Submission Guidelines

Journal of American Folklore

Information for Contributors

Journal of American Folklore, the quarterly journal of the American Folklore Society since the society’s founding in 1888, publishes scholarly articles, essays, notes, and commentaries directed to a wide audience, as well as separate sections devoted to reviews of books, exhibitions and events, sound recordings, films and videotapes, and obituaries. The contents of the journal reflect a wide range of professional concerns and theoretical orientations. Articles present significant research findings and theoretical analyses from folklore and related fields. Essays are interpretive, speculative, or polemic. Notes are narrower in scope and focus on a single, often provocative, issue of definition, interpretation, or amplification. “Commentaries,” included in the “Dialogues” section, address topics raised in earlier articles. The views expressed in the journal are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the society or its officers.

Article manuscripts are acknowledged on receipt and are evaluated first by the JAF editorial staff, and then, if appropriate for the journal, unidentified manuscripts are sent to two qualified anonymous referees for review. The staff attempts to keep authors informed about the progress of the review process via email. The review process may take only a few weeks but sometimes takes several months. Authors are notified as soon as a decision has been made to accept or reject a manuscript; rejection may be outright or with the possibility of revision and resubmission for a new evaluation. The editor reserves the right to reject or return for revision any material submitted, on the grounds of inappropriate subject matter, quality, or length. When a manuscript is submitted to the Journal of American Folklore, it should not have been published elsewhere or be under consideration by any other journal.

Reviews and review articles are generally requested by the review editors, but the editors welcome queries from scholars concerned with particular areas of folklore research, and expressions of willingness to review from scholars with particular expertise. Colleagues who wish to write an obituary should address the editor. Each article-length manuscript must begin with a 50-to-75-word abstract that summarizes the essential points and findings of the article. Current and accurate e-mail addresses, whenever available, are essential for the review process to proceed quickly.

Authors wishing to have an article manuscript considered for publication should submit two versions of their manuscript to the editors. The first version of the manuscript should be identified by the author’s name throughout, including references cited, etc. The second version must be submitted without any identification of the author. This means that the second version should include no title page and no name on each page; all references to the author or to the author’s work anywhere in the manuscript (including the notes, captions, and references cited) must be removed when they serve to identify the author. Deleted materials can be “marked” in the following manner to indicate words missing: (****). Authors should also be sure that they are not identified in the electronic file’s properties, which in many versions of Word can be accessed by selecting “properties” under the file menu and clicking on the summary tab.

All manuscripts must be submitted via both electronic mail and paper mail. First, the two versions of the manuscript should be sent as e-mail attachments to the editors at jafolklore@tamu.edu. Both versions should be in Microsoft Word format. (If the files total more than 5 megabytes in size, please contact the editors before sending the files.) Second, authors must send via paper mail a CD with the two versions of the Word files. Please do not send postage or a fee for submission. Hard copies of the manuscript are not required. Articles in JAF may include figures, such as photos, tables, line drawings, or musical transcriptions. Figures must not be embedded in the Word files. Instead, the manuscript should contain “call outs” to the figures (for example, “<insert Figure 1 about here>”), and a list of figure captions should follow the Works Cited section of the manuscript. Each figure should be submitted as a separate electronic file or hard copy. Electronic files of the figures may be e-mailed to the editors, as long as the total size of all files sent does not exceed 5 megabytes. Otherwise, the electronic copies of the figures should be included on the CD sent by paper mail. If figures exist only in hard copy, they should be sent in the paper mail package. Electronic copies of photos must be at a resolution of 300 DPI or higher, and the JPG format is not accepted. For complete information on figure formatting and permission, please contact the editors. If an article is accepted for publication in JAF, the author is responsible for providing the JAF staff with a clean, corrected copy of the manuscript in Word format.

The Journal of American Folklore generally follows the 14th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). Close examination of the most current issue of JAF provides a helpful model for correct JAF style and form. For spelling, refer to Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1986) or the latest edition of its abridgment, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. If two or more spellings are given, use the first. In all quotations from printed text, the actual spelling in the original is used. Authors should avoid unnecessary use of gender-exclusive language.