, etc.), except for proper nouns and fully capitalized acronyms.
6. Italicize mathematical variables, N (for number), and conventional parameters, such as t-statistics, R, F-ratio, and so on.
7. Use zeros before decimal figures of less than one (e.g., 0.05, not .05). Do not report an entry of 0.000, or (worse) –0.000. Rescale the variables if necessary.
8. Use commas in all integers consisting of more than three digits (e.g., 3,000 or 6,230,549).
9. Incorporate measurement units (%; $; bushels; and so on) into column and row headings, rather than repeating them throughout a column or row.
10. Use dashes for blank cells where data are not available. Inapplicable cells for regression coefficients should be left blank.
11. Do not use bold fonts in tables.
12. Do not use vertical rulings in tables. Consult recent issues of the Journal for proper uses of horizontal rulings.
Figures
1. As with tables, every figure should be preceded by a number and title. The title should describe what is in the figure (e.g., “Regression Results” is not a useful title). The figure should be “self contained,” meaning that the reader should not have to refer back to the text for definitions, units of measurement, and so on.
2. Below every figure, the author should report “Sources:…” There should be sufficient information for readers to understand where the data/information originated. The author may also add “Notes:…” to facilitate interpretation of what is presented in the figure. Both sources and notes should be written in complete sentences.
3. Do not typewrite, hand draw, or hand letter anything; use computer-generated figures whenever possible. All exceptions must be cleared with an editor.
4. All figures should look alike in terms of proportion, font, and the manner in which you arrange the data. Make sure that legends and labels are legible.
5. Units of measure should be clear from the axis labels; if that is impossible, announce them in the figure’s title or the notes. On a time scale, place ticks at intervals appropriate to the scale of your data (e.g., every tenth year). When labeling units of thousands use commas if at all possible (e.g., 1,000, not 1000).
6. Consider whether two or more figures’ data can be combined into one figure to save space; conversely, if your data are hard to “track” due to the complexity of the figure, it may be preferable to make two figures out of one.
7. The figure number, title, and notes should not appear in the figure.
8. If possible, any legend should appear within the rectangular space of the figure.
9. If possible, use Times New Roman font for all aspects of the figure.
10. Do not include a border around the figure or around a legend within a figure.
Last updated: July 2019