Author Guidelines
Guidelines for Submission to Yorùbá Studies Review
Major Focus
Yorùbá Studies Review is devoted to all aspects of the Yoruba transnational, national, and regional presence, both in their West Africa’s homeland and in diasporic spaces, past and present. The journal embraces all disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and the basic /applied sciences in as much as the focus is on the Yoruba affairs and the intersections with other communities and practices worldwide. The journal is open to interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches dealing with a wide range of theoretical and applied topics including, but not limited to: cultural production, identities, religion, arts and aesthetics, history, language, knowledge system, philosophy, gender, media, popular culture, education and pedagogy, politics, business, economic issues, social policy, migration, geography and landscape, environment, health, technology, and sustainability.
Language of publication
The journal will publish original research and review manuscripts in the five languages that are primarily used in the Yoruba world– English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Yoruba. Where possible, abstracts of papers will be translated into English.
Frequency of Publication
2 issues during each academic year, in the fall (October) and spring (April) semesters respectively.
Evaluation Procedure
Manuscripts are peer-reviewed by at least two specialist readers.
Yoruba Studies Review
Follow the guidelines below before sending your essay as e-mail attachment to: yorubastudies@gmail.com
Submission Guidelines for Contributors
- The manuscript must be in Word, Word Perfect, or RTF throughout.
- The manuscript must be prepared for blind review. Contributors should refer to previous publication in third person (“as Adeboye Babalola noted”) and to an institution where research was conducted as “institution X.” Names can be reinstated after the review process. Contributors should not put their names anywhere on the manuscript, especially not in headers.
- The entire manuscript must be double-spaced throughout, including footnotes, references, and tables. It must be in Times New Roman, 12-point type with 1-inch margins. Do not use boldface or capitalize all the letters in a word. Avoid underlining (and italics for emphasis).
- Manuscript must be formatted for 8.5 by 11 inch paper (American letter size).
- Save all tables, charts, figures, photos, and illustrations in separate file and submit along with your chapter. Insert in the text files callouts that indicate where each illustration should be placed. The callout should be placed on its own line following the paragraph in which the table or illustration is first referenced and should be surrounded by two angled brackets: <Insert Table 1.1 here>
- Use the indentation function in the paragraph formatting window to indent paragraphs a half inch. Do not insert tabs or spaces to achieve indentation. For block quotes, please indent by half inch with left justification only (generally quotations with less than one hundred words should not be blocked).
- If your article is subdivided, identify subheads by typing <1> immediately before the subhead. If a subsection is further subdivided, so that there are two levels of subheads, identify the second level subheads with <2>. A third level, though discouraged, is identified with the code <3>.
- The use of a word in Yorùbá requires translation in this format: word in English (Yorùbá translation). In order to ensure consistency in the use of diacritics or tone marks for Yorùbá words, the following is a list of style rules that should be adopted:
- Capital initials but no italics for all tone-marked proper nouns, including but not limited to personal names, names of cities, societies, and associations or organizations. Names of ethnic groups and their languages should be capitalized and tone-marked, but never italicized. Always refer to Yorùbá, the Yorùbá, and Yorùbáland. For reasons of consistency and citation, names of authors should not be tone-marked.
- Italics and tone marks (but no capital initials) for titles that are not part of proper nouns listed in a. For example, òrìṣà, baálẹ̀, àfin, ọba, et cetera;
- Italics and tone marks for shorter sample of Yorùbá texts embedded in body of work, but with no quotation marks.
- Longer Yorùbá texts (poetry, songs, etc.) should be italicized, tone marked, and indented.
- After acceptance, the author must obtain written permission from the copyright holder to use any copyrighted material. Authors are also responsible for supplying professionally drafted figures, suitable for reproduction, and are responsible for obtaining necessary permissions. Camera-ready illustrations may be submitted in hard copy or in electronic format.
Manuscript Style
We recommend you follow The Chicago Manual of Style 16th ed. (University of Chicago Press, 2010), on virtually all matters of style, punctuation, capitalization, and hyphenation. We therefore require US-style punctuation (e.g. use double quotations marks, and single quotation marks for quotations within quotations, and place commas and periods inside quotation marks). Here are a few style preferences to pay attention to in particular:
*Use the serial comma for series linked with and or or.
*Use the month-day-year format for dates. So, June 23, 2015, rather than 23 June 2011.
*Hyphen, en dash, and em dash:
The hyphen (-) indicates compound meanings, like hard-fought victory.
The en dash (–) denotes a period of time or pages, e.g., 1997–2006 or 23–36.
The em dash (––) is used in stylistic variation with commas and parentheses.
*Truncate the last number in page ranges as follows: 1–5, 43–44 (do not truncate when the last number is only two digits), 100–102 (do not truncate when the first number is a multiple of 100), 106–7 (don’t repeat the 0), 131–38, 188–213
*Use ellipses to indicate omissions from quoted passages. In general do not bracket ellipses. If ellipses appear in the original quotation, please explain this in the note citation (e.g., ellipses in original)
*Spell out whole numbers from zero through one hundred and round multiples of these (i.e. whenever a number one through one hundred is followed by “hundred,” “thousand,” or “million.” For example: thirty-two, one hundred, nine thousand, three hundred thousand, 6,560, or 460,000.
*For percentages, use numeral and the word percent (e.g., 57 percent).
Notes and Work Cited
NB: For in-text citation, follow the template (Isola 2017: 10–20).
Notes: Insert only footnotes (no endnotes please) using Microsoft Word’s automatic notes feature. Never key in note numbers manually.
Works Cited: Include only but all the works cited in your essay using the following style (which is different than Chicago):
Single authored book: Washington, Teresa N. Our Mothers, Our Powers, Our Texts. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2005.
Joint authored book: Falola, Toyin and G. O. Oguntomisin. Yoruba Warlords of the 19th Century. Trenton: Africa World Press, 2001.
Multi-authored book: Drewal, Henry John, et al. Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought. New York: Center for African Art in Association with H. N. A. Abrahams, 1989.
Edited book: Falola, Toyin and Matthew Heaton, eds. Traditional and Modern Health System in Nigeria. Trenton: African World Press, 2006.
Chapter in an edited book: Oyelaran, O. O. “Linguistic Speculations on Yoruba History.” In Department of African Languages and Literatures Seminar Series I, ed. O. O. Oyelaran, 624-51. Ile-Ife (Nigeria): University of Ife, 1978.
Journal article: Ojo, M. O. D. “Symbol of Warning, Conflict, Punishment, and War and their Meanings among the Pre-Colonial Yorùbá Natives: A Case of Aroko.” Antropologija 13.1 (2013): 39-60.
Dissertation: Olabimtan, Afolabi. “A Critical Survey of Yoruba Written Poetry 1848-1948.” Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Lagos, Lagos (Nigeria), 1974.
Manuscript Length
We invite original manuscripts of 25-30 pages (not exceeding 10,000 words including references and endnotes). Each article must include an abstract (not more than 150 words) that summarizes the work’s argument, method, findings, and significance and a cover sheet containing the manuscript title, the name address, office and home numbers, fax number, email address, and full names and institutions of each author. Book reviews must not exceed 1000 words.
Submission
Contributors should submit digital files of original manuscript as email attachment to yorubastudies@gmail.com (cc toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu). Manuscripts submitted simultaneously for publication elsewhere, including on the web, will not be considered. Authors must therefore inform editors at time of submission of similar / related versions of the manuscript that have appeared or are being considered elsewhere.
Please Note
Opinions expressed in the Yoruba Studies Review are not necessarily those of the editorial staff. The order of publication of individual articles does not imply relative merit. The journal is hosted by three institutions:
The University of Texas at Austin
The University of Florida, Gainesville
The University of Ibadan, Nigeria
Copyright Notice
Yoruba Studies Review will not accept articles containing material plagiarized from other publications or authors.
For the purposes of this policy, plagiarism is defined as copying of or reliance on work — including text, images and data — by others or yourself without proper attribution. Please be aware that you can plagiarize yourself; you must provide proper attribution in all cases where your previously published material or previously used data or images are included in your manuscript.
Plagiarism detected prior to publication will cause rejection of your manuscript. Plagiarism detected after publication will cause the published article to be amended to state that it contains plagiarized material; in extreme cases of plagiarism, the publication will be removed at the Editors’ discretion, and the reason for removal stated on the journal's website.
Yoruba Studies Review does not consider the following situations to be plagiarism when proper attribution is made:
- Translations into English of a previously published paper not in English;
- Publication of all or part of a revised thesis or dissertation;
- Publication of a paper previously made public as a conference presentation, white paper, technical report, or preprint
Yoruba Studies Review follows workflows developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) to deal with cases of plagiarism
Use of Third-Party Copyrighted Materials
When submitting your manuscript, please be mindful of copyright laws in the United States and (if outside the U.S.) your home country. Yoruba Studies Review respects the intellectual property of scholars, students, and publishers, and we ask that you secure appropriate permissions or evaluate whether your incorporation of images, figures, charts, quotations, and other materials falls within the scope of fair use/fair dealing.
If you are incorporating published materials that you have previously authored, be aware that in many cases your publisher may now own the copyright and you may need to seek permission to reprint your own work.
The University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries provides resources on copyright and fair use, with an emphasis on U.S. Copyright Law: https://guides.uflib.ufl.edu/copyright
Correction, Retraction, and Removal of Articles
Correction. Despite the best of efforts, errors occur and their timely and effective remedy are considered the mark of responsible authors and editors. Yoruba Studeis Reviews will publish a correction if the scholarly record is seriously affected (e.g., if accuracy/intended meaning, scientific reproducibility, author reputation, or journal reputation is judged to be compromised). Corrections that do not affect the contribution in a material way or significantly alter the reader's understanding of the contribution, such as misspellings or grammatical errors, will not be published. When a correction is published, it will link to and from the work. The correction will be added to the original work so that readers will receive the original work and the correction. All corrections will be as concise as possible.
Retraction. Yoruba Studies Review reserves the right to retract items, with a retraction defined as a public disavowal, not an erasure or removal. Retractions will occur if the editors and editorial board finds that the main conclusion of the work is undermined or if subsequent information about the work comes to light of which the authors or the editors were not aware at the time of publication. Infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, inaccurate claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data will also result in retraction of the work.
Removal. Some circumstances may necessitate removal of a work from Yoruba Studies Review. This will occur when the article is judged by the editors and editorial board to be defamatory, if it infringes on legal rights, or if there is a reasonable expectation that it will be subject to a court order. The bibliographic information about the work will be retained online, but the work will no longer be available through Yoruba Studies Review. A note will be added to indicate that the item was removed for legal reasons.
Data-Sharing Policy
Authors of research papers submitted for publication in [journal] are encouraged to make the data underlying their articles available online whenever possible. For the purposes of this policy, the term "data" is understood broadly and refers to both quantitative and qualitative research outputs, spanning observations and analysis of social settings (producing numbers, texts, images, multimedia or other content) to numbers attained through instrumental and other raw data gathering efforts, quantitative analysis, text mining, or citation analysis, as well as protocols, methods, and code used to generate any specific finding reported in the paper. The [journal] editorial board prefers that the data be submitted as supplemental files accompanying the article, or be archived in a secure repository that provides a persistent identifier, assures long-term access, and provides sufficient documentation and metadata to support re-use by other investigators. Acceptable solutions include institutional repositories; repositories specifically focused on data curation, or domain specific repositories. If there is no relevant public repository available, and the data cannot easily be included in a supplement, authors should describe how the data are being curated and made available or, in the case where they cannot be made available (e.g., IRB restrictions), why that is so. In any case, a citation to the dataset should be made in the article itself in accordance with the data citation principles of the FORCE11 "Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles", including an ORCID for the researcher(s) associated with the data. Finally, we recommend that whenever possible authors explicitly define the terms of re-use by assigning a license to their data, choosing, for instance, among Creative Commons or Open Data Commons licenses.
The Yoruba Studies Review data policy does not require data publication and citation at this time due to still-emergent standards for data peer review; the lack of sufficiently robust and distributed infrastructure to support the variety of disciplinary research occurring in our field; uncertainty whether Yoruba Studies Review should provide a third mode of data publication in the form of “data papers” or “data descriptors”; and insufficient preparation and notification to Yoruba Studies Review contributors to ensure datasets are properly curated with the aim of publication. Authors unable to share their data must provide written explanation of this circumstance in their cover letter at the time of submission.