Submissions should be made electronically through this website. Once submitted, the author can track the submission and communicate with the editors via the online journal management system.

Please ensure that you consider the following guidelines when preparing your manuscript. Failure to do so may delay the processing of your submission.

All word counts are inclusive of the abstract, notes, references, and table and figure legends

Structure

Title page

To ensure blind peer review, please only list the title and abstract on the submitted manuscript file.

The names of all authors, affiliations, contact details, biography (optional) and the corresponding author details must be completed online as part of the submission process. All authors must fit within the journal's definition of an author, available here.

Author names should include a forename and a surname. Forenames cannot include only initials.

• J. Bloggs is not preferred. The full name, Joe Bloggs is required (this will enhance the 'findability' of your publication).

The affiliation should ideally include ‘Department, Institution, City, Country’. However only the Institution and Country are mandatory.

Abstract

Research articles must have the main text prefaced by an abstract of no more than 300 words summarising the main arguments and conclusions of the article. This must have the heading ‘Abstract’ and be easily identified from the start of the main text.

A list of up to six key words may be placed below the abstract (optional).

The Abstract and Keywords should also be added to the metadata when making the initial online submission. We recommend Times New Roman, size 12, space 1,5, justified text.

Main text

The body of the submission should be structured in a logical and easy to follow manner. A clear introduction section should be given that allows non-specialists in the subject an understanding of the publication and a background of the issue(s) involved. Methods, results, discussion and conclusion sections may then follow to clearly detail the information and research being presented.

Up to three level headings may be present and must be clearly identifiable using different font sizes, bold or italics. We suggest using Headings 1, 2 and 3 in MS-Word’s ‘Style’ section.

Supplementary Files 

(optional)
Any supplementary/additional files that should link to the main publication must be listed, with a corresponding number, title and option description. Ideally the supplementary files are also cited in the main text.

e.g. Supplementary file 1: Appendix. Scientific data related to the experiments.

Note: additional files will not be typeset so they must be provided in their final form. They will be assigned a DOI and linked to from the publication.

Reproducibility

If data, structured methods or code used in the research project have been made openly available, a statement should be added to inform the reader how/where to access these files. This should include the repository location and the DOI linking to it. Read our reproducibility guide for more information on best practice and maximising the impact of your open data.

If data used in the research project has not been made available, a statement confirming this should be added, along with reasoning why.

The journal's data policy is available on the Editorial Policies page.

Ethics and consent

(if applicable)
Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Where applicable, studies must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee and the authors should include a statement within the article text detailing this approval, including the name of the ethics committee and reference number of the approval. The identity of the research subject(s) should be anonymised whenever possible. For research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study must be obtained from participants (or their legal guardian) and added to this statement. If a study involving human subjects/tissue/data was exempt from requiring ethical approval, a confirmation statement from the relevant body should be included within the submission.

Experiments using animals must follow national standards of care. For further information, click here.

Competing interests

If any of the authors have any competing interests then these must be declared. A short paragraph should be placed before the references. Guidelines for competing interests can be found here.

Acknowledgements

 (optional)
Any acknowledgements must be headed and in a separate paragraph, placed after the main text but before the reference list.

References

All references cited within the submission must be listed at the end of the main text file.

Permissions

The author is responsible for obtaining all permissions required prior to submission of the manuscript. Permission and owner details should be mentioned for all third-party content included in the submission or used in the research.

If a method or tool is introduced in the study, including software, questionnaires, and scales, the license this is available under and any requirement for permission for use should be stated. If an existing method or tool is used in the research, it is the author's responsibility to check the license and obtain the necessary permissions. Statements confirming that permission was granted should be included in the Materials and Methods section.

Language & Text

Capitalisation

For the submission title:

Capitalise all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs and subordinate conjunctions (i.e. as, because, although). Use lowercase for all articles, coordinate conjunctions and prepositions.

• Person Recognition Is Easier from Faces than from Voices

Headings within the main text:

First level headings in the text should follow the same rule as the main title.

For lower-level subheadings, only capitalise first letter and proper nouns.

Headings should be under 75 characters.

Headings should be numbered or unnumbered, as long as it remains consistent throughout the
document.

Spelling

Submissions must be made in English. Authors are welcome to use American or British spellings as long as they are used consistently throughout the whole of the submission.

When referring to proper nouns and normal institutional titles, the official, original spelling must be used.

• World Health Organization, not World Health Organisation

Grammar

American or English grammar rules may be used as long as they are used consistently and match the spelling format (see above). For instance, you may use a serial comma or not.

• red, white, and blue OR red, white and blue

Font

We recommend Times New Roman, size 12, space 1,5.This may be changed during the typesetting process and will not necessarily be the published font.

Underlined text should be avoided whenever possible.

Bold or italicised text to emphasise a point are permitted, although should be restricted to minimal occurrences to maximise their efficiency.

Do not indent paragraphs.

Lists

Use bullet points to denote a list without hierarchy or order of value. If the list indicates a specific sequence then a numbered list must be used.

Lists should be used sparingly to maximise their impact.

Quotation marks

Use single quotation marks except for quotes within another speech, in which case double quotation marks are used.

Quotations that are longer than three lines in length must be in an indented paragraph separate from the main text. Quotations with 4 or more lines do not use quotation marks;
indent to the left 1,5 cm, set off from the text, size 11, 1 space.

It must be clear from the text and/or citation where the quote is sourced. If quoting from material that is under copyright then permission will need to be obtained from the copyright holder.

Acronyms & Abbreviations

With abbreviations, the crucial goal is to ensure that the reader – particularly one who may not be fully familiar with the topic or context being addressed – is able to follow along. Spell out almost all acronyms on first use, indicating the acronym in parentheses immediately thereafter. Use the acronym for all subsequent references.

• Research completed by the World Health Organization (WHO) shows …

A number of abbreviations are so common that they do not require the full text on the first instance. Examples of these can be found by clicking here.

Abbreviations should usually be in capital letters without full stops.

• USA, not U.S.A

Common examples from Latin origin do not follow this rule and should be lower case and can include full stops.

• e.g., i.e., etc.

Use of footnotes/endnotes

Use endnotes rather than footnotes (we refer to these as ‘Notes’ in the online publication). These appear at the end of the main text, before ‘References’.

All notes should be used only where crucial clarifying information needs to be conveyed.

Avoid using notes for purposes of referencing, with in-text citations used instead. If in-text citations cannot be used, a source can be cited as part of a note.

Please insert the endnote marker after the end punctuation.

Data & Symbols

Symbols

Symbols are permitted within the main text and datasets as long as they are commonly in use or have explanatory definition on their first usage.

Hyphenation, em and en dashes

There is no set rule on the use of hyphenation between words, as long as they are consistently used.

Em dashes should be used sparingly. If they are present, they should denote emphasis, change of thought or interruption to the main sentence and can replace comas, parentheses, colons or semicolons.

• The president’s niece—daughter of his younger brother—caused a media scandal when…

En dashes can be used to replace ‘to’ when indicating a range. No space should be around the dash.

• 10-25 years
• pp. 10-65

Numbers

For numbers zero to nine please spell the whole words. Please use figures for numbers 10 or higher.

• This study looked at five case studies
• This study looked at 12 case studies

We are happy for authors to use either words or figures to represent large whole figures (i.e. one million or 1,000,000) as long as the usage is consistent throughout the text.

If the sentence includes a series of numbers then figures must be used in each instance.

• Artefacts were found at depths of 5, 9, and 29 cm.

If the number appears as part of a dataset, in conjunction with a symbol or as part of a table then the figure must be used.

If a number is presented with a symbol then the figure must be not separated from the unit by a space.

• This study confirmed that 5% of…

Numbers that are less that zero must have ‘0’ precede the decimal point.

• 0.24 NOT .24

Centuries must be spelled out: nineteenth century and not 19 th century.

Units of measurement

Symbols following a figure to denote a unit of measurement must be taken from the latest SI brochure. See http://www.bipm.org/utils/common/pdf/si_brochure_8_en.pdf for the full brochure.

Figures & Tables

Figures

Figures, including graphs and diagrams, must be professionally and clearly presented. If a figure is not easy to understand or does not appear to be of a suitable quality, the editor may ask to re-render or omit it.

All figures must be cited within the main text, in consecutive order using Arabic numerals (e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.).

Each figure must have an accompanying descriptive main title. This should clearly and concisely summarise the content and/or use of the figure image. A short additional figure legend is optional to offer a further description.

• Figure 1: 1685 map of London.
• Figure 1: 1685 map of London. Note the additional of St Paul’s Cathedral, absent from earlier maps.

Figure titles and legends should be placed within the text document, either after the paragraph of their first citation, or as a list after the references.

The source of the image should be included, along with any relevant copyright information and a statement of authorisation (if needed). If using images from an archive then please provide the name of the archive, the collection and the acquisition number.

• Figure 1: Firemen try to free workers buried under piles of concrete and metal girders. Photo: Claude-Michel Masson. Reproduced with permission of the photographer.

If your figure file includes text then please present the font as Times New Roman. 

NOTE: All figures must be uploaded separately as supplementary files during the submission process, if possible in colour and at a resolution of at least 300dpi. Each file should not be more than 20MB. Standard formats accepted are: JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, EPS. For line drawings, please provide the original vector file (e.g. .ai, or .eps).

Tables

Tables must be created using a word processor's table function, not tabbed text.

Tables should be included in the manuscript. The final layout will place the tables as close to their first citation as possible.

All tables must be cited within the main text, numbered with Arabic numerals in consecutive order (e.g. Table 1, Table 2, etc.). The shortened word ‘Tab’ should not be used to cite a table.

Each table must have an accompanying descriptive title. This should clearly and concisely summarise the content and/or use of the table. A short additional table legend is optional to offer a further description of the table. The table title and legend should be placed underneath the table.

Tables should not include:

• Rotated text
• Colour to denote meaning (it will not display the same on all devices)
• Images
• Vertical or diagonal lines
• Multiple parts (e.g. ‘Table 1a’ and ‘Table 1b’). These should either be merged into one table, or separated into ‘Table 1’ and ‘Table 2’.

NOTE: If there are more columns than can fit on a single page, then the table will be placed horizontally on the page. If it still can't fit horizontally on a page, the table will be broken into two.

References

The following style guidelines are based on the MLA Formatting and Style Guide, 9th ed.

In-text citations
Every use of information from other sources must be cited in the text so that it is clear that external material has been used.
Parenthetical reference in the text (author-page style): for the most part, an in-text citation is the author’s last name and the page number with one space (or just the page number, if the author is named in the sentence) in parentheses. Ex.:
Imperialism is “the practice, the theory, and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan center ruling a distant territory” (Said 9).
or
According to Edward W. Said, imperialism is defined by “the practice, the theory, and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan center ruling a distant territory” (9).
In one work by the author of two or more works: place a comma after the author’s last name followed by comma, add a shortened version of the title of the book (ex.: Toffler, Future 211) or article (ex.: Lefevere, “Why Waste our Time” 241), and supply the page number(s).
Multiple citations: To cite multiple sources in the same parenthetical reference, separate the citations by a semi- colon, ex.: (Burke 3; Dewey 21).
When creating in-text citations for media that has a runtime, such as a movie or podcast: include the range of hours, minutes and seconds you plan to reference, ex.: (00:02:15- 00:02:35).

Works Cited
All citations must be listed at the end of the text file, in alphabetical order of authors’ surnames. If you are listing more than one work by the same author, alphabetize the works by title. For multiple authorship, place names in the order they appear in the source. Reverse the name of the first author only (ex.: “Wilmut, Ian, Keith Campbell, and Colin Tudge.”). When the author is an institution, begin with its name (ex. “CEAUL–Centro de Estudos Anglísticos da Universidade de Lisboa / ULICES–University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies”). For a source with three or more authors, list only the first author’s last name, and replace the additional names with et al.
All reading materials should be included in the ‘Works Cited’ section – works which have not been cited within the main text, but which the author wishes to share with the reader, must be cited as additional information in endnotes explaining the relevance of the work. This will ensure that all works within the reference list are cited within the text.
NOTE: If multiple works by the same author are being listed, please re-type the author’s name out for each entry, rather than using a long dash.
NOTE: DOIs should be included for all reference entries, where possible. The DOI or URL is usually the last element in a citation and should be followed by a period.
NOTE: All works cited entries end with a period.

Reference format

This journal uses the MLA Formatting and Style Guide, 9th ed. – see below for examples of how to format.

Format examples

Source: libguides.uwf.edu/citingsources/mla8.

For other sample entries see the MLA Formatting and Style Guide at OWL Purdue.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms. If a submission is rejected or withdrawn prior to publication, all rights return to the author(s):

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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).

Submitting to the journal implicitly confirms that all named authors and rights holders have agreed to the above terms of publication. It is the submitting author's responsibility to ensure all authors and relevant institutional bodies have given their agreement at the point of submission.

Note: some institutions require authors to seek written approval in relation to the terms of publication. Should this be required, authors can request a separate licence agreement document from the editorial team (e.g. authors who are Crown employees).

The publication of articles is funded by national funds through the FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., under the projects UID/ELT/00114/2019, UIDB/00114/2020 and UIDP/00114/2020.

Authors will not be charged any fee for publishing in this journal. The grant provided by FCT covers all publishing costs (editorial processes; web hosting; indexing; marketing; archiving; DOI registration etc.) and ensures that all of the content is fully open access. 

A publicação de artigos é financiada por fundos nacionais através da FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., no âmbito do projeto UID/ELT/00114/2019, UIDB/00114/2020 e UIDP/00114/2020.

Aos autores não será cobrada qualquer taxa de publicação neste periódico. O apoio forecido pela FCT  cobre todos os custos de publicação (processos editoriais, alojamento na Web, indexação, marketing, arquivamento, registo do DOI, etc.) e garante que todo o conteúdo seja totalmente de acesso aberto.