The journal is published in electronic form on a rolling basis, with content collected into two issues a year. 

Please feel free to contact the Journal Editor (journaleditor@archivists.org.au) to discuss your submisssion.

Peer reviewed article guidelines

Manuscripts are accepted in English only. Australian English spelling and punctuation are preferred (refer to Macquarie Dictionary). Please use single quotation marks, except where ‘a quotation is “within” a quotation’. Long quotations of 40 words or more should be indented without quotation marks.

See below for detailed textual and citation style guidelines.

A typical peer-reviewed article will not exceed 10,000 words excluding tables, references, captions, footnotes and endnotes. Manuscripts that greatly exceed this will be critically reviewed with respect to length. Authors should include a word count with their manuscript.

Manuscript submissions should be compiled in the following order:

• Title page document:
  • title of paper;
  • authors. All authors of a manuscript should include their full name and affiliation on the cover page of the manuscript.  Where available, please also include ORCiDs and social media handles (Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn). One author should be identified as the corresponding author. Please give the affiliation where the research was conducted. 
  • acknowledgements, including funding and grant-awarding bodies if any;
  • disclosure statement (if required);
  • short biographical note for each author. This could be adapted from your departmental website or academic networking profile and should be relatively brief (e.g. no more than 200 words);
  • abstract;
  • 3-5 keywords.
• Main text document (blind):
  • abstract (100 words);
  • 3-5 keywords; body of article;
  • acknowledgements (ensuring anonymity of the author/s);
  • endnotes;
  • appendices (as appropriate);
  • table(s) with caption(s) (on individual pages);
  • figure caption(s) (as a list – image files should be submitted separately not embedded in the manuscript text – see section 5. Illustrations and figures below).

Section headings should be concise.

All persons who have a reasonable claim to authorship must be named in the manuscript as co-authors; the corresponding author must be authorised by all co-authors to act as an agent on their behalf in all matters pertaining to publication of the manuscript, and the order of names should be agreed by all authors. Read more on authorship.   

If any of the named co-authors moves affiliation during the peer review process, the new affiliation can be given as a footnote. Please note that no changes to affiliation can be made after the manuscript is accepted. Please note that the email address of the corresponding author will normally be displayed in the article PDF (depending on the journal style) and the online article.      

Please supply all details required by any funding and grant-awarding bodies as an Acknowledgement on the title page of the manuscript, in a separate paragraph.

Authors must also incorporate a Disclosure Statement which will acknowledge any financial interest or benefit they have arising from the direct applications of their research.

Data Availability Statement: If there is a data set associated with the paper, please provide information about where the data supporting the results or analyses presente­d in the paper can be found. Where applicable, this should include the hyperlink, DOI or other persistent identifier associated with the data set(s).  

Data deposition: If you choose to share or make the data underlying the study open, please deposit your data in a recognised data repository prior to or at the time of submission. You will be asked to provide the DOI, pre-reserved DOI, or other persistent identifier for the data set.    

Authors must adhere to SI units. Units are not italicised.

When using a word which is or is asserted to be a proprietary term or trade mark, authors must use the symbol ® or TM.

Tables should present new information rather than duplicating what is in the text. Readers should be able to interpret the table without reference to the text. Please supply editable files.   

Supplemental online material: Supplemental material can be a video, dataset, fileset, sound file or anything which supports (and is pertinent to) your paper. We publish supplemental material online  alongside the article. Supplemental material are created by the authors themselves and are not edited by the publisher so please proof-read these thoroughly before submitting. 

Reflection articles guidelines

Generally refer to the section above for formatting and referencing styles while keeping in mind the following considerations:

• Reflection articles undergo editorial review and potential authors are encouraged to contact the editor in the first instance to discuss their ideas (journaleditor@archivists.org.au).
• Reflection articles should be no longer than 3000 words in length.
• Manuscripts can be more reflective and/or speculative in tone than usually permitted for peer-reviewed articles.
• Reflections articles can be written in less formal language using the first person. However, they should be of publication standard and intended for a professional audience.
• The purpose of reflections is to record and further ideas of general interest to the archival profession. It is expected that some reflections will also be of interest to the scholarly community. Reflections can also develop case studies in archival practice, or report on and discuss developments of importance to the archival profession or sector in Australia. Conference papers may be published as reflection articles (peer-review papers will also be considered).
• For reflections, endnotes are still encouraged, however fewer references are required than for peer-reviewed articles.

Reviews guidelines

The following guidelines are presented with a view to minimising editorial intervention:

• Reviews should be approximately 800–1,500 words in length, unless a review article is intended, in which case this needs to be agreed to in advance by the journal editor.
• As a reviewer, you need to consider: What is the author’s aim and to what extent the aim has been achieved? Who is the author and what is his or her background? What is the target readership of the book? How does this work compare with others covering similar ground? The editors would prefer you to be provocative rather than bland (but not actionable, please).
• The citation at the beginning of the review should include in the following order: title in bold, name of author(s) or editor(s), place of publication, publisher, year of publication, extent including preliminary pages, currency and price (publication format), ISBN or ISSN
  For example: Is digital different? How information creation, capture and discovery are being transformed, edited by Michael Moss, Barbara Endicott-Popovsky and Marc J. Dupuis, London, Facet Publishing, 2015, xvi + 217 pp., GBP £49.95 (paperback), ISBN 978 1 856048 54 5
• When referring to another publication italicise the title followed by the date of publication in round brackets.
• When quoting from the publication being reviewed use single quotation marks and note the page number of the quote in round brackets following the end of the quote.
• Your name and, where appropriate, that of your organisation should be at the end of the review.
• The editors will only accept reviews in electronic form, preferably emailed as attachments.
• The editors reserve the right to make changes to the review, although usually these will only consist of minor stylistic alterations. Editors will consult with reviewers before any significant alterations to a review are made.
• When a review copy of a publication is supplied to the reviewer, the copy becomes the property of the reviewer upon publication of the review.
• Persons who are approached to write a review for Archives and Manuscripts must make the Reviews Editor aware of any conflicts of interest that might be relevant to their writing of the review in question. The Reviews Editor is currently Dr Jessie Lymn journaleditor@archivists.org.au. 
  
  

Text and citation style guidelines

The journal uses Australian English spellings. These differ in minor ways from standard British or American English. For example, Australian English usage differs in the spelling of words such as realise (not realize) or organisation (not organization). Authors should refer to the Macquarie Dictionary if they are in doubt about the correct spelling in Australian usage.

The reference for the journal’s textual and citation style is derived from the Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers, sixth edition, published by John Wiley & Sons.

In particular, attention should be paid to the presentation of endnotes. The journal does not accept articles with footnotes, lists of references or author–date references.

Endnotes should be indicated in the main text of the article by superscript arabic numerals at the end of the relevant sentence or sub-clause in a sentence (after all punctuation marks).

The following are some samples of how publications should appear in the numbered endnotes at the end of an article:

1. Gary B Shelly, Web 2.0: concepts and applications, Course Technology, Boston, 2011, p. 56.
   
   The above is an example of a citation of a book by a single author, with a page reference to a specific page in the publication being cited.
    
2. Ann Pederson (ed.), Keeping Archives, Australian Society of Archivists Inc., Sydney, 1987.
   
   The above is an example of how to cite an edited publication when you are citing the publication as a whole.
   
   
3. Verne Harris, ‘Archons, Aliens and Angels: Power and Politics in the Archive’, in Jennie Hill (ed.), The Future of Archives and Recordkeeping: A Reader, Facet Publishing, London, 2011, pp. 103–21.
   
   The above is an example of how to cite a specific author's chapter within an edited publication, including the page span of that publication within the entire publication.
   
   
4. PJ Scott and G Finlay, ‘Archives and Administrative Change: Some Methods and Approaches (Part 1)’, Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 7, no. 3, August 1978, pp. 115–27.
   
   The above is an example of how to cite a co-authored article published in a journal including the page span of that publication within the journal.
   
   
5. National Archives of Australia, ‘AGLS Metadata Standard Part 1 – Reference Description’, 2010, available at , accessed 1 May 2015.
   
   The above is an example of how to cite a online publication published on the Internet.
   
   Subsequent references to the same source should be abbreviated, in preference to using the terms op. cit. or loc. cit., as in:
   
   
6. Scott and Finlay, p. 120.
   
   The above is referring back to publication first cited in endnote 4 where the publication was initially cited in full, but is specifying that the citation in this endnote specifically relates to page 120 of the publication being cited.
   
   The academic convention of ‘ibid’ and ‘ibid., p. 130.’ may be used where the second reference is immediately below the first. 'Ibid' on its own means exactly the same reference as the one in the previous endnote. ‘Ibid’ modified with a page number means the same reference as the one in the previous endnote except a different page.
   
   
7. ibid.
8. ibid., p. 130.
   
   A single superscript arabic numeral at the end of the relevant sentence or sub-clause in a sentence is used to indicate a specific endnote in the endnote section at the end of the article. Multiple citations can be bundled together under a single endnote number, for example:
   
   
9. Shelly, Web 2.0, p. 20; Paul D Jackson, Web 2.0 knowledge technologies and the enterprise: smarter, lighter, cheaper, Chandos, Oxford, 2010, p. 16; Steve Bailey, Managing the Crowd: Rethinking Records Management for the Web 2.0 World, Facet Publishing, London, 2008, p. 28.
   
   In the above example, the first citation refers to the publication by Shelly that was already cited at endnote 1 at the start of the sequence, therefore the publication appears with the author's surname only and a shortened title. The other two publications are each separated by semi-colons.

Substantial quotations (over 40 words) should be indented from the text without quotation marks. Shorter quotations within text should be indicated by single quotation marks. Abbreviations and acronyms should be expanded when first used.

Illustrations and figures

Please provide the highest quality figure and illustration format possible. Please be sure that all imported scanned material is scanned at the appropriate resolution: 1200 dpi for line art, 600 dpi for grayscale and 300 dpi for colour. 

Figures and illustrations must be provided as separate files. Please do not embed figures in the manuscript file.

Files should be saved as one of the following formats: TIFF (tagged image file format), PostScript or EPS (encapsulated PostScript), and should contain all the necessary font information and the source file of the application.

All figures must be numbered in the order in which they appear in the manuscript (for example, Figure 1, Figure 2). In multi-part figures, each part should be labelled (for example, Figure 1(a), Figure 1(b)).

Figure captions must be saved separately, as part of the file containing the complete text of the manuscript, and numbered correspondingly.

The filename for a graphic should be descriptive of the graphic, for example, Figure1, Figure2a.

Captions and source acknowledgements for all figures and illustrations should be included in the main text of your manuscript, beneath [bolded placemarkers in square brackets] indicating the filename of the figure or illustration and the preferred location for the figure or illustration, for example, [figure1].    

Using Third-Party Material in your Paper

You must obtain the necessary permission to reuse third-party material in your article. The use of short extracts of text and some other types of material is usually permitted, on a limited basis, for the purposes of criticism and review without securing formal permission. If you wish to include any material in your paper for which you do not hold copyright, and which is not covered by this informal agreement, you will need to obtain written permission from the copyright owner prior to submission.