Guidelines
Submission Guidelines
Authors wishing to submit articles for publication in Register Studies are requested to do so through the journal’s online submission and manuscript tracking site. All other enquiries
should be directed towards the editors by e-mailing the journal at: Register.Studies
gmail.com
Manuscripts submitted to Register Studies will undergo double-blind peer review and will be evaluated based on their originality, methodological rigor, significance of findings, and quality of presentation. Manuscripts submitted for consideration to the journal should not be previously published or being considered for publication elsewhere.
All submissions to Register Studies should be written in English and prepared according to the following guidelines.
Anonymizing Papers for Review
For review purposes, all author names and affiliations should be removed from the title page. However, because of the value for reviewers in being able to consider a manuscript within the context of related previous work, references to works by the author should not be removed or replaced with Author (date). Instead, full references should be maintained within the manuscript and in the reference list, and all references to the works by the author(s) should be discussed in the third person in a way that maintains the anonymity of the author(s). For example, in a manuscript authored by Jane Smith, a reference to Smith (2015) could be structured as “This study adopts the framework used in Smith (2015), in which they operationalized X as Y” instead of “This study adopts the framework used in Author (2015), in which we operationalized X as Y”.
Length
Full-length articles reporting on empirical or theoretical research should be 7,000-9,000 words. Critical reviews of books, corpora, and software/tools relevant to register research should be 1,500-2,000 words. Descriptions of corpora or datasets and methodological papers should be 5,000-6,000 words. Word limits should be adhered to closely; tables, references, notes, and appendices should be included in the word counts.
Abstract
Full-length articles and descriptions of corpora and methods should include an abstract that is 150 words long. Reviews do not require an abstract.
Keywords
All submissions should include four to six keywords that can be used for indexing purposes.
Presentation
All submissions should be presented in Times New Roman, 11 or 12-point font. Please include page numbers in the manuscript.
Sections and Section Headings
All sections should be numbered and labeled with a descriptive title. Please do not exceed three levels of headings. Section numbering should follow the pattern 1, 2 (for level one); 1.1, 1.2 (for level two); and 1.1.1, 1.1.2 (for level three).
Tables, Figures, and Other Graphics
In the initial submission, authors should place tables, figures, and other graphics within the paper in the desired location. However, authors should be prepared to submit original artwork files separately upon final accepted submission. All tables and figures should be numbered consecutively and include a caption that is informative and concise. All tables and figures should be introduced in the text.
In-text references
References in the text should follow the Name (year) format. Use et al. for three or more authors after the first mention (include all authors in the reference list). Examples:
Smith (2005)
Harding and Jones (2009)
Johnson et al. (2014)
Jones (2007, 2010)
When both the name and the year is placed in parentheses, do not include a comma between the name and date; replace ‘and’ with ‘&’. When page numbers are required, follow the format year + colon + page numbers (no ‘pp.’). Examples:
(Smith 2005)
(Smith 2005: 56-58)
(Harding & Jones 2007)
(Johnson et al. 2014: 43)
If there are multiple references to the same author within one parenthetical, separate years with a comma. Example:
(Biber 1988, 1994, 2006)
If there are multiple references to different authors within one parenthetical, separate each reference with a semi-colon. Examples:
(Smith 2005; Harding & Jones 2007; Johnson et al. 2014)
(Biber 1988, 1994, 2006; Biber & Finegan 1994)
Quotations
Use double quotes for shorter quotations. Quotations longer than 40 words should be displayed as an indented block quote. Any quotations within the main quote should use single quotes.
Language examples
Language examples and linguistic items within the main text should be in italics, with bolding for further emphasis:
- ...antecedents for pronominal this and these tend to be extended units of discourse…
- ...noun phrases with more than one premodifying noun, such as justice department official…
- the conversion of verbs to nouns (as in strong increase or flow line)
Standalone examples should be set apart from the main text with blank lines before and after, indented, and numbered. Examples should be referred to in the text by number (e.g., Example 1 shows that…). Italics, bold, and underlining can be used for further emphasis if needed. Examples:
(1) Specifically, we were interested in investigating the quantitative difference in the use of grammatical structures associated with registers over time.
(2) This may be explained by the presence of high fluctuations in the 1 min. data.
Longer examples (i.e., multiple sentences) should be labeled as Text Sample 1, Text Sample 2, and so on. These longer examples should be indented from the main text (see Biber’s article in RS 1:1 2019 for an example).
Terms and Emphasis
Within the text, if additional formatting is needed to indicate a term, single quotation marks should be used:
- …the analysis of texts can be approached from a ‘register’ perspective and from a ‘genre’ perspective…
- …the term ‘register’ was first introduced by…
To mark emphasis, use italics (however, this should be used sparingly). Example:
- …because situational factors are external to language users
In order to maintain anonymity, acknowledgements, if any, should not be included in the initial submission. Authors of accepted papers may include a brief acknowledgements section in the final submission. This should be an unnumbered section immediately following the conclusion.
Notes
Use footnotes rather than endnotes. These should be numbered consecutively throughout the paper.
Reference list
The full reference list should follow guidelines provided by the American Psychological Association (6th edition). A few examples follow; please consult the APA manual for full details.
Books
Biber, D., & Conrad, S. (2009). Register, genre, and style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Leech, G. (2004). Meaning and the English verb (3rd ed.). London: Routledge.
Journal Articles
Matthiessen, C. (2015). Register in the round: Registerial cartography. Functional Linguistics, 2(9), 1-48.
Szmrecsanyi, B., Biber, D., Egbert, J., & Franco, K. (2016). Towards more accountability: Modeling ternary genitive variation in Late Modern English. Language Variation and Change, 28(1), 1-29.
Book Chapters
Ferguson, C. (1994). Dialect, register, and genre: Working assumptions about conventionalization. In D. Biber & E. Finegan (Eds.), Sociolinguistic perspectives on register (pp. 15-30). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Appendices
One or more appendix sections may be included after the references section.
Copyright permission
It is the responsibility of the author to obtain permission to reproduce any material that has been previously published.