Resources
Please note: E-AsPac and AsPac Conference Papers welcomes inquiries as to all issues. Please contact the Executive Editor, Jeffrey Barlow at barlowj@pacificu.edu, who will forward the inquiry to the appropriate party.
What is the difference between submissions intended for E-AsPac and AsPac Conference Papers?
• E-AsPac is in its fourth year of publication and is now a well-established electronic journal in the field of Asian Studies. E-AsPac articles are peer-reviewed and are intended to make a contribution to their field of study equivalent to that of any paper published in a traditional scholarly journal such as the Journal of Asian Studies. Our editors expect that such papers would have many or most of the following qualities:
? They would show an awareness of the current state of the topic by referencing or discussing recent scholarship in both important books and articles.
? Such manuscripts would usually include research done in the language(s) of the subject field.
? Such manuscripts include numerous citations and an extensive research bibliography.
? They would be carefully proofread and corrected, indicating the sort of scholarly effort that goes into good thought and writing. We recognize that for many of our authors English is a second language and we will work with you within reason to improve the quality of your English usage. However, please first give all papers to a friend or colleague who is a native speaker of English for correction before submitting them to us; we do not have the time to improve basic grammatical or spelling problems
? If your submission fails to pass peer review and is denied publication in E-AsPac, it is automatically eligible for publication in AsPac Conference Papers. When notifying you of negative outcomes for submitted papers, we will suggest this course. However, please do not submit papers you believe to be unlikely to pass peer review to E-AsPac, but rather submit directly to AsPac Conference Papers. Peer review is a time consuming and expensive process for us.
? Procedures:
? Upon receiving your submission we will acknowledge receipt and ask for any additional details.
? We will strip the submission of all identifiers (please make this easy for us by disguising references to your own previous works, place name, affiliation, and e-mail address only at the top of the file following the title.
? We will read the mss both here at Pacific University and send it out to one or more editors for comments. Conflicting reports will be sent to an additional editor.
? This process often takes about eight weeks and you should not query us in less time than that. We will let you know if there are problems or you can help us. After eight weeks of our initial acknowledgement of receipt of your submission, please feel free to inquire.
? Often our editors will want changes or improvements in your submission. While we will communicate these as directly and quickly as possible to you, the time frame for corrections will often be very tight and we hope you will do your best to make corrections and resubmit in a matter of days or weeks, not months.
? Once your paper is posted, you will be notified so that you yourself can proof-read and suggest corrections in formatting, etc. We do ask that you do this very thoroughly the first time; we do not welcome a continuing series of suggestions for improvements which distract us from working with other writers.
? We hope to publish this round of papers before the end of 2004, providing that authors cooperate!
• AsPac Conference Papers. AsPac Conference Papers are in their tenth year of publication and are found at: http://mcel.pacificu.edu/aspac/home/aspac.html The servers where AsPac Papers reside receive more than five million “hits” annually. This site is currently being redesigned to present a more scholarly appearance.AsPac Papers were usually presented at our conferences, but other submissions are welcome. (We ask that you join AsPac if you publish with us.) Many established scholars have chosen to publish directly with AsPac Papers, perhaps because they want to publish quickly or to reach a large audience.
? AsPac Papers are peer-reviewed only in the sense that your paper was selected for presentation at an AsPac conference. We hope that you will have taken the opportunity to respond to audience suggestions, but will take your paper as presented provided that it can stand alone as a document to be read on the World Wide Web. Power Point files or presentations consisting primarily of slides are not usually appropriate for publication.
? AsPac Conference Papers are, generally speaking, an earlier and less polished form of scholarship. They might be intended to solicit commentary from others interested in the field, or preliminary to more thorough scholarly development, a work-in-progress.
? We sometimes receive seminar papers as submission for AsPac Papers. We expect these to be equivalent to graduate level work and to be part of a scholarly project.
? AsPac Conference Papers should be carefully proofread and corrected. They should confirm to the other standards expected of any scholarly papers, including notes and bibliographies.
? Please do provide key words as suggested for E-AsPac submissions (see above).
? AsPac Papers can usually be posted within one month of our receiving them. You will be notified.
The following suggestions hold for either E-AsPac or AsPac Papers:
• Submissions can usually be made electronically. The most frequent reason we sometimes require a disk copy is the presence of numerous large graphics, or occasionally problems with unusual fonts.
In the email containing your submission, please try to address these issues:
• The “Subject” line in your message should be: “ASPAC submission” whether you are merely inquiring or actually sending us a file.
• In the email indicate the platform (MAC or PC?) and the word processor used for any files you do attach.
• With any submission include a separate “README” file. The README should also include a brief explanation of any and all files included and/or a "tree" showing how the files relate to each other.
• Abstracts: Each author should provide a one-paragraph (c. one hundred words) abstract of their submission. The abstract will lead off published pieces and will also be used in indexing and archiving the piece.
• Biographical statement: With your submission include a brief (0ne paragraph biographical statement including field, education, current status or professional position, any additional publications and a current email address.
• Please do update your email address with us if it changes during the editorial process. Every year we lose track of at least one author who changes and email address without notifying us.
• Key words: Include an individual file “Key words” including the most important 10-12 key words that might bring your piece up on a search engine, including your name, topic area (Chinese Modern History, etc.) and any other recurring terms. If you wish to include more than 10-12, do so.
Formatting:
• Length: Submissions should be no more than the equivalent of forty pages in length, double-spaced, including all notes and references.
• It is usually best if notes are formatted as endnotes, and be aware that some older versions of MS Word may not create automatic endnotes that survive being first transmitted in email then opened in another word processing program. For this reason it is best to format the notes individually in a separate file, or to use the most recent versions of your program available. However, we will try to work with whatever you choose to do.
• Please let us know if any of your foreign fonts require readers to download special plug-ins or add-ons.
• Notes and citations should follow the Chicago style. The submission should include notes and bibliography files formatted as individual documents rather than as one long document.
• Because reading on a computer is substantially different than in hard copy, we encourage the use of internal subheadings that can be used to create an index. See, for example, Mayumi Itoh’s paper found at: http://mcel.pacificu.edu/easpac/2004/itoh.php3
E-Galley Proofs: It is our practice to notify authors when they may view our final editing of their submissions so that they can approve our formatting or editorial changes.
HTML Formatting: If you wish to do your own HTML formatting, please inquire as to our ability to handle work done with a specific editor upon our server (MAC) before proceeding. In general, we prize clarity and organization of content over creative displays of formatting and technology, though we recognize the importance of graphic presentation within an electronic format. It is our goal to keep this journal accessible to the widest possible electronic audience while maintaining high professional standards. We reserve the right to reformat HTML materials according to our standards. Our standard font is "Arial" size 3. If you format in Arial 3 we will be able to maintain most of your layout in preparing your submission. Several submissions have been posted on the web site of the author, and we have taken them from that site with formatting intact. However, the need to edit to our own format inevitably will introduce changes.
• Anchors: If the text includes anchors or links to external sites, these should be included if at all possible in the bibliography or in an additional "Resources" file rather than imbedded in the text itself. While this may not be the optimum use of hypertext it will keep our readers from becoming lost on the web before they have finished reading in our site. You are responsible for testing addresses which are included in your file; we cannot search the web for 404s. This has proven to be a very serious problem for us, please take great care in testing your links!
• Graphics: We encourage appropriate graphics (usually JPG format is best) to be included in submissions. However, these must be graphics to which you have clear rights of use. Legal responsibility for your work resides with you. The placement of graphics is one of the most complicated and time-consuming problems we face in our editing; all the assistance which authors can give us is appreciated.