The Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society is a traditionally eclectic county journal which welcomes quality submissions on all subjects related to the archaeology, history, fine arts, literature, geology or natural history of the County of  Dorset.  If you have a query as to whether the PDNHAS is the appropriate destination for your article,  please contact the Hon. Editor to discuss your proposal well in advance.

The PDNAHS accepts both full length structured articles, shorter contributions of similar style, and short contributions (e.g. archaeological notes), including obituaries.

The general length for an article should not exceed 7,000 words. However, in some cases, for example archaeological site reports, or reports of environmentally related fieldwork, it is accepted that a longer submission may be appropriate. In these cases, please contact the Hon. Editor in advance of submission. Short contributions may also be discussed.

All full papers which are submitted will be overseen by an experienced specialist subject editor and will be independently peer reviewed.

Please note: We use the Harvard system for referencing; we cannot reproduce footnotes.

Submission

We accept papers for the Proceeding on a rolling basis.  The earlier papers are submitted, the more likely they are to have completed consideration for the next volume; however, as there are likely to be previous submissions already held over, we are unable to guarantee inclusion in a particular volume, should a paper be accepted.

Shorter contributions and reports (e.g. archaeological notes and obituaries) should be submitted  by the 31 January in the publication year, for example January 2019 for publication in the 2019 volume.

These deadlines must be strictly adhered to — any contributions submitted late will be considered only for future editions of the Proceedings.

We aim to publish in June each year. This means that the review process (outlined below) needs to be completed well within that time. Your co-operation with respect to deadlines for revisions and checking proofs  will be greatly appreciated.

The Proceedings has a digital production process. Please send your submissions electronically to the Hon. Editor. Emails should have the typescript of your article attached as separate word processing files, preferably in Microsoft Word. We cannot accept them in PDF format. You should include the abstract, your biographical details, and a list of figures as separate Word documents. Each figure should also be submitted as individual original files. Further information on this is included below.

If your submission is too large to email, please contact the Hon. Editor as submissions/attachments may need to be sent via a dropbox, or some alternative arrangement. Paper submissions may only be accepted exceptionally by prior arrangement with the Hon. Editor.

The Process

Please send all submissions to The Honorary Editor  (editor@dorsetcountymuseum.org). You should receive an acknowledgement of your submission within two weeks. Submissions will be checked on receipt for completeness and appropriateness of file formats. If there is an issue with these aspects, you will be contacted and possibly asked to amend what you have submitted.

All submissions are logged and then passed for consideration to the Subject Editors. The Subject Editors are experienced specialists in the particular field into which your submission falls. They will consider the suitability of your submission, and arrange where appropriate for it to be passed to one of our panel of reviewers. The reviewer will consider the submission and provide some comments and potentially suggestions, which will be communicated to you by the Subject Editor.

The role of the Subject Editors and reviewers is to check that the submission has suitable subject matter for the Proceedings, and facilitate the quality your submission. When you receive comments and suggestions, the Subject Editor will let you know the date by which the corrected text needs to be returned in order to meet our publication timetable. Please try to adhere to this as closely as possible.

The decision on the inclusion of a submission to the Proceedings is by consulation between the Subject Editors and the Hon. Editor, taking into the nature of your submission and accounts for the mix, number and size of submissions. You may be advised that a paper is accepted, but only for a subsequent edition. The decision of the Hon. Editor is final.

Once the review and correction process is complete, proofs of full articles will be prepared which will combine your text and any illustrations etc. Authors of full papers will be sent proofs usually in PDF format via email. Please check the proofs for any minor errors. Please note that the proof will have been edited in accordance with the ‘house style’ of the Proceedings. Please do not correct changes which relate to this. Changes must be returned within the time-frame specified by the Hon. Editor. Minor corrections and/or revisions will then incorporated into the final proof. If authors do not return their proofs within the allotted time, the existing proofs will be used for the final published version. Please ensure that you only make minor corrective changes at the proof stage. Extensive changes left to this last stage may result in your paper being deferred to the next volume or rejected.

While every effort will be made to ensure that authors are happy with the final proofs, in matters of editing and style the decision of the Honorary Editor is final. All submissions are edited with reference to the MHRA (Modern Humanities Research Association) Handbook for Authors, Editors, and Writers of Theses, and the current Hart’s Rules— the Handbook of Style for Writers and Editors.

Format for submissions

Submission Form

All submissions must be accompanied by a Proceedings Submission Form. This must be completed and included or we cannot accept your submission. It contains a checklist to ensure that you have included everything in the correct format.

Please give your full name and the contact information of the author responsible for addressing publication queries. You must include a word count.

Contributors are asked to provide a short biography written so that it explains the reasons for their interest in their submitted paper, ideally around 50 words.

Abstract

Please provide an abstract with all full length submissions. An abstract may be also appropriate with certain shorter contributions.  Typically, an abstract should comprise a series of single sentences that cover the problem/question addressed, the motivation for doing so, how this was done the general outcome and wider implications of the research. The abstract should be 150-200 words, and include key words which reflect the content of the piece. Please provide the abstract in a separate Word file, formatted in italic script.

Text

Please remember that your article will be printed in the style of the Proceedings. You may wish to consult a recent edition to familiarise yourself with how your contribution might look. We ask you to use the simplest possible layout, and avoid extra formatting and typographical devices.

Please prepare your submission text in the following way:

• use a single style and size of font, preferably Times New Roman or Calibri, pt11;
• leave a left-hand margin of around 25mm
• space the lines generously (minimum 1.15pt)
• use italics and underlining as you would wish them to be used in the published version;
• do not justify the right-hand margin — this should be left ‘ragged’;
• centre title and section headings, and justify sub-headings left.
• use the return key after each paragraph, heading or sub-heading, but please do not indent the start of a new paragraph.
• use ‘en’ (-) or ‘em’ (—) dashes, as appropriate (please refer to either of the standard style guides, mentioned in the final paragraph of these notes, for correct usage). An ‘em’ dash may be indicated by two hyphens (–) for editing later.
• do not include page breaks

Do use page numbers as this assists reviewers.

You should include a separate paragraph of Acknowledgements, at the end of your text. References should be printed at the end of the typescript using the same font size and spacing as the main body of the text. The Harvard system of referencing must be used. Please ensure that these correspond precisely to the relevant examples below. Please check that all references in your text are present in the References and vice versa.

In the Harvard system of referencing, also known as the ‘author-date’ system, cues in the text take the form of the author’s name and the (year) date of the publication within parentheses that enable the reader to identify the work in a list of full references at the end of the text, e.g. (Arkell 1933). Where you are referring to a single issue/point in the work being referred to, please cite page numbers in the following layout: (Mills 1977, 230-1). Where there are two authors please use (Chadd and Extence 2004), and for multiple authors (Fuller et al 1993). Include online sources in the same style.

Full references should be presented as per the following examples. Please note the order, punctuation, italicisation of the main title of the work (not article titles) etc:

Arkell, W.J. 1933. The Jurassic System in Great Britain. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Chadd, R. and Extence, C. 2004. ‘The conservation of freshwater macroinvertebrate populations: a community based classification scheme’,  Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems, 14, 597-624.

Cox, P. And Woodward, P. 1987. ‘The Kimmeridge shale’ in P.J. Woodward ‘The excavation of an Iron Age and Romano-British settlement at Rope Lake Hole, Corfe Castle, Dorset’, in N. Sunter and P. Woodward, Romano-British industries in Purbeck. Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society Monograph 6, 165-72

Fuller, D.Q., Stevens, C.J. and McClatchie, M. 2014. ‘Routine activities, tertiary refuse and labor organization: social inference from everyday archaeobotany’, in M. Madella and M. Savard (eds), Ancient plants and people: contemporary trends in archaeobotany. University of Arizona Press, 174-217

Fuller, R.M., Groom, G.B., Jones, A.R., and Thomson, A.G. 1993. ‘Land cover map 1990 (1km dominant target class, GB)’, https:/doi.org/10.5285/4e3fe599-1ae9-4dbb-9476-bcf74fe90b4e [accessed April 2017].

Hinton, D.A. 1994. ‘Some Anglo-Saxon charters and estates in south-east Dorset’, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society 116, 11-20.

Mills, A.D. 1977. The Place-names of Dorset, Part 1. English Place-name Society, Cambridge.

Constable, B. 1992. Stratigraphy of the Upper Lias Junction Bed of Dorset and Somerset. Unpublished M.Sc. thesis Birkbeck College, University of London.

Illustrations

Illustrations, tables, maps etc need to be supplied separately from the text. Please indicate clearly in your text where the illustrations relate to (e.g. ‘see Figure 2’). However, do not include embedded illustrations in the body of the text. The eventual location of an illustration/table on the page will be dependent on page space and layout, but we will endeavour to ensure that it appears in a logical place close to where it is referred to in the text.

Illustrations must be clear and easily reproducible. Please bear in mind that illustrations may need to be resized during the typesetting process to fit the available space and/or column or page width. This is one reason that we cannot accept figures prepared in Word or Power point as any labelling will not be an integral part of the image and will not be possible to resize. If you have an illustration which needs to be printed to an exact size, please contact the Hon Editor and specify the precise dimensions. Where scale is important the figure itself should include a visual scale-bar. For reference, the PDNHAS page dimensions are A4, column width 80mm and gutter 4mm. Text is arranged in two columns and images will be sized either to a single column width, across two columns or an entire page as appropriate. Where this is important, please indicate.

Please include a separate list of captions, as a separate Word document. This should be typed and spaced as the main body of your text. The caption list should include full details of sources, attributions and copyright acknowledgements where appropriate (see below).

Photographic files should be should be formatted with a minimum of 300dpi as jpeg or tiff files. A higher dpi may be more appropriate depending on the size of reproduction you would like and the subject matter. Graphic images, such as line drawings, maps, charts and diagrams must also be submitted as jpeg or tiff files but should be at least 600dpi. All images must be prepared to your satisfaction before submission   – we are unable to undertake any graphical work with your content. Therefore please ensure all scanned illustrations are perfectly square /cropped etc before including. Please save all image files with the name of the contributor and the figure number to be used in the text (e.g. ‘SmithFig5’). The Proceedings is now produced at least partly in colour as standard. However, this applies to a limited number of pages. Please specify on submission whether/which illustrations will benefit from colour reproduction. If colour is not crucial, we would appreciate illustrations to be prepared in a grayscale suitable for reproduction.

Copyright

Observing the copyright of reproduced material is the responsibility of the contributor. The author indemnifies the publisher, the DNHAS and the editors of the Proceedings against any action taken as a result of infringement of copyright. Where an illustration is not the author’s, permission to reproduce must be obtained by the contributor, and the caption should include relevant copyright or photographic acknowledgement. In addition all authors of accepted contributions must sign a separate copyright indemnity agreement covering the use of both images and text, whether the author’s own, or extracts from other works cited in the author’s submission. The copyright form is incorporated into the submission form for articles which can be found on the Proceedings website pages.

The Society’s policy is to acquire copyright from all contributors, because:

1. ownership of copyright helps to ensure maximum international protection against infringement;
2. requests for permission to reproduce published material in books, course packs or for library loan can be dealt with efficiently with regard to changes in international copyright law;
3. the demand for research literature to be delivered in machine-readable form, on-line or on CD-ROM or down-loaded on a file server, can be met efficiently, with proper safeguards for authors, editors and publisher.

Authors who wish to reproduce material from previously published material, or where the copyright is owned by a third party, must obtain written permission from the copyright holder and the author(s) of the original material. Copyright is required for use in all formats (including digital) in perpetuity and in all geographical regions world-wide.

The Society will not withhold permission from the author(s) to use published material after publication, provided that acknowledgement is given to the Society as the original publisher. Further permission is required for republication to be made in a commercial product. Permission is never unreasonably withheld.

Charges

The Proceedings is published as part of the charitable activities of the DNHAS. However, publication creates a significant cost for DNHAS. Consequently, whilst we are happy to carry submissions from academic, independent and commercial contributors, we make a charge for publication of all full articles which have resulted from work undertaken as part of a commercial project. We would also ask academic contributors to consider inclusion of costs of publication as part of their original funding applications, in order to make a contribution to our costs.

Where charges are made, this is done on a page basis. Our current rate is £45 per page, plus VAT. We are able to include a certain number of colour pages, but additional colour may attract a charge. This charge may also be requested of independent contributors where a great deal of colour is required, or where excessive changes are made at a late stage in publication. Invoices will be issued on publication.