Information for Authors

Submission Procedure

All submissions are handled electronically. Papers should be submitted via the online submission website. Any editorial or submission queries should be sent to the Managing Editor who will forward them to one of the Editors. The latter will be responsible for selecting referees and making an editorial decision. Receipt of a submission is systematically confirmed. The Journal aims to make editorial decisions within 10 weeks of submission.

A copy of the standard invitation letter to prospective Journal of Semantics reviewers is available.

Papers are accepted for review only on the condition that they have neither as a whole nor in part been published elsewhere, are elsewhere under review or have been accepted for publication. In case of any doubt authors must notify the editor of the relevant circumstances at the time of submission. It is understood that authors accept the copyright conditions stated in the journal if the paper is accepted for publication.

Peer Review Policy

This journal operates double-anonymised peer review, meaning that the authors identity is hidden from reviewers, and the reviewers’ identities are hidden from authors. The Editor has oversight of the reviewers and the authors names. For full details about the peer review process, see Fair editing and peer review.

OUP author FAQs.

First submission 

At first submission, it is not necessary to apply formatting to match house style, as long as the manuscript is easily readable. You can submit your manuscript initially in any common document format, such as a PDF or Word file. References and in-text citations can be provided in any consistent format. 

At acceptance 

At acceptance, [for an expedite editorial process] please supply Word or LaTeX source files that match journal formatting and style requirements and provide separate tables and/or high-resolution figures.  

It is highly recommended to prepare the final version of your manuscript using LaTeX and the relevant OUP LaTeX template, as this will make the typesetting stages and final rendering much more robust. The template is available online at Overleaf and also as a downloadable package. Please use the Modern Small design (see %%%MODERN%%% section in the source).

Submission Format

The following style requirements of the Journal of Semantics are binding for the final version to be prepared by the author after acceptance of the paper for publication.

• After acceptance, the final version must be provided both as a PDF or Postscript file and a MS-Word file or Latex file with the required supplementary files.
• The page size should be A4.
• The paper must be headed by its title and the name(s) and affiliation(s) of the author(s).
• The author's correspondence address (post office street address and email) must appear immediately at the end of the paper's main text under the separate heading "Author's address", before any Acknowledgements, Appendices, Notes, or References.
• The paper starts, after its title and the author's name and affiliation, with an abstract of approximately 200 words, headed "Abstract".
• Full bibliographical references must appear under the heading "References" at the very end of the paper, after the Author's address and any Acknowledgements, Appendices, or Notes, alphabetically ordered by author's surname and chronologically ordered per author. Each reference takes the form of surname of author, first name of author [, middle initial], year of publication in round brackets (in case of more than one publication per year, add small letters to the year), for books: title (in italics), publisher, place of publication; for journal papers: title of paper, name of journal (in italics), volume number (in boldface), colon, page numbers; for papers in collections: title of paper, In, editor's name, (ed.), title of collection (italics), publisher, place of publication, page numbers; for unpublished theses: title of thesis (in italics), type of thesis, name of department, name of university, place.

  Examples:

  • Burzio, Luigi (1986), Italian Syntax: A Government-Binding Approach. Reidel. Dordrecht.
  • Armstrong, Sharon L., Lila R. Gleitman, & Henry Gleitman (1983), What some concepts might not be. Cognition 13:263-308.
  • Dahl, Östen (1981), On the definition of the telic-atelic (bounded-nonbounded) distinction. In Philip J. Tedeschi and Annie Zaenen (eds.), Tense and Aspect. Academic Press. New York. 79-90.
  • May, Robert (1977), The Grammar of Quantification. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis. Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy. MIT. Cambridge, MA.
  • Smith, John (1999a), The Complete Tszabashi Grammar. Beevier University Press. Beevier.
  • Smith, John (1999b), A Learner's Guide to Tszabashi. Unpublished MS.
• All bibliographical references in the text must be given by author's surname and year of publication enclosed in round brackets (e.g., "... as Smith (1999b) argued..."or "...as was shown already in the Seventies (cf. May 1977).")
• Notes must appear as footnotes rather than endnotes. They are identified by consecutive superscript Arabic numbering. Please avoid excessive use of notes.
• Acknowledgements appear immediately after the main text of the paper and the Author's address and before any Appendices, Notes, and References in a separate paragraph headed "Acknowledgements". Acknowledgements should not appear in footnotes.
• Appendices may be used for the presentation of detailed material supplementing the text. They appear under the separate headings "Appendix 1", "Appendix 2", etc. after the main text and Author's address and any Acknowledgements and before Notes and References.
• The text of the paper should be structured in sections, decimally hierarchically numbered (i.e., 1, 1.1, 1.1.1, etc). No more than three levels of numbering should be used. Each section should bear a section title. The section numbering does not cover the Abstract and starts with the first section of the main text of the paper. Appendices, Acknowledgements and References are not numbered sections.
• Linguistic example sentences and formulas should be numbered on the left start of the line for cross reference by Arabic numbers enclosed in round brackets.
• Linguistic example sentences from languages other than English must be accompanied by a literal word-by-word English gloss as well as an English translation.
• Linguistic examples from languages not using the Latin alphabet must be given in an appropriate standard transliteration.
• Diagrams and Figures should be submitted as electronic files.
• Tables, Diagrams, or Figures of any kind should be numbered for cross reference consecutively and are named "Table 1", "Table 2", "Figure 1", "Figure 2", etc.
• Colour illustrations: authors will be expected to pay a fee for any colour illustrations appearing in the print version of their article ($600 per figure). Alternatively, figures can appear in black and white in the printed version with colour versions appearing online (for which there is no charge). Please indicate your preferred option (i.e. agreement to pay $600 per figure for print and online colour or preference for online-only colour with no charge) when prompted during the online submission process.

• Figure accessibility and alt text

  Incorporating alt text (alternative text) when submitting your paper helps to foster inclusivity and accessibility. Good alt text ensures that individuals with visual impairments or those using screen readers can comprehend the content and context of your figures. The aim of alt text is to provide concise and informative descriptions of your figure so that all readers have access to the same level of information and understanding, and that all can engage with and benefit from the visual elements integral to scholarly content. Including alt text demonstrates a commitment to accessibility and enhances the overall impact and reach of your work.  

  Alt text is applicable to all images, figures, illustrations, and photographs. 

  Alt text is only accessible via e-reader and so it won’t appear as part of the typeset article. 

  Detailed guidance on how to draft and submit alt text. 

Availability of Data and Materials

Where ethically feasible, Journal of Semantics strongly encourages authors to make all data and software code on which the conclusions of the paper rely available to readers. We suggest that data be presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files, or deposited in a public repository whenever possible. For information on general repositories for all data types, and a list of recommended repositories by subject area, please see Choosing where to archive your data.

On Experimental Work

Journal of Semantics has supported the rise of experimental work in our field very early on. The current guidelines for presenting experimental work are not mandatory, but they have proved to improve reliability, facilitate the editorial process and the broad distribution of the work. 

1. Data and analysis code sharing is expected, unless well-motivated (see Availability of Data and Materials section).
2. Pre-registration is strongly recommended, with the understanding that (1) deviation from pre-registered plans may occur and be justified in the manuscript, and that (2) post hoc analyses may be conducted, but should be explicitly differentiated from planned analyses in the text (whether or not the study is pre-registered). Authors should explain their choice of sample sizes, through pre-registration or otherwise. For templates and an introduction to the practice of pre-registration, we recommend the resources at the Open Science Foundation.
3. Writing should follow a standard reporting format from adjacent disciplines – e.g., Introduction (including hypotheses & predictions), Methods (Participants, then Materials and Procedures), Results (including descriptive and inferential statistics as necessary), and Discussion. Some more compact formats are sometimes possible, but the key information should be very easy to find for an expert reader. Most important to the journal is a clear connection between theoretical alternatives and design.

Data Citation

Journal of Semantics supports the Force 11 Data Citation Principles and requires that all publicly available datasets be fully referenced in the reference list with an accession number or unique identifier such as a digital object identifier (DOI). Data citations should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite:

• [dataset]* Authors, Year, Title, Publisher (repository or archive name), Identifier

*The inclusion of the [dataset] tag at the beginning of the citation helps us to correctly identify and tag the citation. This tag will be removed from the citation published in the reference list.

Preprint policy

Authors retain the right to make an Author’s Original Version (preprint) available through various channels, and this does not prevent submission to the journal. For further information see our Online Licensing, Copyright and Permissions policies. If accepted, the authors are required to update the status of any preprint, including your published paper’s DOI, as described on our Author Self-Archiving policy page.

Language Editing

Particularly if English is not your first language, before submitting your manuscript you may wish to have it edited for language. This is not a mandatory step, but may help to ensure that the academic content of your paper is fully understood by journal editors and reviewers. Language editing does not guarantee that your manuscript will be accepted for publication.

Open Access Option For Authors

Journal of Semantics offers the option of publishing under either a standard licence or an open access licence. Please note that some funders require open access publication as a condition of funding. If you are unsure whether you are required to publish open access, please do clarify any such requirements with your funder or institution.

Should you wish to publish your article open access, you should select your choice of open access licence in our online system after your article has been accepted for publication. You will need to pay an open access charge to publish under an open access licence.

Details of the open access licences and open access charges. 

OUP has a growing number of Read and Publish agreements with institutions and consortia which provide funding for open access publishing. This means authors from participating institutions can publish open access, and the institution may pay the charge. Find out if your institution is participating.

Please note that some article types may have different rates for open access.

Author Toll Free Link and Discounts

All corresponding authors will be provided with a free access link to their article upon publication.  The link will be sent via email to the article’s corresponding author who is free to share the link with any co-authors.  Please see OUP’s Author Self-Archiving policy for more information regarding how this link may be publicly shared depending on the type of license under which the article has published.  

All authors have the option to purchase up to 10 print copies of the issue in which they publish at a 50% discount. Orders should be placed through this order form. Orders must be made within 12 months of the online publication date.

Crossref Funding Data Registry

In order to meet your funding requirements authors are required to name their funding sources, or state if there are none, during the submission process. For further information on this process or to find out more about CHORUS, visit the CHORUS initiative.