COASTLINE JOURNAL

Erasmus, by Hans Holbein, 1523

Coastline is an online journal of essays written by current students and alumni of Graduate Liberal Studies programs worldwide. Please read the mission statement for more information. Please note that publication is not automatically granted: an editorial board will first read your paper/article, suggest any changes which will be forwarded to you.  Upon approval of your revisions, your paper will be published.

As this is an interdisciplinary forum, your paper must cross one or more academic disciplines. Please have a look at some of the articles before choosing an essay to submit.

The Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs publishes a bi-annual journal of essays, poetry and fiction submitted by students and alumni called Confluence. We encourage you to submit your work to both journals; if it is accepted by Confluence (or another journal), we will remove your essay from this site upon request.

FORMAT

Submit your work in one of these formats (and only one of these): .rtf, .doc, or .docx. We appreciate the following formatting:

• block paragraphs;
• remove indentations;
• use the “centre” format option if you want to centre something, not tabs or the spacebar;
• In text citations can be (Author, page) or as superscript numerals, but…you should put the parenthetical citation within the punctuation mark for the sentence it refers to. Thus, a quote would end with the number and then the punctuation (27). Notice there is no “p” in that citation;
• footnotes, if you use them, should be changed to endnotes (see below for more on this);
• headers and footers (e.g. page numbers) will be removed for the web version, but remain in the pdf version;
• the version you submit should be the version you turned in for credit in your class, or a more recent, corrected version; and therefore should have been thoroughly spell-checked;
• citations and bibliography will be presumed to be correct (no fact-checking done by editor).

REVISIONS

It is commonplace in academic journals to have articles reviewed prior to publication by one or more anonymous readers, each of whom is an expert in the field of research pertaining to the article. The process is rigorous and fair, if cumbersome (less so with electronic submission); it results in papers where the analyses, theories, results and whatever conclusions that are drawn are supportable and presumably repeatable. These papers contribute to the growth of research through continuation of the work, or provide the impetus for researcher B to disprove or modify A‘s position.

The journal’s primary goal is to get your work out there. Do not expect a line edit: your work should already be proofread prior to submission.

NOTES

Due to limitations in how web pages interpret formatting, traditional bottom-of-page footnotes do not work well (they would if we published your essay as a pdf file only, but not as a web page); thus, you need to globally revise your document, if it has footnotes, to endnotes.

These instructions show how MS Word can quickly convert footnotes to endnotes. When encoded as html, citations are hyperlinked to the endnotes–if you format them as footnotes or endnotes. Further instructions for the Chicago/Turabian* notes-bibliography style are available here.

The Chicago Manual of Style suggests that in the case of two or more citations requiring notes, it is not always necessary to have a footnote after each citation if the meaning and source is clear:

Q. When doing footnotes, do you put a footnote after every sentence, even if two or more consecutive sentences are from the same source and same page? Or can it be assumed that, regardless of the punctuation (as long as it is in the same paragraph), all that came after the last citation and before the footnote you just inserted is part of the same source and same page?

A. Footnotes should be placed where you need them, not according to a rule. Whenever you can imagine the reader asking “Says who?” you should add a note. It’s not true that the reader can assume that everything between one footnote and the next is attributable to the first source, since most writers interject their own arguments or conclusions between the borrowed materials. If everything in a paragraph is from the same source, however, it’s enough to put one note at the end of the paragraph.**

The Chicago quick guide to citations is a handy resource. On the ethics and accepted practices of quoting from sources, a pdf guide made available by Dartmouth University is a useful beginning; however, for both form and practice, one of the best guides is Kate L. Turabian’s A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. Another is the 7th edition of the MLA Handbook.

Turabian K. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations

Modern Language Association. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers

Please include your current location and contact information both in the email and on the first page of your essay. This information will not be published unless you specifically request it. Coastline does not pay at this time.

Please email your file to: COASTLINE EDITOR

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* Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Seventh Edition: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

** Chicago Manual of Style Online. http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html