For Authors
Submission Instructions
- Manuscripts should be categorizable according to one of our submission types. They should be submitted in electronic form to our submissions portal for full consideration, and should generally follow the Chicago Manual of Style. (Paper submissions by snail-mail will have to be discussed directly with the editor-in-chief, who should be contacted via email.)
- Submitted manuscripts are accepted for review only if they have not been published previously and are not currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. (Please see the information detailing our editorial process.) Note: currently, Limina accepts submissions at no cost to authors.
- All electronic manuscripts should be submitted in either MS Word, or PDF format. If you submit using LaTeX, then authors should please include the original source file, together with all style files and figures as supplemental documents uploaded during the submission process.
- Since Limina employs a rigorous double-blind peer-review process, all references to the author or authors of the paper submitted for consideration should be thoroughly removed from the paper prior to submission to our review board. Only a suitably anonymized version of the paper can be reviewed.
- Papers should be as concise and as clearly written as possible, but no manuscript should exceed 6,000 words. An abstract of between 150 to 300 words should accompany the manuscript, containing its background, rationale, and main conclusions.
- Given the inter- and multidisciplinary nature of Limina, papers should be conceived and written for a well-informed and highly-trained general academic audience. Extended technical discussions intended for the expert reader should be reserved for a suitable footnote; or, for longer, more elaborate technical considerations (such as an important mathematical calculation or derivation), a suitable set of appendices should be created at the end of the paper.
- Illustrations (photographs, drawings, diagrams, and charts) are to be numbered in one consecutive series of Arabic numerals. The captions for illustrations should be written on a separate sheet of paper, unless they can be clearly incorporated into the submitted document itself. Photographs should be high quality, showing high contrast. Drawings should be high-quality laser prints or should be prepared with India ink. Either original drawings or good-quality photographic prints are acceptable. Identify figures on the back with the author's name and number of the illustration. Electronic artwork should be in eps or pdf format (1200 dpi for line drawings and 300 dpi for half-tones and gray-scale art).
- Tables should be numbered (preferably using Arabic numerals) and referred to by number in the text. We ask that authors follow a Chicago Manual Style guide for all tables. Please refer to their guide here.
- All references cited in the text are to be listed at the end of the paper in alphabetical order under the first author's name. References and in-text citations should generally follow the Chicago Manual of Style guidelines.
- Footnotes should be numbered using a separate set of numerals and should be typed at the bottom of the page to which they refer. Place a line above the footnote, so that it is set off from the text. Use the appropriate superscript numeral without parentheses for citation in the text.
- If reference to a source is included in a footnote, please cite using an abbreviated Chicago style in the footnote, as follows: Hynek 1973, p. 21. Then, please list the full reference at the end of the manuscript, in your References section, according to the dictates of the Chicago Style as mentioned above.
- Submission of a manuscript does not guarantee review. Only submissions that both fall within the scope of Limina (as decided collectively by the chief and associate editors) and meet minimum academic quality standards (determined at the discretion of our Editorial Board) will be professionally peer-reviewed by experts carefully selected by the editorial staff. If a submitted manuscript is accepted for publication, electronic source files and a pdf version of the final manuscript should be submitted to the journal (generally this will be done using our Scholastica portal, to which authors with papers under review will already have been given access).
- Authors will be given a decision of either: (1) accept (unconditionally); (2) accept with only minor revisions; (3) revise and resubmit (conditional acceptance pending more substantial revisions); reject (and in some cases, the rejection may come directly from our desk, without the paper having moved into the formal referee process, as indicated above). Now, for all authors given decision (3), it will be a requirement that they supply to all reviewers a detailed, point-by-point reply to all comments, specially indicating in some way where exactly in the revised manuscript the relevant comments have been addressed. (And for any comments left unaddressed, authors will be required to explain exactly why.) This is to streamline the review process and to relieve the burden from referees to have to determine, on their own, exactly where and how their comments have been addressed in the revised manuscript.
- Only one set of proofs is sent to the authors. This shows the final layout of the paper as it will appear in the journal. It is therefore essential that manuscripts are submitted in their final form, ready for the printer. Proofreading should be limited to the correction of typographical errors. Any other changes involve time-consuming and expensive work, and the costs will be charged to the author(s). If absolutely necessary and space permits, additions may be made at the end of the paper in a "note added in proof".
- Once the manuscript has been accepted for publication, suitable transfer of copyright to Limina will be requested. However, the journal currently allows authors to retain full copyright privileges.
Required Author Declarations & Ethics In Publishing
Reporting Standards
Wherever applicable, authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. The foundational data for the research presented and detailed in the article should be represented accurately within the article as a whole. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable.
Data Accessibility and Disclosure
Data fundamental to the substance of an article, which was obtained during the course of original research, should be made available (in suitable form) to the editors upon request for independent verification, and, wherever possible, be made available to the article's readership upon its publication.
Originality & Non-redundancy
All manuscript submissions must be original works by the author(s) listed during the course of manuscript submission. Plagiarism in any form is, of course, not tolerated and can potentially result in the reporting of authors found to have plagiarized to the relevant professional authorities. Additionally, manuscripts submitted to this journal should be original is at least one other sense: they should not be reproductions or summaries (however carefully edited) of works previously published elsewhere. However, works such as a précis (an extended summary of a monograph or book) may be considered for publication.
Authorship
Authors listed on an article and entered into our submission system during the uploading process should be limited to those who have made substantial contributions to the paper being submitted. If there are two or more authors on a paper, at least one author should be designated as the one to whom all correspondence should be directed - be it correspondence with Limina and editors assigned to the manuscript, or with its readership upon publication. The author so designated should be clearly indicated on the manuscript.
Generative AI & Manuscript Authorship
Aside from the use of AI during the course of analysis of data fundamental to a paper (which is deemed unnecessary to specifically disclose to the manuscript's assigned editors), the use of AI for the purposes of generating the actual written text of the manuscript under submission should be clearly indicated - whether in a special "acknowledgments" sections, or as a footnote in an appropriate place somewhere within the manuscript. It is strongly recommended that generative AI be used only for the proofreading or general editing of manuscripts, if used at all during the writing process - in which case it would be deemed "AI assisted" writing. If a substantial portion of the text has been so processed, suitable acknowledgment and declaration of this fact should be made in the manuscript.
Declaration of Conflicts of Interest
Any conflicts of interest should be declared in a separate section at the end of the paper. If there are none, then such should also be declared.
Declaration of Funding Sources
If the research and/or writing of the manuscript was funded (or otherwise substantially supported) by an institution, foundation or other entity, such should be noted towards at the end of the paper.
