Submissions

All articles will go through a blind peer-review and will be read by two editors and/or readers. Each editor/reader will then submit a review, indicating whether they will recommend the submitted piece for publication. In cases where these reviews present strongly differing views, a third reviewer will evaluate the piece. Following this a final review will be sent to the author together with an acceptance/rejection letter. Articles not to exceed 10,000 words.

Authors should endeavour to maintain a level of interdisciplinary to their submissions. Articles should appeal to a large audience of medievalists and should provide sufficient context for readers who are not already experts in the subject matter of their articles. Highly focused studies are welcome, but preference will be given to articles of interest to readers in more than one discipline and beyond the specialty in question. 

Submissions are to present original, previously unpublished scholarship. As Apardjón strives to present work which is likely to be of long-term value to Scandinavian scholarship, preliminary notes on research still in progress are not acceptable. Furthermore, work that will soon be published in essentially the same form as part of a book or work that is already available on the Internet should not be submitted. Scholarship that is part of a dissertation is acceptable provided that the work is not formally published. Articles are considered for publication under the agreement that they are not being considered for publication by another journal. Apardjón does not permit online posting of pre-publication versions of articles. Articles may be posted online at the author’s discretion following publication with the caveat that the author acknowledges the article’s publication in Apardjón.

When notified of possible errors or corrections, the editors of Apardjón will conduct a review in consultation with the publisher and seek a resolution consistent with best practices of publishing.

The average decision time for article submissions is three months.

Book reviews will not go through peer-review, but the journal will accept unsolicited book reviews based on quality and relevance. Book reviews may also be solicited pieces, in which case the journal acquires the review copy from the publisher and solicits an appropriate writer for the review. Book reviews will be limited to books that have been published in the last two years and should not exceed 2000 words. 

Reviewers are chosen by the editors for their expertise in the subject matter. The ideal reviewer is sympathetic but critical, without overweening prejudice for or against the author, the subject, or the methodology. Personal conflicts of interest are to be avoided. The length of the review is determined by the appropriate Review Editor. Deadlines are normally four months from the date of assignment.

The editors do their best to ensure that reviews are fair to the author and to the work. Although reviewers speak for themselves, and their judgments should not be understood to be sanctioned by the editors, the editors of Apardjón reserves the right to reject reviews that do not meet the expected criteria and standards of competence and fairness.

The first criterion by which a review is judged is that it provides a clear description of the content of the monograph or essay collection and of the author(s)’s method and purpose. Thereafter the editors look for honest and fair critical judgment, applied to an assessment of the book’s strengths and weaknesses, and for an indication of the importance of the book in the context of other scholarship.

Elaborate scholarly apparatuses (footnotes, charts, illustrations) are normally to be avoided. Long lists of publication errors are rarely permitted – a summary statement and a few examples are usually adequate.

Reviews are assigned by the editors and unsolicited reviews will not be considered. Anyone who reviews a book in Apardjón should not review the same book elsewhere. If you are invited to submit a review for Apardjón, we ask that you keep your role as reviewer confidential until the review has been published. Scholars who wish to review for Apardjón should contact the editors at apardjon@abdn.ac.uk.

Apardjón Journal for Scandinavian Studies is always looking to publish new translations, editions, and transcriptions of medieval Scandinavian literature. Never-before translated works are particularly appealing, but we are also interested in updated and critical translations. All translations should be rendered in English only. If a normalized edition or transcription of the original is not easily accessible, we prefer that the translation supplies one. To make an enquiry of interest, please do not hesitate to contact us either through our social media platforms or write to us at apardjon@abdn.ac.uk. We welcome translation submission all year round.

After the internal editors’ initial evaluation of the appropriateness of a submission for publication, Apardjón follows a policy of double-blind peer review. The author’s identity remains anonymous to the reader evaluating the submission, and the author does not know the identity of the reader. For the contribution to remain anonymous, the author’s name and submission title should appear only in the accompanying email, while the submitted work itself should only present the title and NOT the author’s name. An author should likewise avoid self-identification in the argument or documentation of the article. The author’s name should not appear as an element in running heads of the typescript.

All submissions to Apardjón Journal for Scandinavian Studies are to be the author’s original work and contain no plagiarised material. All contributions are to be submitted to Apardjón’s email address in electronic form in a .doc or .docx file format as an email attachment. In the case of a file including graphics or special characters, a pdf version should also be submitted.  The contribution should be written in UK English and submitted in Times New Roman, size 12 font, 1.5-line spaced, and have pages numbered. Contributions should be prepared in accordance with the MHRA Style Book (2013, online 3rd Edition) with the exceptions noted below.

Italics should be employed as needed, but boldface should be avoided. Ample margins are to be provided (at least 2.54 centimetres/one inch on all sides). Additional line-spaces are not to be inserted between paragraphs or between notes; use subheads when necessary to signal a division between sections of the text. The submitted manuscript is to be paginated consecutively from start to finish. 

Submissions to Apardjón are to incorporate reference citations in the body of the text in parentheses unless they relate specifically to subject matter dealt with in a footnote and should be given in the form illustrated by the following examples: Old Norse sagas and poetry on the other hand praise the art of the warrior and not least his weapons, many of which are described and named in poetic terms (Falk 1914: 47–65; Drachmann 1967). – Anne Holtsmark (1939: 78) and others have already drawn attention to this fact. – Ninth-century Irish brooches have recently been the subject of two studies by the present author (1972; 1973-74), and the bossed penannular brooches have been fully catalogued by O. S. Johansen (1973). 

Quotations should be enclosed in single quotation marks, with quotations within quotations enclosed in double quotation marks. Quotations of more than three lines of prose, or more than two lines of verse are to be set as block quotations and indented on a separate line. Quotations from a primary source are to be presented in the text in the same manner: initially in the original language, in italics, and be immediately followed by a modern (UK) English translation in single quotation marks or in parentheses without single quotation marks. 

Notes should be presented as footnotes, not endnotes. Footnotes are to be kept to a minimum. Whenever possible the material should be incorporated in the text instead, if necessary in parentheses. Footnotes are to be size 10 font sheets, single spaced, and arranged in one continuous numbered sequence indicated by superscript Arabic numerals. The terms op. cit., ed. cit., loc. cit., ibid. should not be used. Also avoid the use of f. and ff.; give precise page references.

Foreign words or phrases cited are to be italicised and followed by an English gloss of the words or phrases (in the first instance of use) enclosed in single quotation marks, e.g. Íslendingasögur ‘sagas of Icelanders’ or forn siðir ‘ancient customs’. Personal and place-names are, however, NOT italicised, e.g. Þórr or Ásgarðr.

A strictly corresponding bibliographical list should be included at the end of the submission. The accuracy of both the references and the list is the author’s responsibility. The bibliography is to be in strictly alphabetical order by surname(s) of the author(s) or editor(s) (except in the case of Icelanders with patronymics, where they are to be listed by given name, e.g. Finnur Jónsson or Sigurður Nordal). Where the author is unknown, e.g Beowulf, the source is to be listed either by the title of the work or with ‘Anonymous’. Neither the name of the publisher nor the place of publication is required; nor, generally, is the name of a series.

As part of the submission process, authors are required to comply with all of the following criteria:

1. All submissions should be the author’s original work and contain no plagiarised material. 
2. All submissions should be submitted in a doc. or docx. file format.
3. All submissions should follow the MHRA Style Guide, with the exceptions listed in the Author Guidelines above. 
4. All submissions should be written in UK English and submitted in Times New Roman, size 12, 1.5 line spacing.
5. Please complete and attach a signed version of our Publication Agreement form, downloadable here, with the submission of your article.

Submissions that do not adhere to the above criteria will be returned to the author.