Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society: advice for authors
For full author instructions please see the Society’s page: https://royalasiaticsociety.org/journal/
It is vital that manuscripts submitted to the JRAS are in as polished a state as possible on first submission. Authors cannot expect to use the review process as a mechanism to formulate their ideas, and the JRAS will reject, without peer review, manuscripts that are clearly in draft state.
The JRAS has a soft limit of 15,000 words for articles. Any submission longer than this must be agreed ahead of time with the editor.
An author may choose to follow JRAS house style (see below) when first preparing their manuscript, as this will save time if it is later accepted. This suggestion, however, is not a requirement for manuscripts to be reviewed.
Please remember to insert an abstract of between 100 and 250 words summarising the contents of the article before the main text.
Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce any material in which they do not own copyright, to be used in both print and electronic media, and for ensuring that the appropriate acknowledgements are included in their manuscript.
The JRAS welcomes expression of all shades of opinion, but responsibility for these rests with their author.
MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION OF ARTICLES ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION
General layout
- All articles (text and footnotes) must be clearly typed in double spacing throughout.
- The title of the article (initial upper case only), as well as a ‘short’ title (to be used as the running header in the published article), the author’s name, affiliation, email address (preferably linked to their institution) and competing interest statement should be placed at the end of the article (right justified).
- An abstract of between 100 and 250 words summarising the content of the article should be inserted before the main text.
- Paragraphs should be flush left with one line space between each.
- Abstract and main text should be left and right justified. Footnotes should not be justified.
- Sub-headings must be used to break up articles. Do not use Roman numerals as section headings.
- Section (A) headings should be bold and centred, with one line space above and below, with initial upper case only except for proper nouns, i.e. ‘The political economy of Uttar Pradesh and the mobility saga’.
- Second level (B) headings should be italic and centred, with one line space above and below.
- Spell out centuries, i.e. ‘nineteenth century’ rather than ‘19th century’, ‘tenth century’ rather than ‘10th century’, etc. Decades should be cited as 1860s, 1900s, 1980s, and so on.
- Use English format for dates, i.e. day, month, year—12 August 1978.
- Numbers: 0 to 9 should be spelt out; 10+ in numerals. For exact measurements, numerals alone should be used: 12 kms, 36 miles. Use thousands and millions, not lakh. For inclusive numbers follow these examples: 5–12, 64–67, 83–110, 100–107, 153–97, 1100–1145, 108–9, 402–12, 1001–5, 125–26, 425–657, 1224–26, 1634–714. Bridge inclusive numbers by an ‘n’-dash rather than a hyphen.
- Spell out %: i.e. ‘15 per cent’.
- c. should always be spelled out and italics: circa.
- ed. and eds./trans. should be in () brackets.
- Use ‘and’ rather than ‘&’, especially within references when giving the names of authors.
- Please spell out all acronyms and initialisms when first mentioned.
- All quotations must be acknowledged and fully referenced within a footnote.
- Use double inverted commas for short quotations and phrases within the main text, then single quotations for quotes-within-quotes.
- No quote marks should be used in quotations that are more than 40 words. Instead, these should be separated from the text with space above and below, right justified and indented with a one-tab space from the left margin.
- Tables should be clearly laid out and numbered consecutively. Vertical lines between columns should be omitted.
- Use British spellings: ‘s’ rather than ‘z’ for ...ise/ization (materialise, constitutionalise, etc.), and, for example, ‘analyse’ not ‘analyze’, ‘colour’ not ‘color’, ‘programme’ not ‘program’.
- Please use the phrase ‘this article’ rather than ‘this essay’ or ‘this paper’.
- Please use English format dates, i.e. day, month, year (14 July 2009).
- Figures, and totals in tables, references and footnote numbers should be checked for accuracy.
- No line separator between main text and footnotes.
Citations
Citations need to be in footnotes at the bottom on pages, without a bibliography at the end of the manuscript.
Placement of footnotes must be at the foot of each page, with automatic footnote numbering, running consecutively to the end of the document. All sources or references should be cited in full in the first instance, within the body of the footnote text. References repeated in subsequent footnotes should be written: author, ‘short’ title, page numbers. Add initials, if more than one author with the same surname is mentioned in the article. Use ibid when two references in a row are from the same source.
In references, there should be a space between p. or pp. and the following number(s), i.e. ‘p. 15’ or pp. 15-22.
JRAS 'house style' for footnotes
Book
G. H. Luce, Phases of pre-Pagán Burma: Languages and History (Oxford, 1985), i, pp. 171-88.
B. Z. Kedar (ed.), Jerusalem in the Middle Ages (Jerusalem, 1979), p. 122.
Chapter in edited volume
M. Sharon, 'The Ayyubid walls of Jerusalem', in Studies in Memory of Gaston Wiet, (ed.) M. Rosen-Ayalon (Jerusalem, 1977), pp. 179-95.
Journal article
C. E. Bosworth, 'Ghaznevid military organisation', Der Islam XXXVI (1960), pp. 40-50.
Unpublished dissertation
Elizabeth Kier, ‘Changes in Conventional Military Doctrines: The Cultural Roots of Doctrinal Change’,(unpublished PhD dissertation, Cornell University, 1992), p. 200.
Website
F. Jansz, ‘LTTE’s police and UFPA’s silence’, The Sunday Leader, 20 June 2004, http://www.thesundayleader.lk/... (accessed 31 January 2018).
(It is essential to mention the date on which the website was accessed because many websites become redundant with time, and so cannot be referred to later on. In case of article references from a website, follow the style of printed texts above, followed by the reference to the website and date on which it was accessed.)
Later references should use a shortened title, e.g. Luce, Phases of pre-Pagán Burma, p. 33.
Please do not use op.cit. and loc. cit., but instead use ibid. where necessary. E.g., Ibid., pp. 56–71.
Use et al. if there are more than three authors.
Figures/illustrations
Figures should be supplied final size, and be no larger than 110mm x 180mm, as separate electronic files, in either TIFF or EPS format, scanned at a minimum of 320dpi for black and white halftone, or colour artwork, at 1200 dpi for black and white line art, and at 800 dpi for combination artwork (line/halftone). FIGURES EMBEDDED INTO THE WORD DOCUMENT WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED.
For further details of file formats please see Cambridge Journals Artwork Guide https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/authors/journals/journals-artwork-guide.
The separate tiff/eps files containing Figures and Illustrations should be saved individually with their Figure/Picture number being the file name: (‘[author surname] Fig_1.tif’, ‘[author surname] Pic_2.eps’, etc.).
Please DO NOT include legends, sources and general text in the figure files; these should be included in your Word document underneath the position marker text, i.e. ‘[INSERT FIGURE 1 NEAR HERE. LEGEND: Figure 1. The handbill calling the Nishads to support Ramraj and the BJP. Source: OND Government texts 1954...]’.
Each figure must be cited at least once in the text. The spelling of place names should be consistent with those used in the text. If there are more than five tables/figures/ illustrations, please provide a separate word document listing them, in the order they are to appear in the main text, with full titles, legends and sources. Pictures may be embedded in this Word document, but for information only. They cannot be used for final publication (see 1 above).
Policy on prior publication
When authors submit manuscripts to this journal, these manuscripts should not be under consideration, accepted for publication or in press within a different journal, book or similar entity, unless explicit permission or agreement has been sought from all entities involved. However, deposition of a preprint on the author’s personal website, in an institutional repository, or in a preprint archive shall not be viewed as prior or duplicate publication. Authors should follow the Cambridge University Press Preprint Policy regarding preprint archives and maintaining the version of record.
English language editing services
Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, may wish to have their English-language manuscripts checked by a native speaker before submission. This step is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the Editor and any reviewers.
In order to help prospective authors to prepare for submission and to reach their publication goals, Cambridge University Press offers a range of high-quality manuscript preparation services, including language editing. You can find out more on our language services page.
Please note that the use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge-published journal.
Competing Interests
All authors must include a competing interest declaration in their title page. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and may be published in the article.
Competing interests are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the content or publication of an author’s work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations.
If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting must include competing interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors.
Example wording for a declaration is as follows: “Competing interests: Author 1 is employed at organisation A, Author 2 is on the Board of company B and is a member of organisation C. Author 3 has received grants from company D.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none”.
Authorship and contributorship
All authors listed on any papers submitted to this journal must be in agreement that the authors listed would all be considered authors according to disciplinary norms, and that no authors who would reasonably be considered an author have been excluded. For further details on this journal’s authorship policy, please see this journal's publishing ethics policies.
Author affiliations
Author affiliations should represent the institution(s) at which the research presented was conducted and/or supported and/or approved. For non-research content, any affiliations should represent the institution(s) with which each author is currently affiliated.
For more information, please see our author affiliation policy and author affiliation FAQs.
ORCID
We encourage authors to identify themselves using ORCID when submitting a manuscript to this journal. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration with key research workflows such as manuscript submission and grant applications, provides the following benefits:
- Discoverability: ORCID increases the discoverability of your publications, by enabling smarter publisher systems and by helping readers to reliably find work that you have authored.
- Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your iD or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID record, and will enable you to share this information with other systems and platforms you use, saving you re-keying information multiple times.
- Keeping track: Your ORCID record is a neat place to store and (if you choose) share validated information about your research activities and affiliations.
See our ORCID FAQs for more information. If you don’t already have an iD, you can create one by registering directly at https://ORCID.org/register.
ORCIDs can also be used if authors wish to communicate to readers up-to-date information about how they wish to be addressed or referred to (for example, they wish to include pronouns, additional titles, honorifics, name variations, etc.) alongside their published articles. We encourage authors to make use of the ORCID profile’s “Published Name” field for this purpose. This is entirely optional for authors who wish to communicate such information in connection with their article. Please note that this method is not currently recommended for author name changes: see Cambridge’s author name change policy if you want to change your name on an already published article. See our ORCID FAQs for more information.
Supplementary materials
Material that is not essential to understanding or supporting a manuscript, but which may nonetheless be relevant or interesting to readers, may be submitted as supplementary material. Supplementary material will be published online alongside your article, but will not be published in the pages of the journal. Types of supplementary material may include, but are not limited to, appendices, additional tables or figures, datasets, videos, and sound files.
Supplementary materials will not be typeset or copyedited, so should be supplied exactly as they are to appear online. Please see our general guidance on supplementary materials for further information.
Where relevant we encourage authors to publish additional qualitative or quantitative research outputs in an appropriate repository, and cite these in manuscripts.
Author Hub
You can find guides for many aspects of publishing with Cambridge at Author Hub, our suite of resources for Cambridge authors.
Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools
We acknowledge the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the research and writing processes. To ensure transparency, we expect any such use to be declared and described fully to readers, and to comply with our plagiarism policy and best practices regarding citation and acknowledgements. We do not consider artificial intelligence (AI) tools to meet the accountability requirements of authorship, and therefore generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and similar should not be listed as an author on any submitted content.
In particular, any use of an AI tool:
- to generate images within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, and declared clearly in the image caption(s)
- to generate text within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, include appropriate and valid references and citations, and be declared in the manuscript’s Acknowledgements.
- to analyse or extract insights from data or other materials, for example through the use of text and data mining, should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, including details and appropriate citation of any dataset(s) or other material analysed in all relevant and appropriate areas of the manuscript
- must not present ideas, words, data, or other material produced by third parties without appropriate acknowledgement or permission
Descriptions of AI processes used should include at minimum the version of the tool/algorithm used, where it can be accessed, any proprietary information relevant to the use of the tool/algorithm, any modifications of the tool made by the researchers (such as the addition of data to a tool’s public corpus), and the date(s) it was used for the purpose(s) described. Any relevant competing interests or potential bias arising as a consequence of the tool/algorithm’s use should be transparently declared and may be discussed in the article.
Copyrighted material
If your article contains any material in which you do not own copyright, including figures, charts, tables, photographs or excerpts of text, please see the seeking permission to use copyrighted material page for instruction.
Publishing ethics
Please refer to the publishing ethics page while preparing your materials for submission to ensure you comply with the relevant policies.