Participations publishes two issues a year, in May and November. We welcome submissions at any point in the year in many different formats, including:
- academic articles featuring empirical audience studies
- reports of empirical research
- debates around existing work or developments
- theoretical or conceptual explorations and arguments
- interviews (where relevant to the broad field of audience and reception studies)
- roundtables featuring academics and/or industry practitioners (where relevant to the broad field of audience and reception studies)
- book reviews – or indeed reviews of significant articles, reports, or the like
- primary datasets relating to audiences
We do not in general carry Conference reviews, unless the events are of substantial significance. We are also open to discussing publication of work that would not normally be published, for instance commercial reports that are otherwise unavailable to outsiders or reports to funding councils detailing the outcomes of a project. If in doubt, please ask by emailing the Editors at editor@participations.org.
If you wish to propose a themed section, please see the separate Guest Editor Guidelines.
1. Preparing your submission
Articles should generally be no more than 8,000 words. Longer submissions may be considered, provided their additional length is used to provide essential context, methodological discussion or primary data. If you have any questions, please contact the editors (editor@participations.org)
Submissions should be in Calibri, 12pt and must include the following, along with the main text:
- Title
- Names of Author(s), institutional affiliation and country
- Abstract (up to 200-words long)
- 4-6 keywords
- Biographical note for each author. This should be placed immediately after the main text of the essay and should include:
- current job title and institution
- a sentence or two about ongoing research interests
- a contact Email address
1.1. Language
All articles submitted to Participations must be in English. We are happy to publish an additional Abstract in another language where useful.
Articles should be written in a clear style that avoid jargon. If technical terms or acronyms are used, please ensure they are explained or written in full when first used. Non-racist and non-sexist language must be used along with plurals rather than he/she unless referring to a specific individual.
We recognise that writing in English can be a challenge for authors who are not native English speakers. Editors will help, where they can, with details of English expression, but we retain the right either to copyedit submissions for language issues before confirming acceptance of a submission, or to ask authors to arrange for this to be done by a native speaker through their own connections.
1.2. Referencing
Referencing and bibliographical systems should follow the Harvard author-date format. You can find more information in our Reference Guide.
1.3. House Style
Submission should follow the Participations house style. Authors may be requested to make formatting revisions after the peer review stage:
- articles should be in Calibri font with body text in 12 pt.
- the title should be in Libre font 20pt, Bold
- subheadings should take the following pattern:
- First Level – Calibri 16pt Bold
- Second Level – Calibri 14pt Italics
- articles should be single spaced
- the start of paragraphs should be indented
- titles of books and journals, films, television programmes, plays, videogames etc. should be given in italics, including in the Bibliography
- quotations of less than 40 words should be included in the text with single inverted commas, and double inverted commas for quotes within quotes. Quotations of more than 40 words should be indented, without being placed in quote-marks
- do not use points in abbreviations, contractions or acronyms (e.g. AD, USA, Dr, PhD)
- numbers below 100 should be spelt out rather than presented as numerals. Numbers over 100 and percentages should be presented in numeric form.
- dates should use the format 1 May 2023
- footnotes are permitted but their use should be limited. Please do not use endnotes.
1.4. Ethical Approval & Anonymisation
Where a submission uses empirical data from human subjects (e.g. questionnaire data, focus groups or interview transcripts, ethnographic observations etc.), authors should confirm that they have received relevant ethical approval from their institution at the initial submission.
Submissions which include materials from interviews must ensure either that people have been sufficiently anonymised, or that interviewees have given their permission to be quoted. We also recommend that, unless you have particular reasons not to do so, as a courtesy to those whom you quote from emails, questionnaires etc., any accidental errors are corrected (and not drawn attention to by the use of a bracketed [‘sic’]).
2. How to submit your article
Submissions should be emailed as a Word document to the Editors at editor@participations.org. Tables, Graphs, and Images should be included within the text where they are most appropriate.