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Diagonal: An Ibero-American Music Review

Diagonal: An Ibero-American Music Review bannerUC Riverside

Submission Guidelines

  1. Diagonal welcomes submission of articles up to 8,000 words in length, including apparatus. Submissions exceeding this length will be considered at the discretion of the editor-in-chief. Articles significantly in excess of this length but nonetheless of high quality may be published in parts.
  2. Prospective contributors should submit one complete copy of their article to Walter A. Clark, Editor-in-Chief, at walter.clark@ucr.edu. The text of the submission should be uploaded as a single Word file (.doc or .docx). Tables and captions, and all examples, figures (continuous tone and line illustrations), and multimedia examples (e.g., video and sound files, as well as embedded hypertext) may be uploaded separately in their respective formats. Locations of all examples, tables, figures, and multimedia examples should be indicated by call-outs in the text. Text material should be presented double-spaced, with left and right margins of at least one inch, with only the left margin justified. Do not submit original artwork for review; submit copies. Original artwork may be requested upon acceptance for publication, in which case it must be of sufficient quality to permit direct reproduction. A style sheet will be provided for musical examples. For very large files, use Dropbox or some comparable method for submitting your materials.
  3. The article must include a short abstract of no more than 200 words.
  4. Authors must obtain in writing all permissions for the publication of material under copyright and submit a copy of the permissions file when the manuscript is first sent to the editor. Authors hold the editor-in-chief and the Center for Iberian and Latin American Music harmless against copyright claims.
  5. To allow for the anonymous outside review of submissions, the author’s name should appear only in the cover letter, which should also contain the full title of the submission and all relevant contact information. Authors should avoid identifying themselves in the document itself (title page, header, or notes) or in the file information.
  6. Submissions may use whatever stylistic conventions the author is familiar with. However, all articles accepted for publication will have to conform to the guidelines given in chapter 14 of The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2010). In particular, shortened references will be used in all article footnotes. (Reviews need full bibliographic citation the first time a work is cited in a footnote.) Authors whose work has been accepted for publication will receive a style sheet and be responsible for bringing their article into conformity with it. (Note: authors can opt for North American or European styles of punctuation around quotation marks and parentheses, but they should use them consistently.)
  7. Musical examples should be provided with underlaid texts and clear captions exactly as they are to appear in the article and should be based on the most authoritative sources available, properly cited in the captions. Examples should be submitted as graphic files (PDF, JPG). Continuous tone and line illustrations are called “figures” in Diagonal. Authors of accepted articles will be asked to submit all figures as high-resolution digital files (300 dpi for images; 1200 dpi for line drawings, including score facsimiles).
    Diagonal welcomes multimedia examples and audio-visual illustrative materials that take advantage of the online journal format. Audio recordings should be submitted in uncompressed WAV format, with a minimum sample rate of 44.1kHz (16 bit). Video examples will preferably be submitted in MOV (Apple Quicktime) format with pro res 422 (HQ) at full size (1920 x 1080), with a steady image and balanced stereo audio. Journal editors may accept other video and audio formats, at their discretion, if these recommendations cannot be met.
  8. All illustrations should be labeled and numbered consecutively. We use three labels: "Table," for tables, "Music Example," for musical example, and "Figure," for everything else, including photographs, maps, diagrams, line art, etc. Captions should be typed on a separate sheet. A callout, i.e., , should indicate clearly where in the text the illustration should go.
  9. Acknowledgments are to be presented in a separate paragraph, thusly labeled, at the end of the text, preceding endnotes. (See also Manuscript Processing, item 2.) Authors whose articles are accepted for publication are encouraged to include their email addresses in the Acknowledgements.
  10. Manuscripts submitted to Diagonal should not have been published elsewhere—including in electronic form, other than on personal web pages—nor should they simultaneously be under review or scheduled for publication in another journal or in a book. Further, if an author submits a paper to Diagonal that is based on material closely related to that in other published or submitted papers or books, the author should explain the relationships among them, in a cover letter to the editor.
  11. Endmatter. The endmatter should be ordered as follows: Appendices, Bibliography, Discography. The bibliography and discography contain only works cited in the article.
  12. A manuscript is read first by the editor, who determines if it is of sufficient interest to proceed further. If not, the editor notifies the author that this is the case. If the manuscript is of sufficient interest, it is sent to outside referees who send written evaluations and recommendations, sometimes with suggestions for revision, to the editor. The editor may reject the manuscript, delay a decision while encouraging revisions, or accept it substantially as is. Ordinarily, the editor will forward the referees’ evaluations (anonymously) along with their decisions. Authors of articles may suggest names of appropriate (and inappropriate) referees.
  13. The review process is generally completed within four months. Authors will be notified if there is a delay.
  14. Special issues. Diagonal is open to considering collections of essays by multiple authors devoted to a particular theme or topic. Proposals for such collections should be submitted to the editor-in-chief by the lead investigator and should consist of a two-page overview accompanied by a list of four to six authors. Proposals will be reviewed by the Editor and by members of the Editorial Board. Final submissions must then be approved by the Editorial Board prior to publication.
  15. Reviews: Diagonal reviews selected scholarly books on music as well as music editions of scholarly significance in each issue. Textbooks, periodicals, and editions of new music are are eligible for review, as are documentary films, recordings, analytical software, interactive websites, and databases that are direct products of music scholarship.
    Send copies of publications for review to: Jonathan Ritter, Review Editor; Department of Music; 900 University Ave; University of California; Riverside, CA 92521.
  16. All articles and reviews submitted to Diagonal should represent new work that has not been previously published in any format or is under consideration elsewhere.
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