Preparing your materials

Modern American History features scholarly articles on the history of the United States since the 1890s. It welcomes work from scholars representing every sub-discipline of this expansive field, and showcases in particular research that straddles the methods of more than one subfield or otherwise bridges traditional divides.

The journal also publishes substantial review essays, forums, and other special features. See below for more information.

1. Article types

Modern American History welcomes the submission of original research articles of between 11,000 and 14,000 words, including footnotes.

For scholars interested in joining wide-ranging conversations about the recent past, MAH also offers a lively “below the fold” section with special features and innovative content.

Historians are not always able to fit all of their insights and findings into their books and research articles. MAH therefore provides a place to share that extra creativity and passion.

In most of its issues, MAH features the following:

Forum

A collection of big picture essays (typically four of 2,000-2,500 words apiece) on a key question or problem in modern American history.

The Soapbox

A provocative think piece that makes a clear intervention or otherwise articulates an original vision for the field of modern American history. When scholars have something opinionated to say that falls outside the conventions of the primary source-driven research article, this feature provides a place to do so. Soapbox essays vary in length.

Q&A

Employing an interview format, Q&A has three rotating formats. “The Debate Table” centers on a lively discussion between two scholars about an important concept or problem. “The Writer’s Studio” features a conversation with a single author about the craft of researching and writing. “The Visitors’ Corner” hosts individuals sharing news and insights from other fields or disciplines.

Take Three

Three scholars with different kinds of expertise offer close analysis (2,000 words apiece) of the same source, event, or artifact of modern American life. By pausing over an important detail from the recent past, and setting three different takes next to each other, this feature draws attention to the nature of interpretation and to methodological choices.

Into the Stacks

Devoted to thinking about books, this essay (2,000 words) goes beyond the basic book review in order to address key historiographical trends and questions. More information about Into the Stacks can be found here.

MAH welcomes proposals for forums or other special features. Please send summaries of no more than 250 words to mah@cambridge.org.

Information on how to submit can be found here.

2. Formatting

Your manuscript should follow the full set of MAH text conventions when submitted, including:

Written in English.
Double spaced throughout. Footnotes may be single spaced.
A total word count of between 11,000 and 14,000 words. This includes footnotes.
Written in a 12 point serif font, such as Times New Roman.
Paginated with a one inch margin.
Uses embedded footnotes with Arabic numerals. No parenthetical citations.
Includes a 4-7 page introductory section that introduces the topic, puts forward the overarching arguments, and makes clear the contributions to existing scholarship. Authors are referred to published articles in MAH for models of the requested introductory architecture.
Divided into sections where necessary. Section titles are optional.
Fully anonymized for peer review

The journal’s style sheet can be found here.

3. Writing a Compelling Abstract

An abstract is an important tool for you to generate interest in your work. It engages readers to learn more about your article by distilling its essence. In this way, it is a useful sifting mechanism. At the same time, the process of writing an abstract helps you to hone your theses. Not only does an abstract prepare your audience to follow an argument, but it also helps readers remember your key points. Additionally, be aware that search engines use abstracts to index articles through keywords. Peer reviewers also look to the abstract for information on whether to accept an assignment to review the associated article.

Below are best practices for writing a compelling abstract. At MAH, it is our hope that you will follow these guidelines to improve viewer traffic to your research.

High-Level Suggestions

Make it brief: typically 100-200 words (c. 5-7 sentences).
Give an overview of the project as a standalone summary.
Consider writing the abstract after you have finished your paper.
Answer these questions:
- Why is your topic important (i.e., what is the rationale or the exigency)? Why does it matter?
- What are your research questions or goals?
  - Here you might provide your research and/or analytical methods.
- What are your main findings / results / arguments?
- What is your contribution to the field?
  - How does your paper fit into the historiography? Provide light context.
Avoid:
- Wordiness (write only what is necessary).
- Excessive prepositional phrasing.
- Passive voice, contractions, citations.
- Extraneous jargon and over-the-top phrasing.
- Repetition of claims and posing multiple questions to the reader.
- Gradiosity (place your topic specifically within the historiography).

4. Figures and tables

MAH encourages the inclusion of images. If you have images to include, please follow these preliminary steps: 1) There should be an in-text citation for each image at the end of the most relevant sentence, 2) Place the image caption (description + citation) between paragraphs approximately where you’d like it to fall in the piece, and 3) upload your images separately in .tiff or .jpeg format as a “Figure (for per review).” Please consult this example file to understand the process from start to finish. For full details of preferred file specifications and minimum quality thresholds, please refer to the CUP Journal Artwork Guide.

5. Datasets, supplementary material, and multimedia files

Authors submitting articles based on quantitative empirical data are encouraged to make their datasets available to support future research and allow for data replication. These files will be archived by Cambridge University Press and made available online alongside the published article.

Authors are also encouraged to publish other forms of multimedia supplementary material online wherever it serves to enhance the argument or otherwise enrich an article. This could include, but will not necessarily be limited to, large images, videos, and audio files. A full set of file specifications and instructions concerning supplementary material of this kind can be found here.

Supplementary files should be delivered to the editorial office together with the original submission so that they can be considered as part of the peer review process.

6. Third-party copyright and permissions

Authors are responsible for obtaining and paying for permission from copyright holders to reproduce any third party materials, including illustrations, tables, figures, or lengthy quotations used in the main article or any accompanying supplementary material. A copy of the paperwork granting permission will be required should the contribution be accepted. Please note that Modern American History is distributed globally both in print and online; permission must be gained for international, perpetual, digital re-use as well as for print publication.

7. Open access

Starting with volume 7, Modern American History is a fully open access publication. Full details can be found here.

8. Competing interests declaration

Authors should include a competing interests declaration at the end of their manuscripts. However, if a declaration contains identifiable information, authors should email their declaration to the relevant editor instead of including it within their manuscript – to preserve the anonymity of their manuscript. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and may be published in the article.

Competing interests are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the content or publication of an author’s work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations.

If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting must include competing interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors. Example wording for a declaration is as follows: “Competing interests: Author A is employed at company B. Author C owns shares in company D, is on the Board of company E and is a member of organisation F. Author G has received grants from company H.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none”.

9. ORCID

Modern American History now requires that all corresponding authors identify themselves using their ORCID iD when submitting a manuscript to the journal. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript submission and grant applications, provides the following benefits:

Discoverability: ORCID increases the discoverability of your publications, by enabling smarter publisher systems and by helping readers to reliably find work that you’ve authored.
Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your iD or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID record, and will enable you to share this information with other systems and platforms you use, saving you re-keying information multiple times.
Keeping track: Your ORCID record is a neat place to store and (if you choose) share validated information about your research activities and affiliations.

If you don’t already have an iD, you’ll need to create one if you decide to submit a manuscript to Modern American History. You can register for one directly from your user account on Scholar One or via https://orcid.org/register. If you already have an iD, please use this when submitting, either by linking it to your Scholar One account or supplying it during submission by using the “Associate your existing ORCID ID” button.

Download information about Seeking permission to use copyrighted material.

Download the MAH Contributor Style Guide.

Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools

We acknowledge the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the research and writing processes. To ensure transparency, we expect any such use to be declared and described fully to readers, and to comply with our plagiarism policy and best practices regarding citation and acknowledgements. We do not consider artificial intelligence (AI) tools to meet the accountability requirements of authorship, and therefore generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and similar should not be listed as an author on any submitted content.

In particular, any use of an AI tool:

to generate images within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, and declared clearly in the image caption(s)
to generate text within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, include appropriate and valid references and citations, and be declared in the manuscript’s Acknowledgements.
to analyse or extract insights from data or other materials, for example through the use of text and data mining, should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, including details and appropriate citation of any dataset(s) or other material analysed in all relevant and appropriate areas of the manuscript
must not present ideas, words, data, or other material produced by third parties without appropriate acknowledgement or permission

Descriptions of AI processes used should include at minimum the version of the tool/algorithm used, where it can be accessed, any proprietary information relevant to the use of the tool/algorithm, any modifications of the tool made by the researchers (such as the addition of data to a tool’s public corpus), and the date(s) it was used for the purpose(s) described. Any relevant competing interests or potential bias arising as a consequence of the tool/algorithm’s use should be transparently declared and may be discussed in the article.

Author Hub

You can find guides for many aspects of publishing with Cambridge at Author Hub, our suite of resources for Cambridge authors.

Authorship and contributorship

All authors listed on any papers submitted to this journal must be in agreement that the authors listed would all be considered authors according to disciplinary norms, and that no authors who would reasonably be considered an author have been excluded. For further details on this journal’s authorship policy, please see this journal's publishing ethics policies.

Author affiliations

Author affiliations should represent the institution(s) at which the research presented was conducted and/or supported and/or approved. For non-research content, any affiliations should represent the institution(s) with which each author is currently affiliated.

For more information, please see our author affiliation policy and author affiliation FAQs.

Competing Interests

All authors must include a competing interest declaration in their title page. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and may be published in the article.

If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting must include competing interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors.

Example wording for a declaration is as follows: “Competing interests: Author 1 is employed at organisation A, Author 2 is on the Board of company B and is a member of organisation C. Author 3 has received grants from company D.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none”.

English language editing services

Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, may wish to have their English-language manuscripts checked by a native speaker before submission. This step is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the Editor and any reviewers.

In order to help prospective authors to prepare for submission and to reach their publication goals, Cambridge University Press offers a range of high-quality manuscript preparation services, including language editing. You can find out more on our language services page.

Please note that the use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge-published journal.

ORCID

We require all corresponding authors to identify themselves using ORCID when submitting a manuscript to this journal. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration with key research workflows such as manuscript submission and grant applications, provides the following benefits:

Discoverability: ORCID increases the discoverability of your publications, by enabling smarter publisher systems and by helping readers to reliably find work that you have authored.
Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your iD or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID record, and will enable you to share this information with other systems and platforms you use, saving you re-keying information multiple times.
Keeping track: Your ORCID record is a neat place to store and (if you choose) share validated information about your research activities and affiliations.

See our ORCID FAQs for more information.

If you don’t already have an iD, you will need to create one if you decide to submit a manuscript to this journal. You can register for one directly from your user account on ScholarOne, or alternatively via https://ORCID.org/register.

If you already have an iD, please use this when submitting your manuscript, either by linking it to your ScholarOne account, or by supplying it during submission using the "Associate your existing ORCID iD" button.

ORCIDs can also be used if authors wish to communicate to readers up-to-date information about how they wish to be addressed or referred to (for example, they wish to include pronouns, additional titles, honorifics, name variations, etc.) alongside their published articles. We encourage authors to make use of the ORCID profile’s “Published Name” field for this purpose. This is entirely optional for authors who wish to communicate such information in connection with their article. Please note that this method is not currently recommended for author name changes: see Cambridge’s author name change policy if you want to change your name on an already published article. See our ORCID FAQs for more information.

Policy on prior publication

When authors submit manuscripts to this journal, these manuscripts should not be under consideration, accepted for publication or in press within a different journal, book or similar entity, unless explicit permission or agreement has been sought from all entities involved. However, deposition of a preprint on the author’s personal website, in an institutional repository, or in a preprint archive shall not be viewed as prior or duplicate publication. Authors should follow the Cambridge University Press Preprint Policy regarding preprint archives and maintaining the version of record.

Supplementary materials

Material that is not essential to understanding or supporting a manuscript, but which may nonetheless be relevant or interesting to readers, may be submitted as supplementary material. Supplementary material will be published online alongside your article, but will not be published in the pages of the journal. Types of supplementary material may include, but are not limited to, appendices, additional tables or figures, datasets, videos, and sound files.

Supplementary materials will not be typeset or copyedited, so should be supplied exactly as they are to appear online. Please see our general guidance on supplementary materials for further information.

Where relevant we encourage authors to publish additional qualitative or quantitative research outputs in an appropriate repository, and cite these in manuscripts.