Author Guidelines

Author guidelines in [PDF].

The deadline for the submission of articles is July 15, of yeach year.

The journal of literature Literatūra focuses on research into various literatures and cultures. It publishes articles, academic reviews and reports of conferences. Proceedings of conferences are also invited.

Papers submitted for publication should not have been published or submitted for publication elsewhere. They are reviewed by at least two anonymous referees. The journal uses double blind peer review policy.

All manuscripts in an electronic version should be sent to editors-in-chief of the respective issue:

Literature 1 (Lithuanian literature): dainora.pociute@flf.vu.lt
Literature 2 (Russian literature): rusu.lit@flf.vu.lt
Literature 3 (Classical literature): klasik.fil@flf.vu.lt
Literature 4 (Western literature): pranckatedra@flf.vu.lt

Manuscripts are sent in two formats: MS Word (*.doc or *.docx ) and Portable Document Format (*.pdf). Please check the converted PDF for formatting errors (margins, paragraphing, charts, pictures, etc.)

Papers should not normally exceed 5, 000 words in length; in some cases significantly longer papers can also be considered.

Papers should be prepared according to the requirements set out below in one of the following languages: English, French, German, Lithuanian or Russian. If the language of the paper is not a native language of the author(s), the paper should be proof-read by a native-language specialist to check its correctness.

It is the authors’ responsibility to ensure that the final version of their paper fully conforms to this style sheet.

The author(s) warrant that their paper is original and no property rights (including copyright or other intellectual property rights) of any third parties have been violated. Literatūra follows the policy of screening for plagiarism. The authors will be required to sign a licence agreement and an honesty declaration. Articles published in Literatūra are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (CC BY-NC 4.0).

The editorial team and reviewers of Literatūra follow the COPE (the Committee on Publication Ethics) code of conduct and best practice guidelines which aim to define best practice in the ethics of scholarly publishing. The authors who submit articles for publication to Literatūra are also strongly recommended to follow the guidelines of COPE for best publishing practices.

Since the journal follows a double blind review policy, the author(s) have to submit two versions of the paper. Version one should be prepared according to this style sheet and version two should have all author identifying features removed both from the text of the article and from the document properties.

1 Structure and form
Papers submitted for publication should correspond to the general requirements of research papers and cover the following points: the research question/problem and aim, review of previous research on the subject, methodology/theoretical framework, analysis, conclusions and references. Papers that do not conform to the requirements will be returned to the authors for revision before further processing.

Papers should be printed on A4 paper size with a 1.5 cm margin on the right and 2.5 cm margins on the top, left and bottom; the pages should be numbered beginning with the title page at the top right corner of the page. The authors should use 1.5 spacing between the lines throughout the paper. The font is 12 pt Times New Roman. The text should be justified left.

The paper should contain:
(1) the title of the paper, 14 pt, bold
(2) the full name(s) in bold and affiliation(s) of the author(s), 12 pt. The affiliation should be given in the language of the publication in full, including departments/centres.
(3) Abstract
It should contain not more than 150 words and be in the language of the publication.
(4) Keywords: a list of 5–7 keywords in the language of the publication, separated by commas. Articles written in other languages than English should have keywords both in the language of the publication and in English.
Example:
Cicero about translation: Exploring the meaning of words
Audronė Kučinskienė
Department of Classical Philology
Vilnius University

A paper should be followed by a summary (400 words) in English. If the paper is written in any other language of the journal except Lithuanian, there should be the second summary in Lithuanian. The summaries should bear the title (in bold, 14 pt) and below it, the author’s first and last names, and the word Summary (12 pt) in the next line. Below the body of the article, the author’s address and e-mail address (hyperlink should be removed) should be indicated together with the date of the article’s submission for publication.

2 The text

The text can be divided into sections and subsections, each of them decimally numbered beginning with 1 (e.g.: 1, 1.1, 1.1.1, etc.) and titled. The number and title should be in bold type.

Figures and tables (12 pt) should be numbered and titled separately under the figure/table. The illustrations will be printed black and white, their resolution should not be less than 300 dpi.

Use italics for foreign words (especially et al.); use bold face for emphasis. Use square brackets [like this] for personal additions.

Quotations. Short quoted sections in the running text should be enclosed in double quotation marks “like this” (the original citation is given in round brackets). Use single quotes for special forms, for quotations within quotations, and for paraphrases of (foreign) words. Quotations longer than three lines (ca. 40 words) should be given in a separate indented paragraph (5 pt) in italics.

Footnotes set in 10 pt should be numbered consecutively throughout the text using superscript Arabic numerals.

List of Abbreviations should precede References.

3 References in the text
All references should be given at the appropriate point in the text in brackets (author’s name or title of publication, year of publication, comma page(s) referred to, if relevant), like this: (Leach 2004, 4–5; Hill 1999, 4). Different sources of reference should be separated by semi-colons (Lindley 1992, 1997; Shohat, Stam 1997). If letters of Slavic or some other non-Latin alphabet have been used, the names and titles should be transliterated. The following transliteration webpage can be used: http://www.lexilogos.com/keyboard/russian_conversion.htm

4 Reference list
All data sources works cited in the text, and only those, should be listed alphabetically at the end of the paper in separate sections under the heading References. Each reference entry is given in a separate paragraph; the second line of the paragraph is indented by 10 pt. All lexical words are capitalized only in the Names of Periodicals; only the first word is capitalized in the Titles of books (proper names, etc. are exceptions). Papers written in languages other than Lithuanian should provide translations of Lithuanian, Latvian, Russian, Polish book and article titles in brackets. Please follow the pattern given below:
Ivanauskaitė, Jurga. 1997. Kelionė į Šambalą. [A journey to Shambhala]. Vilnius: Tyto alba.

References
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths & Helen Tiffin, eds. 1995. Post-colonial studies reader. London: Routledge.
Bale, John, Mike Cronin. 2003: Introduction. Sport and Postcolonialism. Sport and Postcolonialism. John Bale & Mike Cronin, eds. Oxford: Berg. 1–14. 
Dostoevskij, Fëdor. 1972–1990. Polnoe sobranie sočinenij: V 30-ti tomah. Leningrad: Nauka.
Gill, Rosalind, Elena Herdieckerhoff. 2005. Rewriting the romance? Chick lit after Bridget Jones. Available at: http://www.uel. ac.uk/cnr/documents/rewritingromanceGill.doc. Accessed: 8 September 8 2008.
Green, Jeremy. 2005. Late Postmodernism. American fiction at the millennium. New York: Palgrave.
Monaghan, David. 1978. Mansfield Park and Evangelicalism: A reassessment. Nineteenth-Century Fiction 33, 215–230 .
Paunksnis, Šarūnas. 2012. Heaven or freedom: Nationalist discourse as politics of imagination in India. Humanitarinių mokslų daktaro disertacija. Kaunas: Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas.
Reilly, Charlie. 2006. An interview with John Updike. Contemporary Literature 43(2), 217–248.

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Each year deadline for submission to Literatūra is June 01.

Peer-Review

This journal uses double-blind review, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process. To facilitate this, authors need to ensure that their manuscripts are prepared in a way that does not give away their identity.

Based on the following criteria, the reviewers assess if the paper may be accepted without revisions, with minor or major revisions, or if it should be rejected. The core of any review is an objective assessment of both the technical rigour and the novelty of the presented work.

The criteria

Clarity of thesis statement and declaration of purpose.

The relevance of the theoretical discussion and description of the empirical investigation.

Reproducible methods of the research and results.

Well-founded discussion/analysis.

Well-structured and logically coherent composition.

Unambiguous and properly analysed data.

Data supported by conclusions.

The originality of the work. Awareness of relevant research. 

Peer-reviewer responsibilities to authors

Provide written, unbiased feedback on the scholarly merits and scientific value of the work, together with the rationale for your opinion.

Provide your peer-review as soon as possible within 21 day. If you cannot do so, please contact the journal office immediately at journal platform.

Indicate whether the writing is clear, concise, and relevant and rate the work’s composition, scientific accuracy, originality, and interest to readers.

Avoid personal comments or criticism.

Maintain the confidentiality of the peer-review process by not sharing, discussing with third parties, or disclosing information from the reviewed paper without permission from the editorial office.

Peer-reviewer responsibilities to editors

Alert the editor to any potential personal or financial conflict of interest (see Ethical policy, Conflicts of interest) you may have and decline to review when a possibility of a conflict exists.

Determine scientific merit, originality, and scope of the work and suggest ways to improve it.

Note any ethical concerns, such as the substantial similarity between the reviewed manuscript and any published paper or any manuscript concurrently submitted elsewhere.

Peer-reviewer responsibilities to readers

Ensure that positively reviewed papers meet the journal standards.

Protect readers from incorrect or flawed research or studies that cannot be validated by others.

Be alert to any failure to cite relevant work by other scientists.

Reviews can and should be critical, but we ask reviewers to keep in mind that dismissive language and personalised criticisms may be viewed as reflecting bias or ulterior motives on the part of the referee.

The journal Editorial Office handles the administrative aspects of the peer-review process for contributed papers. All peer-reviews must be submitted through the Peer-review system.

Editors of the journal are asking reviewers to prepare their reviews using a template. [nuoroda į template]

Instructions to Reviewers
In the journal, we aim to provide authors with clear feedback that will help to guide them as they improve their work. To help us do this, we ask (but do not require) that you prepare your review using the template below. The idea is to anchor specific criticisms and suggestions to the specific points in the paper. In our experience, reviews prepared this way are clearer, and they help us to understand your concerns better so that we can make decisions that are as specific and as helpful as possible.

Comments to authors
Summary: Please provide a general summary of the paper. This summary can be brief. Your thoughts on the level of advance the paper provide and its importance/interest to the community would be helpful. If you feel that prior literature undercuts any part of the paper, please provide references.

Critique: Please list the main points of the paper. For each point, indicate whether the data sufficiently support that point. If the point is not sufficiently supported, please indicate the kind of evidence is you feel is required, and include any suggestions for specific experiments. If you feel that certain concerns are more crucial than others, it would be helpful to highlight them.

Other comments: Please comment on any other issues (technical, data presentation, textual changes) that are not necessarily linked to any of the specific points of the paper.

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