Instructions to Authors

About the journal

Aims and scope

The Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies publishes world-wide research in the whole range of Classical Studies. Recent articles include art history, archaeology, ancient history, military history, and a range of social and economic studies. Studies of language have included the original deciphering of Linear B, and continues with new textual discoveries in papyri. Research in Greek theatre and performance now has the added dimension given by reception studies. As well as established international scholars, BICS has always sought contributions by younger scholars. BICS is published annually in three issues, and provides essential reading for the Classics community world-wide.

General Submissions

Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies considers all manuscripts that are at least c.5,000 words in length and which drive forward debate in all areas of Classics on the condition that:

• the manuscript is your own original work and does not duplicate any other previously published work, including your own work.
• the manuscript has been submitted only to Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. It should not be under consideration or peer review or accepted for publication or published elsewhere.
• the manuscript contains nothing that is abusive, defamatory, libellous, obscene, fraudulent, or illegal.

To discuss the suitability of your article before submission, please email Susan Deacy ([email protected]).

All manuscripts are now submitted and reviewed via the journal’s web-based manuscript submission system, ScholarOne Manuscripts. To submit to the journal go to the link. New authors should create an account prior to submitting a manuscript for consideration. Technical queries regarding submitting to the journal should be sent to Amaan Hyder at [email protected].

More information about using ScholarOne Manuscripts 

Authors may submit articles for initial review without adhering strictly to BICS editorial conventions. However, it is a condition of acceptance for publication that final submissions are formatted according to the guidelines. 
Our guidelines for the preparation of copy are based on the MHRA Handbook. There are a few differences: in those cases, these notes take precedence.

Developing a themed issue

The subject matter of a themed issue may relate to any area of classical studies broadly defined.

Guest Editors have the freedom to develop their issues as they wish. A themed issue might comprise entirely freshly commissioned papers, for example or it might derive from a research workshop or seminar series which has already taken place, publishing selected and revised papers from those occasions. Alternatively, it might represent a mix of papers which have already been presented, and others that are specially for the issue.

Conferences and seminars often generate excellent material for issues, but BICS issues are not conference proceedings as such. Where an issue has been developed from a conference or seminar series, it will be essential to explain to us how the material has been or will be developed for publication, why certain papers have been included or excluded, and how coherence for the themed issue has been achieved. Prospective Guest Editors should note that we have made a strategic publishing decision not to publish conference proceedings as such.

Each issue should be a high-quality contribution to a thriving, specialist field of research. As a part of a serial, it should also be a publication of sufficient breadth that it will offer interest to classicists who are not specialists in that field.

Proposals
Please take into consideration that the journal currently has special issues in the pipeline: should your special issue be accepted, it will not be published for at least two years. In the proposal, prospective Guest Editors are asked to specify the following: 

• The subject area and working title of your proposed issue.
• Publishing rationale: why this topic deserves publication at this time, with an overview of the relation of your proposed treatment of the theme to other relevant work in the field.
• Contents: a list of articles to be included in the volume, and their authors, with an indication of whether each has already been approached and/or agreed to contribute and whether a first draft of each paper has been completed. For those papers not yet written, please indicate the likely date of completion of first draft. Editors should further specify how they will bring unity and coherence to the issue, and how they expect to solicit, support, and shape individual contributions. If the content is derived from a conference or seminar series, please make very clear how the material will be developed for publication; why certain papers have been included; and please identify any papers that have been freshly commissioned for publication. Please include an abstract/summary for every article.
• Estimated length: generally a complete issue is no less than c. 70,000 words; papers in BICS tend to be c. 8000 words, while contributions of over 15,000 words are rarely accepted. 
• The make-up of the editorial team, including level of editorial experience.
• Schedule: An indication of when the special issue will be ready for peer review. 

Guest editors should also take note of the following journal processes: 

Peer review will be conducted through the journal’s peer review management system Scholar One. Guest issue editors will be expected to engage fully with Scholar One and will be involved in the reviewing process through finding reviewers, reading reports and making decisions on articles. 

As the journal now operates Advance Access articles (whereby articles are published online before they are published in an issue), we aim to publish articles online a year to six months before the official publication date. 

The journal looks to publish on time so guest editors must follow deadlines set out by the journal. 

Authors must clear permission themselves for any images they wish to use in their article. No one at the journal nor at Oxford University Press, can clear permissions on behalf on an author. If permission for an image cannot be cleared, then the image should not be used. 

Please send your proposal to the Editor in Chief, Susan Deacy ([email protected]). 

Please be aware that a themed/special issue for the Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies is distinct from a BICS Supplement. BICS Supplements are not published by the journal, but are published by the University of London Press. Any queries relating to BICS Supplements should be directed to University of London Press publishers- please see the website of UoL Press.

Peer Review 

Before peer review, submissions will be reviewed by the editor who evaluate the suitability of the article for BICS. Those deemed suitable will go on to be peer reviewed. We operate double anonymous peer review and invite 2 reviewers to review each article.

You will be asked to upload a title page file and main article file to the submission system:

Title page file: title and author name

Main article file: title, abstract, essay, abbreviations, bibliography, 

Please ensure no identifying information is included in the main article file. Further information on preparing your files is included further down this page.
 

Ethical policies

Authors should observe high standards with respect to publication best practice. Falsification or fabrication of data, plagiarism, including duplicate publication of the authors’ own work without proper citation, and misappropriation of work are all unacceptable practices. Any cases of ethical or publication malpractice are treated very seriously and will be managed in accordance with the Commission on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines. Further information about OUP’s ethical policies.

Third-party permissions

In order to reproduce any third party material, including tables, figures, or images, in an article authors must obtain permission from the copyright holder and be compliant with any requirements the copyright holder may have pertaining to this reuse. When seeking to reproduce any kind of third party material authors should request the following:

• non-exclusive rights to reproduce the material in the specified article and journal;

• print and electronic rights, preferably for use in any form or medium;

• the right to use the material for the life of the work; and

• world-wide English-language rights.

It is particularly important to clear permission for use in both the print and online versions of the journal, and we are not able to accept permissions which carry a time limit because we retain journal articles as part of our online journal archive. Further guidelines are available on clearing permissions.

Please ensure to upload any permission documentation with your submission.

We will not ask you to seek permission until your article has been accepted.

Self-archiving policy

The journal’s self-archiving policy.

Author Toll Free Link and Discounts

All corresponding authors will be provided with a free access link to their article upon publication.  The link will be sent via email to the article’s corresponding author who is free to share the link with any co-authors.  Please see OUP’s Author Self-Archiving policy for more information regarding how this link may be publicly shared depending on the type of license under which the article has published.  

All authors have the option to purchase up to 10 print copies of the issue in which they publish at a 50% discount. Orders should be placed through this order form. Orders must be made within 12 months of the online publication date.

Permissions regarding re-use of OUP material

Guidelines on permissions for the reuse of OUP material can be found on the Rights & Permissions page.

Funder policies

See the Complying with Funder Policies page for information about compliance with funder requirements.

Production process

For BICS, manuscripts arrive at OUP and go through the production process until final versions are ready to publish. These are then published on our Advance Access page. They will remain on the page up until the issue that they are assigned to is published.

Authors will receive a link to the PDF proof of their manuscript on our online system by email, and it is essential that a current email address is supplied with all manuscripts. Proofing instructions will accompany the PDF file but the proof should be checked immediately upon receipt and uploaded in accordance with covering instructions. Only essential corrections should be made at the proof stage.

After manuscript acceptance, the corresponding authors receive via email a unique URL that gives access, free of charge, to the electronic version of their published paper.

Layout

• Font: All text (main text and footnotes) should appear in Times New Roman. Main text should be 12 point and footnotes 10 point.

• Article titles and subheadings: Capitalize only first words and words which would be capitalized in the text (e.g. proper nouns). Do not use periods at the end of headings.

• Subheadings should be italicized.

• Author’s details: After the article title, leave a one-line space and provide the author’s name(s). The affiliation(s) of author(s) should appear at the end of the article.

• Abstracts: An abstract of c. 100-150 words.

• Paragraphs: The first paragraph of the text, and all paragraphs following sub-headings should be flush left. All other paragraphs should be indented by one TAB. (There should be no spare lines between paragraphs; new paragraphs are indicated simply by the TAB.)

• Sentences: Sentences are followed by a period and one space (not a double space).

• Footnotes: The footnote number should be flush left (not indented); there should then be a single space (not a TAB) before the text of the note begins.

• Layout of quotations:

  • Short quotations (of up to c. 2.5 lines) are set in the text, within single quotation marks (while quotations within those are set inside double quotation marks). They are not italicized.

  • Longer quotations, and poetic quotations, are indented after a double return. They do not need quotation marks. They are not italicized.

  • After an indented quotation, text should continue flush left if the paragraph continues. If a new paragraph begins after an indented quotation, please indent by one TAB in the usual way.

  • A citation reference should be given after a quotation, either in brackets in the text (in which case there should be a period within the brackets), or in a footnote.

  • If the quotation is in a foreign language, a translation must be given: it may appear either in a footnote or following the quotation itself.

  • Omissions: The omission of a portion of text should be indicated by an ellipsis enclosed within square brackets: […].

• Italics are used for non-English words which are not quotations (e.g., ‘research on oppida’; ‘it is a tour de force’; ‘in the archaic polis’). Greek words which are transliterated and used in this way are italicized, as shown; words which appear in Greek font are never italicized, however.

• Bulleted and numbered lists: In brief lists, each point should end in a semi-colon; in longer lists, use a period.

Preparation of copy

i.    Use of English
 

Please ensure English grammar is of a good quality and the overall article reads well. Submissions need to be written in good academic English to be accepted for publication. Oxford University Press only conduct a basic level of copy-editing once articles are sent to production.

ii.    References

Please use footnotes to reference your article and provide a bibliography at the end of your article.

Footnotes
 

When citing references in the footnotes follow this style:

This concept has now been developed in several ways.⁴ 

Your footnote will then simply read:

Chaniotis 2013a: 217.

A longer footnote with several references might read, for example:

See further Bowie 1978: 1690–99; Hintikka 1967: 10–14; Hochschild 2012: 150–58.

[I.e., use a colon and a space before page numbers, as shown, rather than parentheses or a comma.]

Bibliography
 

Punctuation and formatting in this system follows these examples:

Bowie, E. L. 1978: ‘Apollonius of Tyana: tradition and reality’, ANRW 2.16.2, 1652–99. 

Breschi, S., and F. Malebra (eds) 2006: Clusters, Networks, and Innovation, Oxford. Chaniotis, A. 2013a: ‘Paradoxon, enargeia, empathy: Hellenistic decrees and Hellenistic oratory’, in C. Kremmydas and K. Tempest (eds), Hellenistic Oratory: Continuity and Change, Oxford, 201–18.

—— 2013b: ‘Affective epigraphy: emotions in public inscriptions in the Hellenistic period’, Mediterraneo Antico, 16.2, 745–60.

Hintikka, J. 1967: ‘Time, truth, and knowledge in ancient Greek philosophy’, American Philosophical Quarterly 4, 1–14.

Hochschild, A. R. 2012: The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (3rd edn), California.

Johnson, S. (ed.) 2012: The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, Oxford.

Jong, I. J. F. de. 1991: Narrative in Drama: The Art of the Euripidean Messenger-Speech, Mnemosyne Supplementum 116, Leiden.

Merlan, P. 1967: ‘Greek philosophy from Plato to Plotinus’, in A. H. Armstrong (ed.), The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, Cambridge, 11–38.
Rémy, B. 1998: Dioclétien et la tétrarchie, Paris.

Schmitt, T. 2012: ‘Des Kaisers Inszenierung. Mythologie und neronische Christenverfolgung’, Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 16, 487–515. Woolf, G. 2012: Rome: An Empire’s Story, Oxford.
 

iii.    Abbreviations

 

Abbreviations should follow L’Année Philologique.

The following should be abbreviated in the given forms:

In abbreviated forms such as e.g., i.e., etc., the form should be:

e.g.        etc.        i.e.         c.            vol.       vols      edn       fig.        figs

that is, italicized where derived from a non-English word or words, and with a period where the last letter of the abbreviated form does not coincide with the last letter of the full form (thus e.g. ‘vol.’ but ‘vols’). (Note however the exception ‘no.’ which has the plural ‘nos.’.)

• Don’t punctuate standard letter groups or commonly used abbreviated forms: thus e.g.: NB, _{BC, AD.}

• For personal initials, please use both periods and spaces, e.g. J. E. Varey (and not J.E. Varey).

iv.    Other points of style

 

a) Spelling and usage

For spelling, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is the guide. If you are using this online, make sure you are looking at ‘British and World English’ (rather than American English, for example).

This means that ‘z’ rather than ‘s’ spellings are preferred.

• Where the head word in the OED is ‘-ize’, (and the ‘-ise’ spelling is listed as a possible variant), we use the ‘z’ spelling. (Thus e.g.: civilize; realize; prioritize; emphasize; recognize; characterize; summarize; dramatize; memorialize; criticize; classicize.)

• There is a list of some of the few words which are always ‘-ise’ in the MHRA Handbook on p. 20, (including: advertise; comprise); these appear in the OED as the head word.

Hyphenation: Our general rules are: (1) to use hyphens only when they serve a specific purpose, and (2) to avoid the proliferation of hyphens. (See further MHRA Handbook p. 21f.)

• Forms which are attributive are usually hyphenated, e.g. ‘in fifth-century Athens’; ‘there was a slow-motion regime change’; ‘a well-known fact’.

• Predicative forms are not hyphenated, e.g. ‘in the fifth century’; ‘the text is well known’.

• However, to avoid a proliferation of hyphens, ‘a late fifth-century cliché’ is preferred to ‘a late-fifth-century cliché’, for example.

• NB: ‘mid’ (unlike ‘late’ and ‘early’) always has a hyphen, e.g. ‘a mid-classical trope’.

• Adverbs ending in –ly and other polysyllabic adverbs are not hyphenated to a following adjective or participle.

  • Thus e.g.: ‘A highly contentious argument’; ‘this text may be studied alongside the better known canon’; ‘ever widening sections’.

• Hyphens occasionally occur within words, esp. when re- is followed by e, (e.g. re-enter) and also in other words, e.g. co-author. However, generally hyphens are avoided. Please refer to the OED.

b) Punctuation

• We use the ‘Oxford’ comma for lists of more than two items, e.g.: ‘green, white, and violet’ (not ‘green, white and violet’).

• Periods should be followed by a single space (not a double space).

• Superscript numbers appearing in the text to indicate a footnote should appear after punctuation, for example:

  • text text text.⁴  or          text text text;⁴ (and not text text text.⁴)

• Letters bearing accents should still bear them when capitalized, e.g. ‘À la recherche…’.

• Single or short groups of non-English words should be in italics.

  Where classical words are used a great deal, almost as if they were English, a decision will need to be taken which suits the article, issue, or book as a whole, as to whether to italicize all instances. Authors are asked to decide what makes most sense to them for their paper; issue editors might wish to make some adjustments at a later stage. (For example, italicizing all instances of polis could lead to an unnecessary proliferation of italics in some publications.)

• Dashes and hyphens:

  • The short dash (‘en dash’ or ‘en rule’) is used to indicate a span or a differentiation, and may be thought of as a substitute for ‘to’ or ‘and’, e.g. ‘the England – France match’, ‘21–22’ (e.g. in page references).

  • (In contrast, hyphens are used for compound adjectives.)

  • The ‘em dash’ — a long dash — is used in pairs to denote a break in the sentence.

c) Capitalization in English should be minimal. Beyond this, we refer to the OED and the MHRA handbook.

Please note:

• quattrocento (and trecento, etc.) are lower case in the OED (and not italicized).

• ‘Renaissance’, ‘Middle Ages’, ‘Roman Republic’, ‘French Revolution’, and ‘Enlightenment’ are upper case in OED and the MHRA Handbook.

• Adjectives stemming even from capitalized nouns are generally lower case – hence e.g. ‘republican’, ‘papal’, ‘ducal’, etc.

• ‘classical’ is generally lower case, and this is the preferred usage for BICS.

• Capitals are used for titles and dignities when these appear in full or immediately preceding a personal name, or when they are used specifically.

• References to a chapter, or to ‘chapter 2’ or ‘ch. 2’, in a book should be in lower case.

d) Numbers

• Inclusive numbers should be given as follows: 11–14; 21–24; 102–06; 121–24; 1021–24; 1976–79 (i.e., give the last two figures, even when the first is a ‘0’).

• Numbers up to one hundred should be written in words.

• Hyphenate two words which represent a two-figured number, e.g. ‘twenty-four’.

• In references to centuries, the ordinal should be spelled out: ‘eighth century’ (not ‘8th century’).

• In references to decades, an s without an apostrophe should be used: e.g., ‘the 1260s’.

• Both ‘the 1500s’ and ‘the sixteenth century’ are acceptable forms.

• _{BC, AD, BCE, CE} should appear in small caps.

Images

For your initial submission, images can be submitted at the end of the article file. If your article is accepted you will need to upload image files separately and adhere to the following requirements.

Artwork (photographs, graphs, tables, illustrations, etc.) must be submitted in camera-ready form (i.e., requiring no processing other than change of size). Images should be submitted as 300-600dpi. Filenames should include the figure number used for the figure in the article, so that the file can easily be related to the text. The text itself should have indicated clearly where figures should be inserted.

Please submit a document accompanying figures, stating relevant details about the copyright of the images and whether you have acquired permission for reproduction (for example, at what size the image may be reproduced, and whether in colour or black and white).

Your accompanying document should also list the captions for figures, following this example:

• Figure 1. Piero della Francesca, Federico da Montefeltro, c. 1472–74. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Photo credit: Alfredo dagli Orti / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.

Figure accessibility and alt text

Incorporating alt text (alternative text) when submitting your paper helps to foster inclusivity and accessibility. Good alt text ensures that individuals with visual impairments or those using screen readers can comprehend the content and context of your figures. The aim of alt text is to provide concise and informative descriptions of your figure so that all readers have access to the same level of information and understanding, and that all can engage with and benefit from the visual elements integral to scholarly content. Including alt text demonstrates a commitment to accessibility and enhances the overall impact and reach of your work.  

Alt text is applicable to all images, figures, illustrations, and photographs. 

Alt text is only accessible via e-reader and so it won’t appear as part of the typeset article. 

Detailed guidance on how to draft and submit alt text. 

Charges

BICS offers the option of publishing under either a standard licence or an open access licence. Please note that some funders require open access publication as a condition of funding. If you are unsure whether you are required to publish open access, please do clarify any such requirements with your funder or institution.

Should you wish to publish your article open access, you should select your choice of open access licence in our online system after your article has been accepted for publication. You will need to pay an open access charge to publish under an open access licence.

Details of the open access licences and open access charges.

OUP has a growing number of Read and Publish agreements with institutions and consortia which provide funding for open access publishing. This means authors from participating institutions can publish open access, and the institution may pay the charge. Find out if your institution is participating.

Page charges and colour figures

No page or colour charges are levied on authors or their institutions.