Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Papers submitted to the JSCE for review must undergo the review process necessary to present at the annual meeting of the Society of Christian Ethics (SCE), the Society of Jewish Ethics (SJE), or the Society for the Study of Muslim Ethics (SSME).

The JSCE does not publish previously published works. If you have published your paper (or a significant portion of your paper) elsewhere, or if it will be published elsewhere in the immediate future, the paper is not eligible for publication. If you thik this policy impacts your paper please contact the co-editors as soon as possible.

Submissions Info for Conference Presenters

Authors must submit their abstract to the JSCE online submission system by September 15 prior to the January meeting. This can be the same abstract used in the proposal for the meeting.

• https://jsce.scholasticahq.com

Authors must submit their manuscript by midnight on the Monday before the January meeting. Authors should NOT upload their paper as a new submission. They should submit this as a “revision” of the abstract using a link that will be sent via email from the editors.

Manuscripts must be submitted in Microsoft Word format (.doc, .docx, .rtf).

All papers submitted for review must include a 100-150 word abstract placed at the beginning of the paper. The abstract does not replace an introduction to the paper.

Any illustrations should be submitted as separate electronic files. Do not embed the illustrations in the manuscript Word files or place them in a separate Word document.

Authors are expected to prepare their work following the standards of academic scholarship.

• This must include prior IRB approval when research involves human subjects. A letter from the IRB should be uploaded as an additional file when the paper is submitted.
  
• Although styles appropriate for presentation may include a colloquial tone, papers to be reviewed for publication must be submitted in prose form. Papers in power point or outline form are not acceptable.

Papers must be developed using The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition (CMS16). The body of the text must be double-spaced using 12 point “Times New Roman” font. The JSCE employs the “notes and bibliography” rather than the “author-date” system of documentation and uses endnotes. However, papers may be submitted at the time of the Annual Meeting of the SCE with footnotes or endnotes; these references may be single-spaced.

Panel presentations in plenary, concurrent, or interest group sessions may be submitted to the JSCE for review. Recognizing the likely colloquial nature of some presentations, however, the JSCE requires that panel submissions adhere to the academic standards of scholarship as noted above.

Submissions Info for Panel Presentations

For a panel presentation to be considered for publication, one of the following approaches is required:

Option 1: One of the panelists assumes the work of collating and merging the panelists’ respective works to create a single document (this option requires the development of an introduction, presents a break between each of the panelist’s work by identifying the author and title of the presentation, and includes, if available, any prepared response by yet another member of the panel); for example, see Sohail Hashmi and respondents John Kelsay, Dov Nelkin, Jonathan E. Brockopp, and Irene Oh, “Cultivating a Liberal Islamic Ethics, Building an Islamic Civil Society,” JSCE 27.1 (2007):3-32.

Option 2: One of the panelists assumes the work of weaving the panel presentations into a single document (this option requires the development of an introduction, transitions from one panelist’s work to the next, and a conclusion); for example, see Julie Hanlon Rubio, Barbara Hilkert Andolsen, Rebecca Todd Peters, and Cheryl Kirk-Duggan, “Women Scholars in Christian Ethics: the impact and value of family care,” JSCE 27.2 (2007):11-53.

Papers under consideration for publication in the JSCE will be reviewed by two referees at the Annual Meeting and by the Journal co-editors. Each referee will prepare a report and editors will receive a copy or summary of these anonymous reports.

If the paper is accepted for publication, it will be returned to the author with the comments from referees and editors along with format editing, requests for additional information, and suggestions for cutting, splicing, and other author-generated revisions. If the paper is not accepted for publication, the author will still receive the comments from the referees.

The revised manuscript is due to the editors by April 30 unless otherwise directed. All papers must be submitted electronically in Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx, .rtf).

The ideal length of a paper, including all references, is between 5,000 and 6,250 words (approximately 20-25 double-spaced typed pages). Essays with over 8,000 words will only be accepted in extraordinary situations. A word count should be included at the beginning of the revised manuscript submission.

General Formatting

Authors should provide a word count for the entire essay.

The entire manuscript should be double spaced, including endnotes, block quotations, and references, and uses the 12-point Times Roman font throughout the manuscript. Endnotes, not footnotes, are to be used when the paper is revised for publication by the author.

The entire manuscript must be prepared in Word format (.doc, .docx, .rtf). If you have converted the manuscript from another program, check to be certain that no data were lost. Clean up any extra spaces or incorrect characters that may have been added in the conversion.

The text must be clean with no autoformatting. Manuscripts with embedded queries, tracked changes, and/or particular design specifications will be returned for you to fix accordingly.

Please run spell check, a critical function in Word, prior to submission.

Set off block quotations by a one-inch indent on the left side only. Do not enter a hard return at the end of each line. These must be removed prior to submission if they have been entered.

Check all URLs and ensure the websites are still active and accurately display the information you referenced.

All em-dashes—which when typeset will resemble these—in the text are indicated by two consecutive hyphens without space before, between, or after them, so that they appear--like this.

The first paragraph of each new section is set flush left and all subsequent paragraphs are indented using tabs. Do not insert spaces (returns) between paragraphs.

The first use of an abbreviation is spelled out in the text followed by the abbreviated form in parentheses, e.g., Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). (Note: All subsequent mentions of the abbreviation may use the abbreviated form only.)

All quotations have been compared with original sources for accuracy of citation and completeness.

Every page is numbered consecutively in the top, right-hand corner of the manuscript straight through from beginning to end in Arabic numerals.

All headers and footers (running heads and running feet) have been removed.

Endnotes

Use the automatic notes feature in Word to create notes. Notes will be placed at the end of the article. Notes should always be embedded so that they are autonumbered.

All in-text note numbers are superscript (e.g., 2), and all note numbers preceding the endnote itself are base aligned (e.g., 2).

Endnotes are formatted according to the CMS16, chapter 14 using Documentation Style 1 (the notes and bibliography system). Notes must contain complete bibliographic information upon first mention and a shortened citation on each subsequent use. This is discussed in detail in CMS16, chapter 14. Endnotes are numbered consecutively and all note numbers in the text have corresponding endnotes that are correct and accurate.

Revisions (C. Pohl; January 2017, K. Carnahan; August 2017)