Submissions

This page is designed to help you ensure your submission is ready for and fits the scope of the journal.

Before submitting, you should read over the guidelines here and register an account (or login if you have an existing account). After creating or accessing your account, check your profile and confirm that all details are accurate. If it has been a while since you logged in, please verify that this information is correct, particularly if you have changed institutions. Add your ORCID ID and other relevant information to the profile. The system will automatically extract author information from your profile for the published XML and PDF files.

All authors should have an account so they can be linked to the piece by publication date. The piece will be attached to the person submitting as "author" but more can be added (or removed) before acceptance. 

Open Screens is the open-access online journal of the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies. The scope of the journal is international and its vision is inter-disciplinary. It encourages innovative contributions from scholars of film, television and other screen-based media, publishing research articles, reviews and audio-visual research-by-film-practice.

In keeping with the mission of BAFTSS, contributions from both established and postgraduate scholars are considered, and contributors do not need to be members of the Association.

Open Screens ranges over the historical and the contemporary, and it aims to embrace film, television, screen and media studies, as well as screen-based research in related disciplines across the Humanities and beyond, such as area studies, gender studies and sexuality studies.

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 who do not adhere to these guidelines.

• The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
• Any third-party-owned materials used have been identified with appropriate credit lines, and permission has been obtained from the copyright holder for all formats of the journal.
• The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format. Please do not submit a PDF file. 
• All DOIs for the references have been provided, when available.
• Tables and figures are all cited in the text. Tables are included within the text document, whilst figure files are uploaded as supplementary files.
• Figures/images have a resolution of at least 150dpi (300dpi or above preferred). Each is no more than 20MB per file. The files are in one of the following formats: JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, EPS (to maximise quality, the original source file is preferred).
• The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which are found under the Submissions tab. Please ensure that your article includes a competing interest statement in accordance with our Competing Interest Guidelines.
• Every effort has been made to ensure that author names are removed from the manuscript. The following link provides information on ensuring an anonymous review.
• Please indicate in the 'Comments to the Editor' box below if this article is submitted to a forthcoming Special Issue and the type of article or piece you are submitting. If you are submitting to a General Issue, please write here a paragraph indicating what kind of piece it is (e.g. research article, videoessay, review, etc.) and summarising the main argument. Add here also your keywords to help the editors identify reviewers. If you are submitting a video, add also the link to the video and the password (if using).

1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. If you would prefer to publish your work under an alternative Creative Commons License, please indicate this in the Comments for the Editor box below, providing reasons for your request.
2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

All submissions are initially assessed by the Editor-in-Chief or a member of the Editorial team, who determines whether the article is suitable to proceed to peer review. If deemed appropriate, the submission is assigned to a member of the Editorial Board and at least one additional independent expert. These reviewers assess the article for clarity, validity, and methodological rigour.

The journal follows a double-anonymous peer review process, meaning that both authors and reviewers remain anonymous throughout. The review period typically takes between six and twelve weeks, although this may vary depending on reviewer availability. We aim to identify two independent experts in your subject area and allow reviewers 6–8 weeks to complete their assessments. Reviewers are encouraged to provide constructive feedback, even if the article is ultimately not recommended for publication.

The following licences are allowed:

• CC BY 4.0 - More Information  
  Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

If your institution is not currently supporting the platform, we request that you use our 'Recommend Us' tool. The OLH is extremely cost effective and is a not-for-profit charity. However, while we cannot function without financial support and we encourage universities to sign up, institutional commitment is not required to publish with us.

The journal currently operates on a rolling issue format. This means we do not wait to accumulate 6–8 articles before publishing an issue. Instead, we open an issue in January and publish articles as they become ready, continuing until the end of July. A new issue is then opened in September, with publication continuing until January.

We welcome proposals for Special Issues, which are published separately as and when they are ready. If you are interested in proposing a Special Issue, please contact the Editor for further information. You will typically need to provide the following:

A proposed title
A rationale for the issue
Names and affiliations of guest editors
The type of content you are seeking
Whether you already have contributors (if so, send bios and title of their contributions) or plan to issue a Call for Papers
A prospective timeline

The overall timeline from submission to publication is usually between 6 and 10 months. Conversations and reviews are internally reviewed and are usually ready in 4-12 weeks. If we are opening a new Issue, we might wait to have one research article or practice piece before publishing a review or conversation. Articles covering broader subject areas tend to be easier to place with reviewers, whereas more specialised topics may require additional time to identify suitable experts. This can affect how many reviewers we need to approach before securing one, as well as how many review requests they may be managing across journals in the field. A three-month review period is common when there is a wide pool of available reviewers. However, if reviewers initially accept and later decline after their deadline has passed, the process must be restarted. 

If the reviews recommend publication, you will receive the feedback and be given time to make any necessary revisions. This revision period typically ranges from 4 to 12 weeks, depending on the nature of the suggestions. Once your revised manuscript is resubmitted via your author area, the editorial team will review the changes and/or your response. This stage may take up to 4 weeks, depending on the time of year and the volume of submissions being managed.

If approved, your article will proceed to copyediting. During this stage, you may receive final queries or requests for clarification. Copyediting usually takes a couple of weeks, after which the manuscript is sent to the typesetters. The team at the Open Library of Humanities typically completes typesetting within 2 weeks. You will then receive proofs and any typesetter queries (e.g. formatting of headers or referencing inconsistencies). Once these are resolved, your article will be published and made immediately available.

Please note that Open Screens pauses during August. Submissions made during this period will not be processed until September. Submissions around UK holiday periods or bank holidays (e.g. the last week of December) may also be picked up a week later. All editors and reviewers are unpaid volunteers who undertake this work alongside full-time academic roles.

We encourage authors to consider the following practices to enhance accessibility. These recommendations are drawn from guidance provided by the British Dyslexia Association, APA Style, W3C standards, and university accessibility policies.

• Use Sans Serif fonts, as the letters appear less crowded and are easier to read. For example, use Arial, Calibri, or Tahoma.
• Use font size 12pt as standard for the body of text. Captions and footnotes can remain at 10pt. Headers can increase to 14-16pt.
• Avoid headers with all capitals.
• Use 1.5 line spacing for the body of text. Block quotes (standalone, whole paragraph indented, and over three lines) can be kept at 1pt, as they tend to appear sparingly.
• Use bold and increased size for section headers. You can use italics for smaller subsections, as they are not very common. If the italics make the letters appear overcrowded, increase the letter spacing for these headers only.
• Align text to the left only; do not justify margins.
• Set paragraph formatting to add 6pt space before and after paragraphs.
• Avoid very long paragraphs and break them where possible. A paragraph should explore one point or statement. If you have more than one key idea, try to split the paragraph.
• Avoid abbreviations and jargon, where possible. Always introduce and explain abbreviations, even if relatively common in your discipline, as these might not be easily understood by readers in other subject areas or countries. 
• Use “smart quotes” (the ones that bend towards the quote and open and close the quote itself) as opposed to "straight quotes" or "inch marks"). This will allow assistive software to read it correctly.
• Use single spaces everywhere. Do not use two spaces after a period because they produce an extra silent beat or are read as "space" by some assistive readers.
• Aim for 40-50 characters per line.
• Use plain, clear language.
• Use Oxford commas or serial commas, where possible. 
• If using tables, add headers for columns and rows.
• Avoid using images with text (e.g. tables included only as text), as these cannot be read by assistive software. 

If you are submitting a research article, please consider this structure. For those submitting their first article or less familiar with the structure of articles in screen studies and the humanities, we have included some guidance on what to include in each part, as a way to minimise requests for corrections in this area further down the line:

• Abstract: up to 250 words. The abstract should summarise in a concise manner the main argument, aims of the research, the research question(s), case studies, methodology (if applicable), the originality of the research or gap it is addressing, and its findings. References should not be necessary. 
• Keywords: (minimum 4, maximum 6)
• Introduction: Without being prescriptive, in an order that follows its own flow, and without the need for subheaders (unless sparingly and if desired), this section should outline the scope of the piece and explain its originality or the gap in scholarship it seeks to address, including how it contributes to advancing knowledge. The research question(s) that the article interrogates or explores should be clearly stated. A concise literature review should situate the topic within existing scholarship, and the piece should be positioned within the broader academic debates of the field. Where applicable, the introduction should describe the methodology used, justify the selection of case studies or examples, and explain the theoretical or conceptual frameworks chosen. Finally, it should offer a brief indication of what the article will cover and in what order, to help orient the reader.
• Main Body: Authors should use their own headers for this section, as appropriate to the structure and flow of their argument. Ideally, each paragraph should address a distinct point and contribute to the development of the overall argument. For longer sections, and to support readers who may be unfamiliar with the topic (such as students or those new to the area) we recommend including brief recaps, mini-conclusions, or partial findings at the end of these sections to aid comprehension and reinforce key ideas.
• Conclusion: The conclusion should reflect the aims set out in the introduction. While not intended as a checklist, we recommend that this section includes a summary of how the article addresses the research question(s), highlights the significance of the study, and outlines any potential applications or replicability, where relevant. It may also indicate how the research can inform future work, acknowledge any limitations, and offer a reminder of how the piece contributes to advancing knowledge within the field.
• Acknowledgements (optional): As this section could easily identify the author, please submit an anonymised manuscript version as well, if using.
• Competing Interests: If none, just indicate "The author has no competing interests to declare". If any, please submit an anonymised manuscript version as well.
• Ethics and consent (only if applicable): If a declaration needs to be made, this would possibly include a reference to the author's university, its ethics committee, the project number, and other related information. As all of these can identify the author, if using, please submit an anonymised manuscript version as well, indicating "The details for this section have been omitted for peer review".
• Reference List: Please note that the list should only include works cited in the text.

We encourage the use of stills and screenshots. Please refer to the usual UK copyright guidance and fair usage in this regard (e.g. for educational purposes and not more than 10% of the total). For film and television stills, make sure these are used as "quotes", i.e. they are referenced in the text as part of the discussion and are not merely there for decorative purposes, the screenshots have been made by you, and they are properly referenced and captioned (e.g. Film Title (DATE, Director). Short title representing the shot or scene. Optional timings [HH:MM:SS] or description such as Opening scene. ) Images that are reproduced in full, such as figures from other publications, photographs taken by others, film posters, or similar materials, must either be copyright-free or accompanied by permission for reproduction, which should be obtained by the author. Please note that we are an open-access journal, and published articles are freely available without registration. In the interest of preventing the journal from being censored or banned from educational settings and library access, we kindly request that you avoid including explicit or distressing images that might not be permitted in these contexts.