Guidance for OHJ Online article contributors
Articles in OHJ Online differ from the articles published in Oral History. They are shorter and aimed at a wider audience. Many articles for OHJ Online will still be scholarly in nature, but often they will respond to news and current affairs which impact oral history practitioners. OHJ Online pieces may cover, but are not limited to:
- Reflective news pieces
- Timely and informative interviews
- Media (films, TV, radio etc) which draw on, or speak to, oral history
- Recent publications in the Oral History journal (authors may publish shorter, publicly accessible versions of their article)
Style and length of article
Online articles should normally be no more than 5,000 words long and usually not fewer than 1,000 words long. Submissions must be sent to the editors as a Word file.
Normal house style generally applies for these articles. This link takes you to the main authors’ guidance page, which you should read before submitting manuscripts for consideration as print or online articles.
The online article should begin with the full title of the work. Keep titles as short and direct as possible.
Reading online is different from reading an article published on paper. Make it easy on the eye. Break up any large paragraphs (2–5 sentences maximum is your goal) and run-on sentences.
Keep footnotes to a minimum, but please feel free to provide links to YouTube videos, Soundcloud recordings or other online content produced by your project. We will do our best to include them.
Featured image
Send a good photo to use as the article’s featured image. This is the image that will appear at the top of your post. It will also become the post’s thumbnail and the image used when your post is shared on social media channels. The ideal size for a featured image would be 1200 x 628 pixels i.e. landscape format. Send it to us as a .jpg file.
You can also send other images for inclusion in the post. These can be either landscape or portrait format .jpg files.
Please make sure that you have permission to use the images you want to post. For every image, please provide the following:
- Image source and copyright ownership
- Wording of copyright attribution
- a short caption, if needed
Summary and keywords
Set out the main point of the article in no more than a couple of sentences. If you can summarise it in 140 characters or fewer, even better – this makes it easy to share on Twitter. If you know of any relevant Social Media accounts to tag in posts, please do let us know. The summary is also what appears with the title and featured image when the post appears in tile format on the website.
Please supply up to five keywords describing the piece. These should appear as follows: ‘Keywords: one; two; three; etc…’
Name of post author(s) + a short biography/team description
Include a short bio of yourself and/or your organisation (up to about 50 words). Provide links to your webpage, social media accounts, etc. if you wish.
Email us
Please email your contribution to: [email protected] with ‘OHJ Online’ in the Subject box.
If you would like to discuss an OHJ Online article ahead of submission, please email George Severs at [email protected]
If accepted, we will post your contribution as soon as possible and let you know when it has gone live. Please indicate if there is a particular date or anniversary which relates to your blog, and we will try our best to post around this date.
After your article is submitted
The Oral History Journal’s editors will read it carefully to see if it fits the criteria for publication. The editors aim to read each article and give comment within 3 weeks. The editors may decide an article can be posted without any changes. They may also ask for some amendments to be made before publication on the website. If the article is not suitable to publish on OHJ Online, the editors will explain why.
Each online article submission is anonymised and peer reviewed by up to three editors. It is discussed alongside all article submissions (both print and online) at the quarterly editorial team meetings, if these meetings occur soon after the submission has been received. Otherwise, to try and ensure speedy online publication, the decision-making process can take place via email correspondence between the editors. In the event that the editors decide that the submission would be more suited to the print issue of the journal, the editors will advise you accordingly. In this eventuality, editorial discussions about it will take place at the quarterly editorial meetings.
