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Editorial Policy
Description
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Humanity will publish papers presented at the annual Macquarie-Newcastle Humanities Postgraduate Symposium.
The purpose of Humanity is to provide postgraduate students in Humanities at Macquarie University and the University of Newcastle with experience in publishing to help them with their future professional needs to publish in academic journals. The Humanities Symposium will give postgraduates experience in presenting papers to an audience of scholars.
Humanity journal will give those who have presented papers at the Symposium the further experience of writing for publication and going through the process of having a paper published. Another group of postgraduates will be able to gain further insight into the publishing process by acting as editors and referees for the journal.
Exclusivity
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Postgraduates presenting papers for Humanity are cautioned to think carefully whether this could exclude them from having the paper published in another journal that could earn DEST points. It is unlikely that any journal will accept a paper from them if it has already appeared in Humanity. This issue should be discussed with your supervisor. Humanity does not require exclusivity on any paper presented to it.
Copyright
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Copyright in any material submitted to Humanity remains with the author.
Content and writing style
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Length Presentations at the Symposium are 20 minutes long. This will usually involve 2500 to 3500 written words. This is the guideline for papers presented to Humanity. It is unlikely that papers shorter than 2500 words would be accepted but papers longer than 3500 may be considered providing the content is relevant and interesting.
Microsoft Word Manuscripts should be prepared using Microsoft Word or a compatible word processing system.
Headings and subheadings. Please keep your headings and subheadings very plain and simple. The journal articles will all need to look the same. Please don't use headers, footers or any pagination.
Images. We are happy to include illustrations such as photos, charts and diagrams. Where possible these should be reduced to VGA (96dpi) resolution before sending.
spelling. Configure your spelling checker to use English (Australian) spelling.
Citation style. All citations must be in the APA-5 style.
Readability Humanity editors will require a high level of readability. The most important factors in attaining this are
Short sentences. Long sentences containing several clauses become hard to understand. Readability is nearly always improved by breaking them into two or more sentences. As a rough guide, sentences over 25 words will tend to lower the readability of your paper. Microsoft Word's spelling checker has a grammar checker as well. Turn this on and it can alert you to many points affecting your readability.
Simple words with no jargon. Use the more common, well used word.
| For example, rather than saying | ascertain | say | find out | |
| aggregate | total | |||
| prior to | before | |||
| point in time | time | |||
| endeavour | try | |||
| commence | begin or start | |||
| terminate | end or finish |
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Avoid using jargon. Readers of Humanity come from several different disciplines and may not understand words peculiar to your own discipline. However, sometimes it may be appropriate to use technical terms. Take care to explain these to the reader.
Active rather than passive voice. Usually it is better to say: "The surveyor asked the respondent" (active voice) rather than "The respondent was asked by the surveyor" (passive voice). Passive voice is stiff and stilted. Active voice is more direct and lively.
Verb form rather than noun form. Don't kill your verbs by turning them into nouns.
| Don't say: | My intention is to perform problem definition and resolution. |
| Rather, say: | I intend to define the problems and resolve them. |
| Don't say: | We carried out a review of the arrangements in order to effect improvements in the reporting of complaints. |
| Rather, say | We reviewed our arrangements to improve how complaints are reported." |