Submissions

This page is designed to help you ensure your submission is ready for and fits the scope of the journal.

Before submitting you should read over the information below, ensuring that your submission fits with the journal's 'Focus and Scope', and that it follows the journal's 'Author Guidelines'. Then, please register an account (or login if you have an existing account) to begin the submission process.

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

1. The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
2. Any third-party-owned materials used have been identified with appropriate credit lines, and permission obtained from the copyright holder for all formats of the journal.
3. The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
4. All DOIs for the references have been provided, when available.
5. Tables and figures are all cited in the text. Tables are included within the text document, whilst figure files are uploaded as supplementary files.
6. Figures/images have a resolution of at least 150dpi (300dpi or above preferred). Each file is no more than 20MB per file. The files are in one of the following formats: JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, EPS (to maximise quality, the original source file is preferred).
7. The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.
8. If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring an Anonymous Review have been followed.
9. Please ensure that your article includes a competing interest statement in accordance with our Competing Interest Guidelines.
10. The submission adheres to the publisher's guidance on the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI), particularly that substantial and known uses of generative AI are declared in an 'AI Declaration Statement' as a section within the manuscript and that this declaration is also given in the online submission process when prompted. Please read OLH's AI Policy for further information on acceptable and unacceptable uses of generative AI, and where and how to make an 'AI Declaration Statement' if this is required.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

• Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
• Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
• Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

This journal recommends that authors retain their copyright via a CC BY 4.0 attribution license. This means that users accessing the work must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. They may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses them or their use of the work. No additional restrictions, however the user may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Articles published by the Open Library of Humanities may also contain other CC-licensed material, or material used or reproduced under an exception or limitation to copyright. Such material is not subject to the article's license. It is either marked with its own license, or marked that it has been reproduced with permission or under fair-use.

All articles submitted to Studies in the Maternal are initially assessed by an Editor, who decides whether or not the article is suitable for peer review. Submissions considered suitable for peer review are assigned to two or more independent experts, who assess the article for clarity, validity, and sound methodology.

Studies in the Maternal operates a double-blind peer review process, meaning that authors and reviewers remain anonymous for the review process. The review period is expected to take around six weeks. Reviewers are asked to provide formative feedback, even if an article is not deemed suitable for publication in the journal.

This journal follows the publisher's guidance on the use of generative AI for submissions and in the journal's publishing workflow.

Authors should read the publisher's AI policy in full and adhere to it before submitting their research to this journal, paying particular attention to acceptable and unacceptable uses of generative AI and advice on whether it is necessary for an 'AI Declaration Statement' to be made with their submission.

This journal is published by the Open Library of Humanities. Unlike many open-access publishers, the Open Library of Humanities does not charge any author fees. This does not mean that we do not have costs. Instead, our costs are paid by an international library consortium.

If your institution is not currently supporting the platform, we request that you ask your librarian to sign up. The OLH is extremely cost effective and is a not-for-profit charity. However, while we cannot function without financial support and we encourage universities to sign up, institutional commitment is not required to publish with us.

The journal is published twice yearly. The Autumn issue is an Open Issue which may include contributions pertaining to any topic, and the Spring Issue is a Special Issue organised around a specific theme. Those wishing to submit contributions for consideration for the Open Issue, or ideas for a themed Special Issue should send their work or enquires to the editors, Lisa Baraitser and Sigal Spigel, at mamsie@bbk.ac.uk.