If you would like to reach a large, policy-oriented audience, the Press would be glad to consider:
- Article manuscripts
- Essays
- Letters to the editor
- Book reviews and review essays
- Proposals for Newport Paper monographs.
Submitting Manuscripts: Articles, Essays, and Letters
What gets an article or essay into the Review is its subject and the thought applied to it, as reflected especially in the clarity and organization of thesis, evidence, and argument. The fundamental criterion is a combination of substantial value, however indirect, to our "target audience"—comprising policy makers and commanders—and at least informativeness to some portion of our (variegated and international) general readership.
Our subject areas are—very broadly, not exhaustively, and in each case with at least remote applicability to maritime security: maritime strategy, operations, doctrine, planning, war gaming, technology, international law, military ethics, coalition warfare, operations other than war, regional security studies, civil (including media) relations, defense economics, and history. We generally do not publish in the areas of tactics, procedures, sociological or personnel issues, or bureaucratic matters not bearing plainly upon the above. We are also careful not to publish papers that seem intended in significant degree for bureaucratic public relations—describing, especially praising, the work of the author’s agency or command, etc. You can best get a feel for the subject areas, level of writing, etc., we look for by examining recent back issues.
Due to the large number of articles received, we are generally unable to consider work that has already appeared in or been accepted by other journals in substantially the same form, reaching broadly the same audiences.
Manuscript Format and Citation Style
Submissions must be word-processor output (PC, readable in Word) or typewritten, double or triple-spaced throughout, and page numbered. The author’s name must not appear on the manuscript. Text must be in a single column, left-justified with a "ragged right" margin, and not hyphenated. Source documentation must be in endnotes, not footnotes or in-text author-date citations; for Word submissions, please embed citations (i.e., click Insert > Footnotes> Endnotes [selecting arabic note numbers]). Review articles and essays use "humanities" endnotes (aside from occasional glosses in footnotes), in a format adapted closely from that of the Chicago Manual of Style. Preparation for publication can be greatly speeded, and its accuracy increased, if manuscripts are submitted with citations conforming to our style for articles. Please do not submit articles with citations in either legal ("Blue Book") or author-date format without prior consultation with the managing editor. Manuscripts otherwise acceptable may be returned to authors for conversion of citation or other format features.
Length
Our articles run a minimum of about 3,500 words, including apparatus; that's about eight of our proof pages. Most are in the five-to-nine-thousand-word range. While like all journals we are constrained by space, a case can sometimes be made for lengthy articles (some run nearly twenty thousand words) if required by the material and treatment. We also publish in separate departments (Commentary, Research & Debate, etc.) shorter pieces of, say, 1,800 to 3,500 words. By and large—the exceptions are reprinted addresses and the like—articles require formal documentation. Longer works may be candidates for our monograph series, the Newport Papers, which receive much smaller, but potentially "tailored," circulation.
Letters to the Editor
Letters for publication are welcome, and those accepted by the editor appear, with light editing, in our "In My View" department. They should be shorter than an essay (ie, than 1,800 words) and must comment on items that have previously appeared in the Review. Advance copies of accepted letters are routinely provided to the authors of the work commented upon, who may choose to reply.
Submission
For article files readable in Word, on-line submission (to the managing editor) is preferable and sufficient. Otherwise, mail a hard copy and if possible a CD. To ensure that the College's electronic security firewall is not triggered (1) please use your last name, alone, as the attachment's filename, and (2) do not compress ("zip") the attachments. If you do not receive reasonably prompt confirmation that the manuscript was received electronically, please contact the managing editor.
Article and essay manuscripts, however submitted, must provide or be accompanied by a
- Regular mailing address
- E-mail address (if the original submission is sent by regular mail—all correspondence, aside from the editor's decision letter, and manuscript handling will be electronic)
- Separate abstract (a one-paragraph summary of the purpose, argument, and scope of the paper)
- Brief biographical note or curriculum vitae of the author or each coauthor.
Approval, Editing, and Production
Our articles and essays are approved for publication not by the editors but by the President of the Naval War College or his designee. The editor generally sends each manuscript to at least two referees, inside and outside the Naval War College. The approving authority prefers to evaluate candidate papers in largely the form in which they would appear. Accordingly, we copyedit manuscripts right away, sending "edits" to authors for their approval correction and submitting the results for approval for publication. Given that, we return the papers to the authors (as "galleys") for any further corrections or updates, to deal with any issues that have been raised, and for the authors’ formal consent to publish. Thereafter we pull proofs, to be included in the issues for which the articles are ultimately scheduled. The entire process is done electronically.
Other Manuscript Matters
- All material must be not only unclassified but suitable for unrestricted distribution; responsibility for any necessary security, policy, or "sensitivity" clearances lies with the author. We will query the author if in doubt. Disclaimers and caveats can be printed.
- We copyedit rather heavily, in comparison to some journals; on the other hand, we send authors the results—before we submit the manuscripts to our publisher, and then again afterward—under a lengthy e-mail accounting generally or specifically for everything we have done. Our standard authorities, aside from house practice, are the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition, and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition. As for illustrations, we can accommodate "line work": black-and-white tables, diagrams, maps, and photographs (the website is in color, of course). Diagrams and the like may be reformatted by Naval War College compositors or illustrators.
- As the masthead of our journal states, the Review "neither offers nor makes compensation for articles accepted for publication and assumes no responsibility for the return of material, though as a matter of practice every effort is made to return manuscripts not accepted for publication."
- Finally, as contributors otherwise learn from our acknowledgment e-mail, we presume that manuscripts sent to us for consideration have not been submitted elsewhere at the same time; we ask that contributors who have already done so, or later wish to, let us know—at which point we put their submissions in abeyance (without prejudice to later consideration, as agreed).
If you would like to discuss your project further in the light of all this, please contact the managing editor.
Our interests, although centered on naval and maritime affairs, cover a broad area involving international, regional, and national security. Our quarterly and monographs reach a target audience of flag and general officers, military staffs and "operators," foreign officers and officials, scholars, policy analysts and practitioners, and defense industry executives, as well as a large number of informed citizens.
Aside from occasional features, speeches, and advocacy pieces, our articles and essays are submitted to referees, in a blind-review process.