Labour History, journal of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, is published in May and November each year. Some articles are available online prior to their appearance in print. The opinions of the contributors are their own and not necessarily those of the Editors or Editorial Board.
Intending contributors should read the Editorial Policy, the Notes for Contributors (below), and the Style Guide.
All submissions should be emailed to admin@labourhistory.org.au.
Notes for Contributors
Labour History publishes scholarly articles (6–8,000 words excluding footnotes) along with shorter documents, reports, and research notes. All scholarly articles are sent, without identifying the author, to at least two external referees.
Papers should not be submitted to Labour History if they have been published elsewhere or are under consideration by another journal. However, there are exceptions to this rule. For instance, a conference paper that has been published as part of a non-refereed stream may be considered for publication in Labour History. If you are not sure of your paper’s eligibility, please ask us.
An invitation to submit an article is NOT a guarantee of publication. All scholarly manuscripts are sent to two or more referees for blind refereeing. (Further information below.)
Ahead of Print: Authors whose papers have been accepted can choose to have them published online before their appearance in a print issue of the journal. As these papers are fully refereed, edited, proofread, and published, they are not “preprints.”
Green Open Access: Liverpool University Press permits Labour History authors to archive, in open access repositories, pre-publication versions of their papers, ie manuscripts that have been refereed, finalised, and accepted for publication (known as a “post-prints” or “author accepted manuscripts”). Click here for more information, including restrictions.
Guidelines for Initial Submission
- File type: Your manuscript should be a Word file.
- Length: Between 6,000 and 8,000 words excluding footnotes.
- Abstract: Begin your paper with an abstract of 150 words or less.
- Format: Keep formatting to a minimum. Use a single font and avoid style sheets. Simply put headings in bold.
- Anonymity: Manuscripts should not name the authors or provide other information that might identify them to the referees. The name, contact details, institutional affiliation, and brief biographical information of each author should be provided separately in the submission email.
- Language: Papers should be written in English with English translations of any quotations from another language.
- Figures & tables: Any graphic elements should be included in the manuscript. You may need to scale them down so that the total file size is not too large to email. (If we decide to publish your paper, we will ask for high-resolution versions of photographs etc to be sent separately.)
Our Process
All contributions are acknowledged on receipt. Selection of referees is made at monthly meetings of the Editorial Working Party.
Decisions about publication are taken by the Editor in the light of referees’ reports and advice from the Associate Editors. Authors are then advised of the decision and are usually sent copies of all reports.
Articles usually require some revision before being accepted. Sometimes, the required revisions are such that we send the revised manuscript back to referees.
When an article is accepted, the author will be given an indication of the issue in which it is likely to be published. The process from submission to notification takes approximately four months.
Revising Your Article
Please do your revisions within 12 months. If you take much longer, Labour History‘s editors may decide to treat your paper as a new submission. For revised manuscripts:
- Follow the same guidelines for submission given above.
- Please provide a separate document indicating how you have addressed the points raised by the referees and editors. For instance, if you have been asked for a new source, indicate which footnote now includes it. If you disagree with any suggestions made by referees or editors, please give your reasons.
- Don’t forget to revise your abstract.
Further Procedures
If your initial submission was provisionally accepted pending revisions, your revised manuscript will be assessed by Labour History’s editors. They will either request further revisions or offer to publish your paper essentially unchanged. This process may take a month or two.
However, many revised papers need to be assessed not only by Labour History’s editors but by referees. This can take three or four months.
If your paper is officially accepted, you will be given a likely publication date, and asked if you want your paper published online “Ahead of Print.” You will also be asked for high-quality versions of any graphics to accompany your article. Please ensure that you have checked copyright and obtained approval (where applicable) for their reproduction. There are some other things you will need to provide, eg keywords, author acknowledgements, and a brief biography.
The finalised paper will be sub-edited and formatted in-house before being sent to Liverpool University Press (LUP). After a few months, LUP will send you PDF proofs of your article to check along with a copyright form to sign.
Authors are sent a copy of the issue in which their article is published. Producing Labour History is a significant financial cost and administrative task. Contributors can show their support by becoming subscribers, enabling ASSLH and LUP to continue to promote and publish labour history research in Australia and abroad.