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We recommend that authors read through the submission guidelines below prior to composing
an article. Then review the same guidelines before submitting the final draft.
Authors often overlook a point or two in the guidelines, which adds time to the review and formatting process.
The most commonly overlooked items regard manuscript length, opening summary,
layout of the contents, and bibliographical format.
AUTHOR COPYRIGHT AND LICENSING AGREEMENT. The author of an article enters
into an agreement with the IEP such that (1) The author grants exclusive and
perpetual license to the IEP to use and distribute the article through Internet
media. (2) This license covers the present version/edition of the IEP, all future
versions/editions of the IEP, and all derivations of the IEP in the present media format as well as
other possible formats such as printed works or CD ROM; (3) The author
receives no financial payment for his/her article from the IEP. (4) The author
retains copyright to his/her article; the author also retains the right to
publish the article in a format that does not compete with the IEP in nature and
scope. Authors must inform the IEP general editors of any
secondary publishing opportunity and also inform the secondary publisher about the author's
prior agreement with the IEP. (5) The IEP reserves the right to discontinue using an article. This
might be required for various reasons, such as if the author is not able to revise the article
and the editors determine that a revision is needed.
LENGTH. Articles should be at least 4,000 words in length, not counting bibliographical material.
Those on the most important topics should be around 8,000 words. There are no space restrictions, and
authors are encouraged to err on the side of being too long rather than too
short. Major philosophers may require a series of articles to adequately cover
the scope of their contributions; see for example the sets of articles on
Aristotle and Hume.
THE ARTICLE'S PURPOSE. The purpose of
your article is to present information accepted by colleagues working in the area. An encyclopedia article is
not the place to defend an original thesis.
Your article will explain the topic in language the reader
can understand, and it will present the
the important distinctions, the main results, and the main points of view on controversial issues. Your article should
call attention
to related topics and should provide
some references in case the reader wishes to read further on your topic.
LEVEL OF SOPHISTICATION. Your article should be aimed at the reader who has the ability to read
professional philosophy articles but who
has little prior acquaintance with your particular topic. Most articles should be understandable, in large part,
to advanced undergraduates or at least to
beginning graduate students. For topics that are unavoidably technical, such as an article on Einstein's General Theory
of Relativity or on Ramsey sentences in logic, the goal should be to make the early parts easy going so
that the technically unsophisticated reader will still profit from reading much of the article.
OPENING SUMMARY. The beginning of each article should contain a
summary of the article. Its length should be 200-500 words. The purpose of
the summary is to give readers a quick overview of your topic -- as they might
find in a short dictionary of philosophy. Please see the article on Descartes as an example.
You have three goals to achieve simultaneously:
(1) to convey some understanding of your topic to those readers who will read the summary with no intention of reading the
entire article as they browse through the Encyclopedia,
(2) to say something intriguing that will make readers want to continue reading beyond the summary, and
(3) to give readers who initially intend to read the article some idea of the territory ahead.
Avoid using any reference in the summary to make your point. When the point is repeated in the body of the article,
add the reference there. In your summary, do not include a quotation from a
secondary source; make the point in your own words. STRUCTURE OF ARTICLES ON PEOPLE. The body of the article should begin with a
biography of the philosopher. The bulk of the article will consist of a discussion of
the philosopher's main philosophical contributions; in most cases a topical
presentation of this material is preferred over a strictly chronological
presentation. The discussion might include influences on the philosopher,
traditional criticisms of the philosopher, and the impact of the philosopher on
later philosophers. See the article on Francis Bacon as an example.
As in the Bacon article, you are
encouraged to include a copyright-free picture with your own article.
STRUCTURE OF ARTICLES ON TOPICS. The opening sentence of the summary paragraph
should be a general definition of the term being used, such as, "The term
'category' means ultimate or fundamental division." The opening of the article
body should say something about the origin of the term, the context in which the
term is used, or alternative definitions of the term. The article will typically
consist of a chronological survey of philosophical theories relating to the
term. Where appropriate, include traditional criticisms of the theories in
question. Please see the article on Logical Paradoxes as an
example.
FORMAL STYLE. All articles should be written in a formal, yet simple style, such as that used
in the Encyclopedia
Britannica, the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, or the
Encyclopedia of Philosophy edited by Paul Edwards. Avoid slang.
Avoid reference to yourself, as in "I find this argument to be unconvincing," or
"As I've shown in the previous paragraph...."
SIMPLE STYLE. Articles should be written in a straightforward style that is accessible to
intelligent but general readers. Although the IEP is regularly visited by
professional philosophers, many users of the IEP are philosophy students or
philosophically curious web surfers. To best serve these latter users, authors should
minimize unnecessary technical vocabulary.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. Do not include acknowledgements to colleagues who
provided input on your article, nor to institutions
that provided you with funding. Thank them privately.
TABLE OF CONTENTS AND SECTION HEADINGS. For typical articles, those between
4,000 and 8,000 words, please use between 5 and 15 section headings. Less than
five will make the article difficult to follow. More than 15 will make
the contents list too complex and, in most cases, make some of the sections too short and thus appear visually awkward.
Use capitals and small case, not all capitals. The opening summary should be followed by a table of contents
that reflects the sections and sub-sections of the article.
You don't have to use subheadings. That is, the table of contents can either be "flat" (see the article on Hume, David -- a. Life and Writings for an example) or
"hierarchical," with main sections and then sub-sections within them (see the
article on the Aztec Philosophy for an example). In
either case, use the following numbering convention
in order to be formatted correctly.
1. Heading One
1a. Subheading One
1a.i. Subsubheading One
1a.i.1) Subsubsubheading One
1a.i.2) Subsubsubheading Two
1a.ii. Subsubheading Two
1a.ii.1) Subsubsubheading One
1a.ii.2) Subsubsubheading Two
1b. Subheading Two
2. Heading Two
3. Heading Three...
9. References and Further Reading
When your article is processed by our FORMATTER program, the above table of
contents will look like this:
1. Heading One
a. Subheading One
i. Subsubheading One
1) Subsubsubheading One
2) Subsubsubheading Two
ii. Subsubheading Two
1) Subsubsubheading One
2) Subsubsubheading Two
b. Subheading Two
2. Heading Two
3. Heading Three...
9. References and Further Reading
Although the table of contents may have up to four levels, we encourage you
to restrict yours to only two levels
(that is, to only headings and subheadings) for visual elegance.
REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHIES. Bibliographies should be brief and, preferably, annotated. Long, unannotated lists of all the
major works in a field are usually unhelpful to all except a professional researcher, who already will have such references
available from elsewhere. We
suggest that you follow
MLA format. But other formats are acceptable.
More readers are more likely to use your bibliography if each entry is annotated with a short sentence describing the nature
of the work cited; see Fallibilism for an example of how to do this. Listing a zillion unannotated references simply
confuses the reader who is searching for a little more information about your
topic. The heading for the bibliography must be "References and Further
Reading," but it may contain subheadings. Typical subheadings are "Primary
Sources" and "Secondary Sources." Italicize all names of books and journals; do not use underlining.
Do not use dashes in place of author names, although this is commonly done in
journals. Do not include references that are forthcoming.
HYPERLINKS. When appropriate, include hyperlinks in your
article to other IEP articles. Please see the article on Comparative Philosophy as an example. You may
simply indicate where hyperlinks are inserted; you do not need to include the
actual html coding. However, do
not include any hyperlinks to non-IEP web sites. The IEP aims at being a
self-contained resource, rather than a link list. Also, because external links
require continual updating, we hope to avoid this time-consuming task.
GRAPHICS, PHOTOS, AND CHARTS. Authors are encouraged to include graphics in their articles,
provided they do not infringe on copyrights. See the article on Francis Bacon as an example. The graphics
(including photos, charts and tables) need to be in
either .jpg or .gif format. The IEP staff cannot create graphics,
but can crop a graphic and make simple adjustments to a graphic's size and border.
SENDING ARTICLES. If possible, please send your article in MS Word as an
e-mail attachment, and add attachments for all the graphics, photos, and charts.
The editors will then reformat the article to fit the standard IEP graphic
design and layout.
FOREIGN LANGUAGE TERMS.
Authors should minimize the use of italics with foreign language terms. Regarding diacritical marks, use those that have html codes.
Replace other diacritical marks with ordinary letters. Please see our helpsheets on Chinese and Indian languages.
DESCRIPTION OF AUTHOR. Your name will appear at the end of the article
along with your email address and your university's name. Do not include
your title (for example, "associate professor"), your department name (for example
"Department of Humanities and Philosophy"), your university's street
address, or your personal webpage address.
STYLISTIC CONVENTIONS. Spelling and punctuation should follow US English conventions (rather than UK
English conventions, for example). Please do not use footnotes or endnotes. Avoid using underlining or bold face, and restrict special font
formatting to italics. Be sparing in your use of italics for emphasis. Minimize the use of in-text
references such as "as we shall see in section (4) second paragraph below and also in section (6)."
For a more detailed list of IEP stylistic preferences, please see
our Help Sheet for Copyediting Articles.
AUTHORS WHO ARE NON-NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKERS. Authors who do not speak English as
their primary language must have their articles revised by a native
English speaker, or equivalent, prior to submission.
EDITING AFTER ACCEPTANCE. As with printed publications, after the article is submitted and accepted, the editors
and their copy editors may make minor stylistic changes that will not affect the article's content. After your article is published, feel free to come back in later weeks or years and request further changes. You may make any minor content changes. Major changes in content should be approved by the area editor. Examples of major changes would be the elimination of multiple paragraphs
covering a particular topic, the addition of a lengthy discussion of a new topic, or a reorganization that requires addition or deletion of a heading or subheading in the table of contents. A minor change is one that improves the presentation of a point and that does not involve the alteration or removal of a heading or subheading.
To keep our staff from reformatting [re-HTML-izing] the entire article from a wordprocessor document, we request that authors make minor changes directly to the HTML source code if they are able. You may access the HTML source code through
various web browsers; with Internet Explorer, this is done by going to “View | Source” in the pull down menu. We request that you revise the HTML source in either Wordpad or Notepad; doing so in Word, Wordperfect, or an HTML conversion tool will introduce stray HTML codes upon saving.
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