Literary Studies

Instructions for Authors

Submission Checklist

Please:

Read the Aims & Scope to gain an overview and assess if your manuscript is suitable for this journal;
Use the Microsoft Word template to prepare your manuscript;
Make sure that issues about publication ethics, copyright, authorship, figure formats, data and references format have been appropriately considered;
Ensure that all authors have approved the content of the submitted manuscript and confirm that they read the Instructions for Authors.
Authors are encouraged to add a biography (optional) to the submission.

Manuscript Submission Overview

Types of Publications

Full experimental details must be provided so that the results can be reproduced. Literary Studies requires that authors publish all experimental controls and make full datasets available where possible (see the guidelines on Supplementary Materials and references to unpublished data).

Manuscripts submitted to Literary Studies should neither be published previously nor be under consideration for publication in another journal. The main article types are listed below and a comprehensive list of article types can be found here—please note that not all article types are available for all disciplines.

Article: These are original research manuscripts. The work should report scientifically sound experiments and provide a substantial amount of new information. The article should include the most recent and relevant references in the field. The structure should include an Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions (optional) sections.
Review: Reviews offer a comprehensive analysis of the existing literature within a field of study, identifying current gaps or problems. They should be critical and constructive and provide recommendations for future research. No new, unpublished data should be presented. The structure can include an Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Relevant Sections, Discussion, Conclusions, and Future Directions.

A Scoping Review type can be submitted as a Review. The structure is similar to that of a review. Scoping reviews should strictly follow the PRISMA extension for scoping reviews checklist (https://www.prisma-statement.org/scoping) and submit the checklist as non-published material during submission. Templates for the flow diagram can be downloaded from the PRISMA website and the diagram should be included in the main text. We strongly encourage authors to register their detailed protocols, before data extraction commences, in a public registry such as the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/) or Inplasy (https://inplasy.com/). Authors must include a statement about following the PRISMA guidelines and registration information (if available) in the Methods section.

Submission Process

Manuscripts for Literary Studies should be submitted online at litstud.com The submitting author, who is generally the corresponding author, is responsible for the manuscript during the submission and peer review process. The submitting author must ensure that all eligible co-authors have been included in the author list and that they have all read and approved the submitted version of the manuscript. Once you have registered, click here to go to the submission form for Literary Studies All co-authors can see the manuscript details in the submission system, if they register and log in using the e-mail address provided during manuscript submission.

Accepted File Formats

Authors are encouraged to use the Microsoft Word template to prepare their manuscript. Using the template file will substantially shorten the time to complete copy-editing and publication of accepted manuscripts. The total amount of data for all files must not exceed 120 MB. If this is a problem, please contact the Editorial Office mehmetsahin@akdeniz.edu.tr Accepted file formats are:

Microsoft Word: Manuscripts prepared in Microsoft Word must be converted into a single file before submission. When preparing manuscripts in Microsoft Word, we encourage you to use the Literary Studies Microsoft Word template file. Please insert your graphics (schemes, figures, etc.) in the main text after the paragraph of its first citation. All text and metadata identifying the authors should be removed before submission.
Supplementary files: May be any format, but it is recommended that you use common, non-proprietary formats where possible.

Disclaimer: Usage of these templates is exclusively intended for submission to the journal for peer review, and strictly limited to this purpose and it cannot be used for posting online on preprint servers or other websites.

Free Format Submission

Literary Studies now accepts free format submission:

We do not have strict formatting requirements, but all manuscripts must contain the required sections: Author Information, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Materials & Methods, Results, Conclusions, Figures and Tables with Captions, Funding Information, Author Contributions, Conflict of Interest and other Ethics Statements. Check the Journal Instructions for Authors for more details.
Your references may be in any style, provided that you use the consistent formatting throughout. It is essential to include author(s) name(s), journal or book title, article or chapter title (where required), year of publication, volume and issue (where appropriate) and pagination. DOI numbers (Digital Object Identifier) are not mandatory but highly encouraged. The bibliography software package EndNote, Zotero, Mendeley, Reference Manager are recommended.
When your manuscript reaches the revision stage, you will be requested to format the manuscript according to the journal guidelines.

Author Identification

Authors are encouraged to add a biography (300–1500 characters) to the submission. This should be a single paragraph and should contain the following points:

Authors’ full names followed by current positions;
Education background including institution information and year of graduation (type and level of degree received);
Work experience;
Current and previous research interests;
Memberships of professional societies and awards received.

If a manuscript is accepted for publication, we will add an icon linking to your online ORCID profile in the final version of the published paper.

Author Affiliation

All authors should list their current affiliation and the affiliation where most research was carried out for the preparation of their manuscript. We recommend adding as primary the affiliation where most of the research was conducted or supported, but please check with your institution for any contractual agreement requirements.

It is very important that author names and affiliations are correct. Incorrect information can mean a lack of proper attribution or incorrect citation and can even lead to problems with promotion or funding. After the publication of an article, updates or corrections to the author’s address or affiliation may not be permitted.

Independent Researcher

If one or all the authors are not currently affiliated with a university, institution or company, or have not been during the development of the manuscript, they should list themselves as an “Independent Researcher”.

Manuscript Preparation

General Considerations

Research manuscripts should comprise:

Front matter: Title, Author list, Affiliations, Abstract, Keywords.
Research manuscript sections: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions (optional).
Back matter: Supplementary Materials, Acknowledgments, Author Contributions, Conflicts of Interest, References.

Review manuscripts should comprise:
- Front matter: Title, Author list, Affiliations, Abstract, Keywords.
- Review sections: a literature review organized logically within specific sections and subsections (optional).
- Back matter: Acknowledgments, Author Contributions, Conflicts of Interest, References.
The template file can be also used to prepare the front and back matter of your review manuscript. It is not necessary to follow the remaining structure.

Structured reviews and meta-analyses should use the same structure as research articles and should ensure they conform to the PRISMA guidelines.
Graphical Abstract:
A graphical abstract (GA) is an image that appears alongside the text abstract in the Table of Contents. In addition to summarizing the content, it should represent the topic of the article in an attention-grabbing way. Moreover, it should not be exactly the same as the Figure in the paper or just a simple superposition of several subfigures. Note that the GA must be original and unpublished artwork. Any postage stamps, currency from any country, or trademarked items should not be included in it.

The GA should be a high-quality illustration or diagram in any of the following formats: PNG, JPEG, or TIFF. Written text in a GA should be clear and easy to read, using one of the following fonts: Times, Arial, Courier, Helvetica, Ubuntu or Calibri.

The minimum required size for the GA is 560 × 1100 pixels (height × width). The size should be of high quality in order to reproduce well.
Acronyms/Abbreviations/Initialisms should be defined the first time they appear in each of three sections: the abstract; the main text; the first figure or table. When defined for the first time, the acronym/abbreviation/initialism should be added in parentheses after the written-out form.
SI Units (International System of Units) should be used. Imperial, US customary and other units should be converted to SI units whenever possible.
Equations: If you are using Word, please use either the Microsoft Equation Editor or the MathType add-on. Equations should be editable by the editorial office and not appear in a picture format.
Research Data and supplementary materials: Note that publication of your manuscript implies that you must make all materials, data, and protocols associated with the publication available to readers. Disclose at the submission stage any restrictions on the availability of materials or information. Read the information about Supplementary Materials and Data Deposit for additional guidelines.
Preregistration: Where authors have preregistered studies or analysis plans, links to the preregistration must be provided in the manuscript.

Front Matter

These sections should appear in all manuscript types

Title: The title of your manuscript should be concise, specific and relevant. It should identify if the study reports (human or animal) trial data, or is a systematic review, meta-analysis or replication study. Please do not include abbreviated or short forms of the title, such as a running title or head. These will be removed by our Editorial Office.
Author List and Affiliations: Authors' full first and last names must be provided. The initials of any middle names can be added. The PubMed/MEDLINE standard format is used for affiliations: complete address information including city, zip code, state/province, and country. At least one author should be designated as the corresponding author. The email addresses of all authors will be displayed on published papers. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure that consent for the display of email addresses is obtained from all authors. If an author (other than the corresponding author) does not wish to have their email addresses displayed in this way, the corresponding author must indicate as such during proofreading. After acceptance, updates to author names or affiliations may not be permitted. Equal Contributions: authors who have contributed equally should be marked with a superscript symbol (†). The symbol must be included below the affiliations, and the following statement added: “These authors contributed equally to this work”. The equal roles of authors should also be adequately disclosed in the author contributions statement. Please read the criteria to qualify for authorship.
Abstract: The abstract should be a total of about 200 words maximum. The abstract should be a single paragraph and should follow the style of structured abstracts, but without headings: 1) Background: Place the question addressed in a broad context and highlight the purpose of the study; 2) Methods: Describe briefly the main methods or treatments applied. Include any relevant preregistration numbers, and species and strains of any animals used; 3) Results: Summarize the article's main findings; and 4) Conclusion: Indicate the main conclusions or interpretations. The abstract should be an objective representation of the article: it must not contain results which are not presented and substantiated in the main text and should not exaggerate the main conclusions.
Keywords: Three to ten pertinent keywords need to be added after the abstract. We recommend that the keywords are specific to the article, yet reasonably common within the subject discipline.

Research Manuscript Sections

Introduction: The introduction should briefly place the study in a broad context and highlight why it is important. It should define the purpose of the work and its significance, including specific hypotheses being tested. The current state of the research field should be reviewed carefully and key publications cited. Please highlight controversial and diverging hypotheses when necessary. Finally, briefly mention the main aim of the work and highlight the main conclusions. Keep the introduction comprehensible to scientists working outside the topic of the paper.
Materials and Methods: They should be described with sufficient detail to allow others to replicate and build on published results. New methods and protocols should be described in detail while well-established methods can be briefly described and appropriately cited. Give the name and version of any software used and make clear whether computer code used is available. Include any pre-registration codes.
Results: Provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation as well as the experimental conclusions that can be drawn.
Discussion: Authors should discuss the results and how they can be interpreted in perspective of previous studies and of the working hypotheses. The findings and their implications should be discussed in the broadest context possible and limitations of the work highlighted. Future research directions may also be mentioned. This section may be combined with Results.
Conclusions: This section is not mandatory but can be added to the manuscript if the discussion is unusually long or complex.
Patents: This section is not mandatory but may be added if there are patents resulting from the work reported in this manuscript.

Back Matter

Supplementary Materials: Describe any supplementary material published online alongside the manuscript (figure, tables, video, spreadsheets, etc.). Please indicate the name and title of each element as follows Figure S1: title, Table S1: title, etc.
Author Contributions: Each author is expected to have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work; or have drafted the work or substantively revised it; And has approved the submitted version (and version substantially edited by journal staff that involves the author’s contribution to the study); And agrees to be personally accountable for the author’s own contributions and for ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work, even ones in which the author was not personally involved, are appropriately investigated, resolved, and documented in the literature.
For research articles with several authors, a short paragraph specifying their individual contributions must be provided. The following statements should be used "Conceptualization, X.X. and Y.Y.; Methodology, X.X.; Software, X.X.; Validation, X.X., Y.Y. and Z.Z.; Formal Analysis, X.X.; Investigation, X.X.; Resources, X.X.; Data Curation, X.X.; Writing – Original Draft Preparation, X.X.; Writing – Review & Editing, X.X.; Visualization, X.X.; Supervision, X.X.; Project Administration, X.X.; Funding Acquisition, Y.Y.”. Authorship must include and be limited to those who have contributed substantially to the work. Please read the section concerning the criteria to qualify for authorship carefully".
Funding: All sources of funding of the study should be disclosed. Clearly indicate grants that you have received in support of your research work and if you received funds to cover publication costs. Note that some funders will not refund article processing charges (APC) if the funder and grant number are not clearly and correctly identified in the paper. Funding information can be entered separately into the submission system by the authors during submission of their manuscript. Such funding information, if available, will be deposited to FundRef if the manuscript is finally published.
Please add: “This research received no external funding” or “This research was funded by [name of funder] grant number [xxx]” and “The APC was funded by [XXX]” in this section. Check carefully that the details given are accurate and use the standard spelling of funding agency names at https://search.crossref.org/funding, any errors may affect your future funding.
Institutional Review Board Statement: In this section, please add the Institutional Review Board Statement and approval number for studies involving humans or animals. Please note that the Editorial Office might ask you for further information. Please add “The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki, and approved by the Institutional Review Board (or Ethics Committee) of NAME OF INSTITUTE (protocol code XXX and date of approval).” OR “Ethical review and approval were waived for this study, due to REASON (please provide a detailed justification).” OR “Not applicable” for studies not involving humans or animals. You might also choose to exclude this statement if the study did not involve humans or animals.
Informed Consent Statement: Any research article describing a study involving humans should contain this statement. Please add “Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.” OR “Patient consent was waived due to REASON (please provide a detailed justification).” OR “Not applicable.” for studies not involving humans. You might also choose to exclude this statement if the study did not involve humans.
Written informed consent for publication must be obtained from participating patients who can be identified (including by the patients themselves). Please state “Written informed consent has been obtained from the patient(s) to publish this paper” if applicable.
Data Availability Statement: In this section, please provide details regarding where data supporting reported results can be found, including links to publicly archived datasets analyzed or generated during the study. You might choose to exclude this statement if the study did not report any data.
Acknowledgments: In this section you can acknowledge any support given which is not covered by the author contribution or funding sections. This may include administrative and technical support, or donations in kind (e.g., materials used for experiments).
Conflicts of Interest: Authors must identify and declare any personal circumstances or interest that may be perceived as influencing the representation or interpretation of reported research results. If there is no conflict of interest, please state "The authors declare no conflict of interest." Any role of the funding sponsors in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results must be declared in this section. If there is no role, please state “The funding sponsors had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, and in the decision to publish the results”.
References: A reference list is always arranged alphabetically. All sources are listed by the last names of the authors and listed individually at the end of the manuscript. We recommend preparing the references with a bibliography software package, such as EndNote, ReferenceManager or Zotero to avoid typing mistakes and duplicated references. We encourage citations to data, computer code and other citable research material. If available online, you may use reference style 8. below.
Citations and References in Supplementary files are permitted provided that they also appear in the main text and in the reference list.

All the references mentioned in the text should be cited in the “Author-Date” format, for example (Woodward 1987), (Schuman and Scott 1987); An author-date citation in running text or at the end of a block quotation consists of the last (family) name of the author, followed by the year of publication of the work in question. In this context, author may refer not only to one or more authors or an institution but also to one or more editors, translators, or compilers. No punctuation appears between author and date. Abbreviations such as ed. or trans. are omitted.

The Reference list should include the full title as recommended by the APA style guide. See: for APA style.

Preparing Figures, Schemes and Tables

Literary Studies can publish multimedia files in articles or as supplementary materials. Please contact the Editorial Office for further information.

Our guidance regarding various aspects of figures, schemes and tables is described below.

Resolution, color and format:

File for Figures and Schemes must be provided during submission in a single zip archive and at a sufficiently high resolution (preferably no less than 600 dpi) in PNG, JPEG or TIFF formats.
Authors are encouraged to prepare figures and schemes in color (RGB at 8-bit per channel). There is no additional cost for publishing full-color graphics.
Images should be combined to avoid any issues during formatting changes. There should be no editable parts in the images.
All table columns should have an explanatory heading. To facilitate the copy-editing of larger tables, smaller fonts (no smaller than 8 pt.) may be used. Authors should use the “Table” option in Microsoft Word to create tables.

Order:

All figures, schemes and tables should be inserted into the main text close to their first citation and must be numbered following their order of appearance (e.g., Figure 1, Scheme 1, Figure 2, Scheme 2, Table 1, etc.).

Content:

Generally, figures should contain only English text and the correct mathematical symbols, e.g., - instead of — and decimal points instead of commas.
The figure content should be complete and the characters should not be masked. Unnecessary marks such as red wavy lines and hard (soft) returns are not allowed.
A comma should be added in numbers of five or more digits in all figures, schemes and tables. The scientific enumeration should be correct.
All figures, schemes and tables should have a short explanatory title and caption. Any special characters or icons in an image, e.g., *, **, and #, need to have a corresponding explanation in the caption.

Reprinted/adapted figures or tables may have copyright issues. Whether copyright permission is required and should be obtained will need to be determined. Please add the corresponding copyright-related content in the caption if required (please refer to Intellectual Property i.a. Copyright, Patent and Licensing).

Literary Studies’s Pledges to Authors and Readers:

publish rigorously peer-reviewed manuscripts of high scholarly impact
maintain quick publication—manuscripts are published within 5–7 weeks of submission (provided no major revisions are required)
publish full open access journals—readers can access all content published on this platform for free
publish citation-tracked journals—Literary Studies continuously works towards quick coverage and citation-tracking of all of its journals in the top databases and various other databases.

Benefits of Open Access to Authors and Readers:

Read the full open access information here.

free availability of the literature without any subscription or price barriers
immediate access once an article is published (no embargo period)
authors retain all copyrights—authors will not be forced to sign any copyright transfer agreements
permission to re-use the published material if proper accreditation is given (Creative Commons Attribution Licence).

Extensive English Editing

It is the authors’ responsibility to submit their work in correct English. If extensive editing is required, your paper could be returned to you at the English editing stage of the publication process. This could delay the publication of your work.

General Peer-Review and Editorial Procedure

All manuscripts sent for publication in our journals are strictly and thoroughly peer-reviewed by experts (this includes research and review articles, spontaneous submissions, and invited papers). The Managing Editor of the journal will perform a technical pre-check of the manuscript’s suitability upon receipt. The academic editor will be notified of the submission and invited to perform an editorial pre-check. The Editorial Office will then organize the peer-review process performed by independent experts and collect at least two review reports per manuscript. To uphold transparency and keep authors informed on the progress of the peer review, a preliminary version of the reviewers' reports, collected during the peer-review process, is made accessible to authors via the Susy platform. Authors can see in real-time the content and how many reviewer reports have been collected. As these reviewer reports have not been checked by an academic editor, authors are recommended to refrain from undertaking any revision until the full editorial assessment has been conducted and official notification has been received by the Editorial Office. We ask our authors for adequate revisions (with a second round of peer-review if necessary) before a final decision is made. The final decision is made by the academic editor (usually the Editor-in-Chief/Editorial Board Member of a journal or the Guest Editor of a Special Issue). Accepted articles are copy-edited and English-edited.

Editorial Decision and Revision

All the articles, reviews and communications published in Literary Studies go through the peer-review process and receive at least two review reports. The in-house editor will discuss each step of the process with the external academic editor and communicate decisions to the authors regarding the following:

Accept in Present Form: The paper is accepted without any further changes.
Accept after Minor Revisions: The paper is, in principle, accepted after revision based on the reviewers’ comments. Authors are given five days for minor revisions.
Reconsider after Major Revisions: The acceptance of a resubmitted manuscript depends on the revisions. The authors need to provide a point-by-point response or a rebuttal if some of the reviewers’ comments cannot be revised. A maximum of two rounds of major revisions per manuscript is normally provided. Authors will be asked to resubmit the revised paper within ten days and the revised version will be returned to the reviewers for further comments. For manuscripts that require longer than two months for revisions, we recommend that authors withdraw their manuscript while they prepare the resubmission to avoid unnecessary time pressure on revisions. Revised manuscripts will be assigned a new manuscript ID and linked to the original submission in our submission system (SuSy). Following resubmission, the editorial process will continue as normal. To ensure an efficient and effective peer-review process, the same reviewers will be invited to review the resubmitted manuscript.
Reject and Encourage Resubmission: An article where additional experiments are needed to support the conclusions will be rejected and for manuscripts that require extensive revisions, where the paper status is “Reject and Encourage Resubmission”, authors may choose to resubmit their manuscript to the same journal in their own time upon completion of comprehensive revisions. Revised manuscripts submitted to the same journal will be assigned a new manuscript ID and linked to the original submission in our submission system (SuSy). Following resubmission, the editorial process will continue as normal. To ensure an efficient and effective peer-review process, the same reviewers will be invited to review the resubmitted manuscript.
Reject: An article containing serious errors and making no original contribution will be rejected, with no offer of resubmission to the journal.

Digital Preservation of Literary Studies Content

To ensure indefinite preservation of our publications, all content published within an Literary Studies is permanently archived in the following databases:

The CLOCKSS archive

For the purposes of record-keeping, Literary Studies retains copies of submitted manuscripts and supporting files.