Dedicated to the Study of the Weapons, Armour, and Military Fittings of the Armies and Enemies of Rome and Byzantium

Instructions for Contributors

Contributions are invited for the Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies on any subjects relating to the declared fields of interest of the periodical. Wherever possible, a computer disc containing the text should also accompany a manuscript, but please note the comments below under Computer Media.

House style

A few guidelines on style should be borne in mind, particularly if preparing a computer compatible form of the paper you wish to submit. Underline Latin or Greek words where you wish them to be italicized (and contributors are encouraged to distinguish ancient usages from their descendants which are still lodged within modern languages). Greek should be handwritten carefully and legibly if no printout is available. Careful attention must be paid to accenting of languages in place names and so forth. Numbers up to ten should be in words, from 11 onwards in arabic numerals. References should be in the house style - a superscript numeral in the text referring to a note where the abbreviated publication details (e.g. SMITH, 1969, 25-30) should be given and the full bibliographic reference provided in a bibliography (note that page ranges terminating in f or ff are not acceptable): Harvard-style references within the text are not used.

Manuscripts

Manuscripts should be typed, double-spaced, on one side of the paper. It is important that all accenting is indicated clearly on the manuscript, for computer files will frequently be unable to carry many of the familiar accents. Please include a contact address so that proofs can be sent to you. Contributions should be sent to:

Computer Media

The preferred formats for JRMES submissions are either OpenOffice (SXW) or Rich Text Format (RTF) files (see panel on right), but HTML and StarWriter are also acceptable. Note that MS Word DOC files are no longer accepted for various reasons and any submissions received in this format will be returned. Do not attempt to mimic the layout of JRMES (all such formatting has to be undone by us) or embed illustrations in your wordprocessor file (programs like MS Word use no compression on illustrations when they do this and it leads to unfeasibly large files). Save graphics files separately and include a reference in the text where you would like them placed. Files should be sent on 3.5" disc or CD (no zip discs, please), or emailed as an attachment (to: info@jrmes.org.uk); please bear in mind that unusual formats will cost money to convert and so increase costs.

Illustrations

Line drawings should ideally be sent camera-ready if you have access to appropriate facilities, but if not please make sure finds drawings include (besides a verbal statement of scale) a drawn centimetre scale - if one is lacking, you may well find that one is imposed upon your drawing! Think carefully about the layout of illustrations and make sure that they fit within the text area - zipped templates are available for downloading as a PDF file or a compressed TIFF file which can be viewed and printed out from the Adobe Acrobat Reader (which can be downloaded for free from the Adobe website if you do not already possess it). Throwouts should be avoided where at all possible. Photographs (i.e. black and white prints) should be of suitable quality for publication and should have any cropping marks on overlay sheets with a clear indication of top where it might not be readily apparent. Do not send JPEG files as they will seldom be of publication quality; photographs should be scanned at 200 dpi (line drawings at 600 dpi) at least for reproduction at 1:1.

Proofs and Offprints

The proofs you receive will be photocopies of a preliminary version of the camera-ready copy - it is not too late to make changes, but please ensure that they are necessary. You will receive EITHER a gratis copy of the volume for each contribution (not, please note, for each contributor), OR 15 offprints of the contribution (you will be asked to choose at the time of proofing). All contributors will receive a 'broken-down' copy of the paper, together with a PDF file containing a digital version, should you wish to copy it to satisfy offprint requirements.