For Authors

Submission Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to ensure their submission’s compliance with the following items. Submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

  1. The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration.
  2. The submission file is in Microsoft Word document file format (.doc or .docx).
  3. Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
  4. The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined on the Submissions page of this website.
  5. The instructions for Ensuring an Anonymous Review (below) have been followed.
  6. The following information has been provided on the title page of the submission: full name, university affiliation, email address, and paper/article title. Book reviews should include the full bibliographic information for the work reviewed in lieu of a title.

Ensuring an Anonymous Review

To ensure the integrity of the anonymous peer-review for submission to this journal, every effort should be made to prevent the identities of the authors and reviewers from being known to each other. This involves the authors, editors, and reviewers checking to see if the following steps have been taken with regard to the text and the file properties:

All identifying information for the author should appear only on the title page (page 1 of the document) and no other place in the document. The editors will remove this information prior to beginning the review process.

Author identification should also be removed from the properties for the Microsoft Word file.

For Microsoft 2003 and previous versions, and Macintosh versions of Word: Under the File menu select: Save As > Tools (or Options with a Mac) > Security > Remove personal information from file properties on save > Save.

For MacIntosh Word 2008 (and future versions): Under the File menu select “Properties.” Under the Summary tab remove all of the identifying information from all of the fields. Save the File.

For Microsoft 2007 (Windows):

  1. Click on the office button in the upper-left hand corner of the office application
  2. Select “Prepare” from the menu options.
  3. Select “Properties” for the “Prepare” menu options.
  4. Delete all of the information in the document property fields that appear under the main menu options.
  5. Save the document and close the document property field section.

For Microsoft 2010 (Windows):

  1. Under the File menu select “Prepare for sharing.”
  2. Click on the “Check for issues” icon.
  3. click on “inspect document” icon.
  4. Uncheck all of the checkboxes except “Document Properties and Personal information”.
  5. Run the document inspector, which will then do a search of the document properties and indicated if any document property fields contain any information.
  6. If the document inspector finds that some of the document properties contain information it will notify you and give you the option to “Remove all,” which you will click to remove the document properties and personal information from the document.

Copyright Notice

Authors who publish with Past Tense agree to the following terms:

  • Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  • Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal’s published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  • Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.