Submissions | Bibliographica

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

The text has not been previously published nor submitted for consideration to any other journal.
If the text is being submitted to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, a blinded version ensuring anonymous review has been prepared in addition to the original.
The file is in Word format, letter size, with 2.5 cm margins (top and bottom) and 3 cm margins (right and left), in Times New Roman 12 pts., and 1.5 line spacing.
The length meets the requirements: articles contain between 40,000 and 45,000 characters including spaces, and reviews between 8,000 and 12,000 characters including spaces.
All identification details have been included: author's full name, affiliation (up to three levels), city, state, country, email address, and ORCID.
The title is in both Spanish and English and does not exceed 80 characters including spaces each.
If it is an article, it includes a summary and an abstract in English, each with a maximum of 880 characters including spaces.
If it is a review, it includes the complete bibliographic reference of the reviewed book, including ISBN and page count.
It includes five keywords in Spanish and English, separated by semicolons.
References follow the Chicago-Deusto format, and footnotes include complete author names, titles, and imprint details, with the first mention fully developed and subsequent ones abbreviated. Direct quotes include the source and page number; long quotations are in a separate paragraph with a 1.25 cm left indentation. The reference list only includes sources cited in the footnotes, with full details and page ranges when applicable.
Figures (images, book covers, photographs, illustrations, etc.) are identified (e.g., Figure 1) and inserted in the document as a reference, with a callout in the main text (see Figure 1) and a caption including a brief description, credit, and source. All images have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi, original size (at least 5x5 cm), and are in JPG/TIFF format.
Graphic elements (tables, charts, diagrams, graphs, etc.) are identified (e.g., Table 1), with a callout in the main text (see Table 1), and include a title and caption specifying credit and source. All editable files (not images) are available, with a maximum of three shades for black-and-white printing.

Author Guidelines

All contributions must constitute an original work (strictly unpublished), and may not be submitted to any other journal while they are under consideration in Bibliographica. Manuscripts should be presented in electronic form as a Microsoft Word file, Letter sheet size (21.5 x 28 cm), with 2.5 cm upper and inferior margins and 3 cm on the sides, 12 points Times New Roman font, and should be 1.5 lines spaced. The length of papers or articles should be within 20 and 25 pages, including notes, tables, figures, citations and references. Book reviews should be within 5 to 8 pages long, and the book’s publication date must not exceed 3 years by the time the review is issued.

All papers should have a title with an extent of no more than 80 characters, and include an abstract in Spanish and English with the following information: subject, main objectives, original contribution to the field, relevance and conclusions. It must not exceed 800 characters total and should also include up to 5 keywords in both languages.

Provide a cover letter with the following information: Author / Institution / Agency or Department / University, Faculty or School, Department / City, State, Country / Institutional or professional e-mail / ORCID.

If you don’t have an ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID), you can request it when you send your contribution through Open Journal Systems, in the link found after the e-mail field.

Please organize the articles’ general outline as follows:

Introduction: Defines the object of study and describes the addressed problem, as well as the analysis methodology.
Development: Central parts that analyze the object of study; in its frame, authors can use the subdivisions and subtitles that they consider appropriate.
Conclusions: Specify the investigation results and highlight the article’s original contributions, as well as the new lines of research that it opens.
References: Alphabetical list of the consulted and cited works, including their DOI and URL.

Book reviews must include a brief title (in quotation marks, and different to the book reviewed) in Spanish and English, as well as 5 keywords in both languages.

All articles will be subject twice to double-blind peer review, therefore all direct and indirect references to the author in the manuscript should be removed. (This includes identifying references which appear unbeknownst to many authors in the document’s “Properties” section, which is found under “File” in MS Word). Example for references and footnotes: [reference deleted for peer review]

Please send your corrections in a single file (the same file you will be sent along with the blind peer reviews), and marked with Track Changes in Word.

Tables and figures (photographs, drawings, paintings and all graphic material) should be saved in a separate folder and titled individually in the exact manner as they appeared inside the text, as follow: /Table X/ or /Image X/ (numbered sequentially). Captions with a brief description of the graphic (no more than 3 lines) must be included in a separate text file. All images must be scanned in 300 DPI, in original size (without modifications), considering a minimal size of 5 x 5 cm (2 x 2 inches). Tables and charts must contain no color, in Word editable files. Graphs must have a maximum of 3 tones, so the grayscales can be differentiated. Please do not use Internet downloaded images or digitized ones from other books; original sources are preferable.

All images should be properly listed and have a clear indication of the source and owner of the copyright (credits, photographer, institution, archive, etc). If the author is not the copyright owner nor has explicit permission to publish the images, he must sign and submit a full responsibility letter, to exempt the Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliográficas (IIB) of any type of liability or damage that may be caused by their use.

Style Guidelines

Excluding the initial one, all paragraphs should start with a first-line indentation (1.25 cm) and no line should separate them.

Italics will be used exclusively for foreign words (unless inside quotation marks, which should be double); do not use them for emphasis. Use bolds only to denote title and subtitle hierarchies. If you wish to emphasize a word, simply underline it with the same font color.

Initials and centuries should appear in caps (UN, UCLA, IBM; XVIII, XIX), avoiding the use of small caps in all cases; acronyms will be capitalized or mixed case (Aids, Gestapo, Moma). Scientific and technical words or terms, and shortened words, such as initials and acronyms, should be spelt out in full the first time they appear on the manuscript. We recommend avoiding abbreviations.

In-text citation and quotes should always be within double quotation marks. If they exceed either 5 lines or 600 characters, they should be set apart in a single paragraph, indented as a block (1.25 cm) and without quotation marks.

The IIB adopted the official Spanish version of The Chicago Manual of Style (Manual de estilo Chicago Deusto).

See examples in http://www.deusto-publicaciones.es/deusto/pdfs/otraspub/otraspub07.pdf.

Consult English edition here http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html.

All in-text citations should always be referenced on a footnote; please, do not use parenthesis to do so. In addition, include a list of references at the end of the article, where all bibliographic and archive materials should appear, alphabetically arranged by the author’s last name and with hanging indentation (1.25 cm). It is the author’s responsibility to ensure all citations and quotes match the aforementioned reference list. All references must be presented according to Chicago’s “Notes and bibliography” source citation system.

Please include the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) of the consulted references.

The Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliográficas gives priority to the correct and complete registration of the list of references or sources consulted and cited.

Section Policies

Editorial

Bibliographica’s Editorial, as a journal specialized in documental heritage and written culture, is a space where the editorial director and the number coordinator(s) present methodically and rigorously the graphic identity of each issue’s cover and banner, based on works preserved in the Biblioteca Nacional de México’s collections.

Bibliographia

Bibliographia is a section devoted to peer-reviewed research articles that explore topics related to the history, production, and study of the manuscript and printed book, from diverse angles that allow their analysis, as well as those linked to source-based studies, the editorial world and the newspapers from a synchronic and diachronic perspective. It also includes research articles about bibliography and periodicals (from a historic, present and future perspective), book studies and the preservation in both analogical and digital formats.

Indexed material.
Peer-reviewed.

Instrumenta

Instrumenta favors state of the art peer-reviewed research articles on technological and methodological breakthroughs in the study of manuscripts and printed books, from various disciplines, in synchronic or diachronic perspectives.

Indexed material.
Peer-reviewed.

Bibliothecae

Bibliothecae features peer-reviewed research articles focused on the analysis of matters related to the diffusion, organization, and management of libraries, as well as the presentation of important collections, whether private or public, of heritage libraries.

Indexed material.
Peer-reviewed.

Monographia

Monographia welcomes peer-reviewed research articles on a specific investigation topic (related to written culture and documental heritage).

The research articles are compiled by the current issue’s coordinator or by a section’s coordinator through invitation.

Invitation only.
Indexed material.
Peer-reviewed.

Book Reviews

This section publishes book reviews of current works pertaining to the topics of Bibliographica.

The reviews are gathered by invitation. However, reviews that meet the journal guidelines are also welcome.
Indexed.
The reviewed books’ publication date must not exceed 2 years at the time the review is issued.
The reviews must have its own title, different from the reviewed book.
Please provide at least 5 keywords in Spanish and English.

Copyright Notice

Authors who publish in Bibliographica automatically accept the following terms:

a. Authors will keep their authorship rights and will guarantee the journal the first time publication rights of their submitted work, which will be liable to a Creative Commons license that will allow third parties to share their work as long as they give appropriate credit to the author and the first publication is attributed to Bibliographica, it is not used for commercial purposes and modified material is not distributed in case of remix, transformation or recreation.

b. Authors can adopt other non-exclusive distribution license agreements of the published version of the work (for example: deposit it in an institutional telematic archive or publish it in a monographic volume) as long as the first publication is attributed to Bibliographica.

c. Authors are encouraged to self-archive their work (for example: in institutional telematic archives or their website), for this can promote interesting exchanges and increase the citation impact of the published work. (See The effect of open access).

Privacy Statement

Names, e-mail addresses and other personal information provided to Bibliographica will be exclusively used for the purposes intended in the journal and will not be disclosed to a third party nor used in any other way.