We publish the following types of articles: regular research articles, brief notes, review articles, and bibliographic reviews. Our upper limit is approximately 65 pages, including notes, though in special cases we will accept longer pieces. The "Brief Note" division accepts only short articles. We do not publish short reviews of books received, only review articles that offer new research and address a broad field. We occasionally print complex tables, maps, and illustrations to accompany an article. (See illustration policy).
Please submit your manuscript as an e-mail attachment to: amajor@mail.ihp.sinica.edu.tw. If you choose instead to submit your manuscript as hardcopy, please submit in triplicate. All text, including the footnotes, must be double-spaced, and all four margins should be at least one inch.
Articles can have up to two levels of section; do not number section headings, but give them titles. Asia Major may modify such formats for purposes of good page layout and typesetting requirements. We do not use tables of contents or bibliographies of works cited, only a "List of Abbreviations" for short (usually acronymic) abbreviations used in the footnotes of an article, where any abbreviations are used.
1. Chinese
We require the use of Pinyin system for the transliteration of Chinese words.
2. Japanese
The Hepburn system is to be used for Japanese.
3. Other languages
Please use the systems listed in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies for Russian, Korean, Mongolian, Tibetan and Manchu.
C. Non-roman scripts
Many non-Roman scripts can be accommodated, but unlike the previous Asia Major series, we do not expect to present extremely long non-English extracts. Instead authors are urged to cite carefully the relevant pages of published sources. Naturally, non-English extracts will be printed when the discussion makes it necessary, or when an important source is unavailable.
For Chinese, Korean, and Japanese in particular please enter the needed characters directly in the text at the appropriate place; there will be no glossaries. Chinese characters must be in the traditional, full form.
One need not supply
characters for place names, classic texts, dynasties, and persons, etc. that are
universally known (Book of Documents, Tang dynasty, Nanjing). One should
supply characters only at the first use of a term, unless it has appeared
earlier only in the notes, or to avoid ambiguity. (Book titles in Russian,
Greek, Arabic, Manchu, and other languages will be done in transliteration
only.)
Exclude your name and affiliations from the title page, and if possible insure
that they are not apparent elsewhere in the article; this is a blind submission.
We do not expect all matters of style to be met in the submitted text. However, solid conformity with Asia Major style will certainly speed publication of your article if accepted. Upon acceptance, the author is required to bring some or all stylistic points into conformity.
Submissions are to be sent as an e-mail attachment to:
If you prefer to submit your manuscript as hard-copy, please sent to:
Editor, Asia
Major
Institute of History and Philology
Academia Sinica
Nankang 11529, Taipei
TAIWAN
email:
amajor@mail.ihp.sinica.edu.tw
fax: 886-2-2786-8834
This section discusses the criteria for accepted articles; authors, if they choose, may prepare according to our criteria ahead of time.
1. Footnoting:
Use your usual method of automated footnotes or endnotes. Also, note that Word’s auto-footnote or endnote process places a single space before you begin typing your note. Please preserve that format. All notes, as seen at bottom of page, or at end of article, should show just the one space following the footnote number. Nothing else but the space: no tab, or period, etc.
Please do not leave citational data ambiguous about which number represents a “juan”, which one a “ce”, a western-bound style of “volume”, or page number, etc. If you think your footnotes need explaining, write a brief description of what the series of numbers stand for.
2. For all text, both body and notes, use only the following formatting or styles:
curly apostrophes, and double and single quotation marks
page numbering
double spacing
tab to begin each paragraph
ASCII extended characters for umlauts, macrons, & French accents
only one standard font and one font size throughout,
one method of making emphasized text: either the italicization (oblique, etc.) or underlining
3. Please do not do the following:
insert tabs for the purpose of spacing or margins, nor use a string of spaces for that or any purpose.
put spaces in between any two Chinese or Japanese characters, but do have the normal, single space before and after any string of characters.
type any extra spaces surrounding punctuation marks (including footnotes, endnotes or superscripts)
bold, strikeout, all-caps, superscript, etc. (auto-footnoting's superscript numbers are OK.)
margin changes for extracts: use a simple indent for the extract.
auto-hyphenation or justified text. We prefer ragged right text without hyphenation.
4. Do the following:
Double-space everything: extracts, notes, appendixes, captions, etc.
place a single line of text stating the name of any new section, and also indicate if it is first, second, or third level of sectioning.
place a single line of text stating “Prose extract” or “verse extract” or “list” (any sort of list of points, usually more than 2 or 3) wherever such an element begins, and do so for all of them. Later, add a line saying “end” when each such element is finished.
Use a unique symbol (e.g. %%, or #) to take the place of any letter with a diacritic mark that you cannot produce on your system. Provide a list explaining what the symbols you use stand for.
5. Tables and special elements
Please use Word’s standard tool for making tables. Do not used auto-footnoting inside tables; refer to those notes separately (e.g., “A, B, C...”, or “ * ** ”, etc. and keep notes to bare minimum). Do not use complex formatting inside tables.
If your article contain figures, photos, maps, or any sort of graphics, make sure that any required permissions are being secured.
Please make sure that charts and images are clear. Carefully cite the source and content of the image. Please note in text where image is to be inserted. E.g. <insert fig.1 here>.
6. Chinese and Japanese Characters
Make sure that all the Chinese and Japanese kanji (kana, etc) are entered, and footnotes are complete, all needed accents (e.g., Lü¸, nü, Tomō, or Tomoo, etc.) are marked. We do not, however, want the characters for names of publishers inside citations, except in rare cases where the discussion warrants it.
Make electronic copies of your file—to be retained as emergency backups.
In general, please follow Chicago Style (see the published manuals produced by Chicago University Press). Use Webster's New International Dictionary, Second or Third edition for spelling (please follow U.S. spellings). Use double quote marks for citations and special expressions; single quote marks are used only for quotations within quotations.
Chinese-style dates should be written in roughly the following style: "reign year, xx lunar month, xx day." Do not mix two or more styles, or mix Chinese with Western dating in any one reference; if both are desired, set them apart by parentheses. The western form follows the example: "January 15, 1986." Do not use apostrophes in, e.g. "the 1950s." The indicators BC and AD both come after the year, and do not take periods
Do not use short forms; we prefer long, written-out forms and the use of general Western-style references to centuries (e.g., "beginning in the late-fifteenth century") rather than constant references to dynasty names and reign names (unless the discussion warrants it).
Reign names are not italicized. They should not be used as descriptions of time periods (rather say, "in the first quarter of the century," or "in the 1850s"), nor should they be used as the personal names of emperors ("Emperor Shunzhi").
Names of bureaucratic titles ("chief minister," "president of..," "general," "shangshu ling," etc.) in both translated and transliterated forms are uncapitalized, and in transliterated form only are they underscored (italicized). This applies all across the spectrum, including all words for royal and non-royal titles ("emperor," "heir-apparent," "lord," "woman," etc.). (See Chicago Manual of Style.)
The names of the offices, implying in many cases a physical place where people met, or a usual group or activity (e.g., "the Palace Army," the "Board of Rites," "Hubu," etc.) are capitalized and unitalicized, in both translated and transliterated forms.
Do not mention Asian weights
and measures without supplying a conversion into U.S./British or metric
equivalents. One need not even refer to the Asian term at all, if it is not
important to the discussion: just use the western equivalent.
The author may insert, when necessary, a short list of abbreviations at the end of an article. The list should contain acronymic abbreviations for important sources and research compendia used frequently in the footnotes. Example:
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
|
QTW |
Quan Tangwen |
|
QTS |
Quan Tang shi |
|
DMB |
Dictionary of Ming Biography |
Well-known modern journals shown in the following list need never be cited in full, nor included in any list of abbreviations. Other journals will need a full citation at their first mention, including non-roman characters.
|
AM |
Asia Major |
|
AO |
Archiv Orientalni |
|
AOASH |
Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae |
|
BEFEO |
Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient |
|
BMFEA |
Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities |
|
BSOAS |
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies |
|
CAJ |
Central Asiatic Journal |
|
QHXB |
Tsing Hua Journal |
|
ZYYY |
Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology (Academia Sinica) |
|
FEQ |
Far Eastern Quarterly |
|
HJAS |
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies |
|
JA |
Journal asiatique |
|
JAOS |
Journal of the American Oriental Society |
|
JAS |
Journal of Asian Studies |
|
JRAS |
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society |
|
KG |
Kaogu |
|
LSYJ |
Lishi yanjiu |
|
MCB |
Melanges chinois et bouddhiques |
|
MN |
Monumenta Nipponica |
|
MS |
Monumenta Serica |
|
MTB |
Memoirs of the Research Department of Toyo Bunko |
|
OE |
Oriens Extremus |
|
SR |
Shirin |
|
SZ |
Shigaku zasshi |
|
TASJ |
Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan |
|
THGH |
Tôhô gakuhô |
|
TP |
T'oung pao |
|
TS |
Tôhô shûkyô |
|
TSK |
Tôyôshi kenkyû |
|
TYGH (Kyoto) or (Tokyo) |
Tôyô gakuhô |
|
WSZ |
Wen shi zhe |
|
WSZXB |
Wen shi zhe xue bao |
|
WW |
Wen wu |
|
YJXB |
Yenching Journal of Chinese Studies |
|
ZDMG |
Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft |
The following are standard collectanea abbreviations; they are not underscored:
|
CSJC |
Congshu jicheng |
|
DZ |
Daozang |
|
GXJBCS |
Guoxue jiben congshu |
|
SBBY |
Sibu beiyao |
|
SBCK |
Sibu congkan |
|
SKQS |
Sikuquanshu |
|
SSJZS |
Shisan jing zhushu |
|
T |
Taishô shinshû daizôkyô |
At the first mention in the notes, a work must be cited fully. Note that we use "U.P. ", without a space, for "University Press"; we use "p(p). " for "page(s) "; and "j." for "juan."
The following are three examples:
James Lyon, The Chinese Willow (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1968), pp. 12-14.
Wang Zhongmin 王重民 et al., ed., Dunhuang bianwen ji 敦煌變文集 (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1957) 2, p.131.
Sui Shusen 隋樹森 ed., Gu shi shijiu shou ji shi 古詩十九首集釋 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1955).
The following three examples illustrate how "juan" (j.) is used in Chinese editions. In #1, "j." is included because "juan" is given in the alternative, or traditional format, citation. In #2 and 3 there is no indication for the word "juan" --a common way that Asia Major handles such citations when the edition is one of many standard editions of the work that all preserve a common order and numbering of juan.
Cai Bin 蔡彬 (1680-1747), comp., Lin Chenggong wenji 林成公文集 (rpt. Taipei: Xuesheng, 1962) j.3, p.6A.
ZZTJ 43, p.766. [This is an abbreviated title].
Zhuangzi 莊子 (SBCK edn.) 8, p.2b.
After the first mention the work may be given a short title or acronym. At an acronym's first occurrence, state "hereafter cited as ABC." Short titles are accompanied by the author's surname only, even for Chinese or Japanese authors. Do not use ellipses in short titles. In the main text of articles we seldom use any abbreviations at all. A limited number of them are employed in the notes, and generally restricted to the following:
|
annot(s). |
annotator(s) |
|
b. |
born |
|
ca. |
circa |
|
c(c). |
century(ies) |
|
j.s. |
jinshi |
|
cf. |
compare; confer |
|
j. |
juan |
|
comp. (comps.) |
compiler(s); compiled by |
|
chap(s). |
chapter(s) |
|
d. |
died |
|
ed. (eds.) |
editor(s); edited by |
|
edn(s). |
edition(s) |
|
esp. |
especially |
|
et al. |
et alii |
|
facs. |
facsimile |
|
fl. |
floruit |
|
ibid. |
ibidem |
|
illus. |
illustration(s) |
|
l(l). |
line(s) |
|
ms(s). |
manuscript(s) |
|
n(n). |
note(s) |
|
orig. |
original |
|
p(p). |
page(s) |
|
photorpt. |
photo-reprint |
|
pref. |
preface; prefaced |
|
rpt. |
reprint; reprinted in, by |
|
r. |
reigned |
|
sect. |
section |
|
ser. |
series |
|
s.v. |
sub verbo |
|
z. |
zi |
|
trans. |
translator(s); translated by |
|
U.P. |
University Press |
|
vol(s). |
volume(s) |
Never use the following terms and abbreviations:
op. cit.
supra
cf. in the sense of "see"
loc. cit.
passim
infra.