Submissions

Author Guidelines

The Centre for Military and Strategic Studies seeks submissions to its multi-disciplinary electronic Journal. The Journal is fully refereed and deals with a wide range of topics related to military, security, and strategic studies. Articles submitted to the Journal for Military and Strategic Studies should be original contributions and should not be under consideration by another publication at the same time. If another version of the article is under consideration by another publication, or has been, or will be published elsewhere, authors should clearly indicate this at the time of submission and ensure that appropriate citation for the JMSS is included. Articles will be sent to experts for review. Authors interested in making submissions can send articles by two means, through this website or electronically as an attachment to an e-mail to the managing editor at njmackie@ucalgary.ca. The word-processing software and version used to generate the article must be clearly identified. Microsoft Word is preferred. The article will also be edited to fit JMSS style and format. Future issues will be devoted to certain themes, and authors are asked to contact the editors for more details or suggestions. Submissions should also be accompanied by a brief biographical note on the author(s) and by an abstract of not more than 150 words.

Plagiarism

The Journal of Military and Strategic Studies regularly checks submissions for instances of plagiarism. Plagiarism involves submitting work in a manuscript as if it were your own work when, in fact, it is not. Most commonly plagiarism exists when:

• The manuscript submitted was done, in whole or in part, by an individual other than the one submitting or presenting the work.
• Parts of the work are taken from another source without reference to the original author, and/or
• The whole work is copied from another source.

While it is recognized that scholarly work often involves reference to the ideas, data and conclusions of other scholars, intellectual honesty requires that such references be explicitly and clearly noted.

All authors that submit manuscripts to the Journal of Military and Strategic Studies are, by that act, asserting that the piece of written work is the result of their (and all co-authors) own independent scholarly work and that, in all cases, material from the work of others (in books, articles, essays, dissertations, and on the internet) is acknowledged, and quotations and paraphrases are clearly indicated.

Style Guidelines

Manuscript Submission and Format

 ALL manuscripts are to be submitted in Word for ease of editing. The submission must include an abstract.  Each author of an accepted article is asked to submit a biographical sketch. Your sketch should identify where you earned your highest degree, your present affiliation and position, and your current research interests.

Except where described differently below, the manuscript should adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style.

Spelling

Spelling conforms to the Canadian Oxford Dictionary. Where more than one spelling is given in the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, the main entry (and not the alternate spelling) is used. Canadian spelling includes the following words or word forms:

~isation

~ise

~ising

analyse

centre

colour

judgment

labour

theatre

Spacing

Single space after almost all punctuation (periods, commas, colons, semi-colons, closing parentheses, etc.). Proper names with two initials should be spaced: “E. P. Taylor;” not “E.P. Taylor.” Where three initials are present, no spaces are used between initials, e.g., “A.J.P. Taylor.” A space is placed after the following contractions: “ed.,” “p.,” “pp.,” “ch.,” “vol.,” etc. The following other forms are preferred: “i.e.,” “e.g.”  However, please do not use periods in the abbreviations of country names, please use “US” or “USA,” “UK.”

Quotations

Double quotation marks are used around quoted matter within body text. Quotations should not begin or end in ellipses. Quotations over five lines long are indented and do not have quotation marks. Single quotation marks are used for quotations within quotations (where double quotation marks have already been used). The North American convention of placing commas and periods inside closing quotation marks (even when such punctuation does not belong to the quoted matter) should be followed. Colons, semicolons, question marks, and exclamation points follow the closing quotation mark unless they belong to the quoted matter. Where a reference in parentheses immediately follows a quotation ending in a period, the period is moved after the closing parenthesis.

Capitalization

Use minimal capitalization, e.g., “Dr. Smith is a professor in the religious studies department of the faculty of humanities at the University of Calgary.” and “Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”

Structure

Manuscripts contain specific hierarchies of information, i.e., sentences within paragraphs within sub-sections within sections within chapters. The reader must be able to clearly discern the structure that you have imposed on your text. Consistent use of italics for one level of section heading and boldface for another can be useful. You may also employ heading styles defined in your word processor. Tables of contents often indicate the nesting of sub-sections down to a certain depth. Within the text itself, you should use no more than three levels of subheading. In technical writing, a hierarchical section numbering system is sometimes used, e.g., “3.2.1,” etc.

Capitalization within headings should conform to headline style as set out in the Chicago Manual of Style (15th ed., 8.165–67), where lowercase is preferred, especially in prepositions and conjunctions, but proper names and the first and last word of a title are always capitalized.

If you use section headings in your chapters, there should be no text that is not associated with an identifiable (and preferably named) section. Do not begin a chapter with one or two introductory paragraphs that do not belong to the first named section. All text following a section heading and preceding the next section heading of the same level will be presumed to belong to that section.

All nested headings are to be flush to the left margin. For example:

• Major Heading
• Second Heading
• Third Heading

Footnotes

The Journal of Military and Strategic Studies converts all endnotes to footnotes. DO NOT USE THE SCIENTIFIC CITATION METHOD. Use the “footnotes” feature of your word processor. Simply putting superscript numbers in the text and typing the notes at the end of the chapter is not acceptable because such notes are not clearly linked to the relevant text in your submission and will not automatically renumber when other notes are inserted or deleted.

References

Most copy-editing expense results from incorrect or inconsistent referencing. Use either the short title system or the author-date system as described in the Chicago Manual of Style.

A “Bibliography” contains all titles cited in notes and possibly some other sources; a “Select Bibliography” has some but not all works cited, and possibly some other sources. “References” are your entries in the alphabetical list at the end of your manuscript and should include only work you have cited.

Works by the same author should be ordered by date with the earliest appearing first. Original works precede works edited by the same writer. Works by a single author precede joint works. Consult the Chicago Manual of Style for other specifications. While Chicago permits several options, the ones you choose should be internally consistent.

Illustrations

Source details must accompany all illustrations not created by you. If your intention is to include a List of Illustrations at the front of your manuscript, you may chose to place the source information in that list. Otherwise, the source information must be given in your captions. Do not confuse the List of Illustrations with the caption sheet; the latter contains the captions with the exact wording that is to appear with the illustrations. The List of Illustrations should eventually provide page numbers so that the illustration in question may be easily located.

It is customary in many kinds of manuscripts to identify illustrations by number, e.g., “Figure 1.” If there are many illustrations, it may be useful to identify them by chapter as well, e.g., “Figure 1.3.” For in text references, you may refer to them in the following way: “(see Fig. 3).” Avoid internal references such as “(See the above figure.)” or “see the map on p. 176.” By the time your manuscript is ready for publication, all such internal references would have to be re-checked and changed. The numbering of illustrations also helps others who intend to cite materials from your manuscript.

Excel charts, PowerPoint graphics, and CorelDraw files are not acceptable. Avoid pie charts. Consider whether your data might more usefully be presented in a table rather than in a figure. Aim for consistency of presentation in your illustrative material. Maps and drawings should be prepared with a view to their position on the page, possible reduction factors, and the consistency of line width and legibility of type after possible reduction.

Tables

Every table should have a name and a number. Tables should be integrated into the text and numbered by chapter, e.g., “Table 1.2.” A List of Tables at the front of the manuscript is optional.

Use the “table” feature of your word processor rather than trying to create a table by aligning columns using tabs or spaces. Particularly avoid using multiple tabs or spaces to position text on the page; the inevitable change of font or other layout decisions will be the ruin of any such plan.

Double-check totals if your table provides totals. Source information must be provided beneath the table. Notes to tables appear beneath them and are not to be placed with other notes in the manuscript. Such notes are not created using the word processor’s “footnotes” feature. Notes are signified within tables by superscript lowercase letters and full-size lowercase letters beneath the table.