Submitting an Article Online

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Author Guidelines

Article types | Structure | Language 

Submissions should be made electronically through this website.

Please ensure that you consider the following guidelines when preparing your manuscript. Failure to do so may delay the processing of your submission. 

Article types

• Scholarly articles must describe the outcomes and application of unpublished original research. These should make a substantial contribution to knowledge and understanding in the subject matter and should be supported by relevant figures and tabulated data. Research articles should be no more than 8,000 words in length. Abstracts should not be more than 250 words.
• Research notes are designed for the presentation of a new theoretical perspective, findings from fieldwork and discussion on methodological approaches in the field of Latin American Studies. While they are not a full scholarly article, research notes need to make a contribution to the field. Research notes are preferably between 2,000 and 3,000 words. Abstracts of no more than 150 words.
• Essays should reflect upon or critique specific events such as a release of a major study or other notable occurrence related to the journal focus. Authors interested in submitting a commentary piece should discuss the content with the editor before submitting a manuscript. Essays should be no longer than 3,000 words in length. Abstracts of no more than 150 words.
• Book reviews and Book review essays are commissioned by the editors from experts on the field; they focus on interesting books on Latin American Studies that other major journals are unlikely to cover. Reviews should provide an overview of the contents of the book as well as a critical account of the book, i.e. its merits and its shortcomings. Length of a book review should be around 800 - 1,000 words. For book review essays, contact the Book Review editor for instructions.
• Special Issues constitute a collection around a theme or event, coming from a specific group of authors. Such issues can either be a decision by the journal or a request from a group of scholars to publish around "their" proposed theme. Please contact the journal ́s editor before submitting your proposal.

All word limits include referencing and citation.

Structure

Title page

The title page must include all of the below information, in the same order. No further information should be included:

• Title
• Full author name(s)
• Affiliation(s)
• Corresponding author’s email address (other author email addresses are optional)

Author names must include a forename and a surname. Forenames should preferably not include only initials.

The affiliation should ideally include Department, Institution, City, and Country, however only the Institution and Country are mandatory.

Please, note that if the article undergoes double-blind review then the title page should be submitted separately from the main text.

Abstract

Research articles must have the main text prefaced by an abstract of no more than 250 words summarising the main arguments and conclusions of the article. This must have the heading ‘Abstract’ and be easily identified from the start of the main text.

Please, use 150-word abstracts for Research Notes and Essays.

A list of up to six keywords may be placed below the abstract (optional).

The Abstract and Keywords should also be added to the metadata when making the initial online submission.

Main text

The body of the submission should be structured in a logical and easy to follow manner. A clear introduction section should be given that allows non-specialists in the subject an understanding of the publication and a background of the issue(s) involved. Methods, results, discussion and conclusion sections may then follow to clearly detail the information and research being presented.

Acknowledgments (optional)

Any acknowledgments must be headed and in a separate paragraph, placed after the main text but before the reference list.

Competing interests
If any of the authors have any competing interests then these must be declared. A short paragraph should be placed before the references. Guidelines for competing interests can be found here.

Ethics and consent (if applicable)
Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Where applicable, the studies must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee and the authors should include a statement within the article text detailing this approval, including the name of the ethics committee and reference number of the approval. The identity of the research subject should be anonymized whenever possible. For research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study must be obtained from participants (or their legal guardian).

Experiments using animals must follow national standards of care. For further information, click here.

Style Guide - General formatting

MARLAS Guidelines for Authors:

MARLAS uses the Latin American Research Review [LARR] style for all submissions, with in-text parenthetical reference citations (author, year, page #), footnotes (not endnotes) if additional information is provided, and a reference list with complete bibliographical data.

See guidelines at https://lasa-4.lasa.pitt.edu/eng/larr/files/LARR_ArticleStyleGuide_ENG.pdf

Guía para Autores:

MARLAS requiere el estilo de la Latin American Research Review [LARR] en todos los textos: referencias entre paréntesis en el cuerpo del ensayo (autor, año de la publicación, página), notas al pie de la página si se provee información adicional y, al final, una lista de referencias con los datos bibliográficos completos.

Ver instrucciones y modelos en    https://lasa.international.pitt.edu/esp/larr/submit.asp

Guia para Autores:

MARLAS exige o estilo da Latin American Research Review [LARR] em todos os textos: referências entre parêntesis no corpo do texto (autor, ano da publicação, página), nota de rodape' no caso de informação adicional, e no final, uma lista de referências com os dados bibliográficos completos.

Ver instruções y modelos em https://lasa.international.pitt.edu/por/larr/submit.asp

• Submit your article in document format, such as Microsoft Word, RTF, or OpenOffice.
• Double-space all text and use a 12-point font, preferably Times Roman.
• Left justify the text margins; do not use right justification.
• Indent each new paragraph.
• Do not number headings or subheadings.
• Remove headers, footers, or page numbers, as these will be added automatically.
• Use the author-date reference system, with parenthetical citations in the text and a reference list.
• For notes, use the automatic footnote function in your word processing program.
• For spellings and hyphenation in English, refer to Merriam Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary.
• Illustrations, figures, and tables should be placed within the text at the appropriate points. All photographs and reproductions should be clearly documented in captions. (See the graphics guidelines of the Association of American University Presses.)
• Authors are responsible for obtaining permission and for paying any fees for the reproduction of copyrighted materials. (See the permissions guidelines of the Association of American University Presses.)
• For issues not covered in this guide, follow the style guidelines of the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition

Stylistic formatting

•  Italicize first instances of individual foreign words that do not appear in Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary. Phrases, sentences, or names of organizations should appear in roman font.
• Spell out the first instance of all acronyms, e.g., Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).
• Latin abbreviations, such as e.g. and i.e., are usually restricted to parenthetical text and notes and are set in roman type, not italics. Commonly used abbreviations include cf., ed. (eds.), e.g., esp., et al., etc., fig. (figs.), fol. (fols.), i.e., l. (ll.), n. (nn.), no. (nos.), p. (pp.), pt. (pts.), ser., trans., vol. (vols.).
• Include first and last names with the first mention of proper names (e.g., “Augusto Pinochet,” but later, “Pinochet…”) unless speaking to a work itself, e.g., “Mainwaring and Shugart (2000) argue that…”
• Set off quotations that are more than eighty words in length as block quotes or extracts.

Numbers and dates

• Spell out cardinal and ordinal whole numbers from one to ninety‐nine (and such numbers followed by hundred and thousand), any number at the beginning of a sentence, and common fractions. Numerals are used to express very large numbers (in the millions or more). For example:

no fewer than six of the eight victims

no more than fifty‐two hundred gallons

as many as 187 students

One hundred and eighty-seven students graduated.

twenty-first-century

attendance was about ninety thousand

at least two‐thirds of the electorate

there were 2 million ballots cast

the population will top 25 billion

• Numbers that express decimal quantities, dollar amounts, and percentages are written as figures. For example:

an average of 2.6 years

now estimated at 1.1 billion inhabitants

more than $56, or 8 percent of the petty cash

a decline of $0.30 per share

•  Dates appear in the following form: August 11, 2014; August 2014. Centuries are spelled out.
• Inclusive page numbers are given in full: 3–11, 74–75, 100–103, 104–109, 112–115, 414–532, 505–516, 600–612, 1499–1500

• Use in‐text citations keyed to a reference list. In-text citations include the author’s last name (with first initial if ambiguous), year of publication, and pages referred to. 
• For works by more than three authors, only the surname of the first author is used, followed by “et al.”
• A lowercase “a,” “b,” “c,” and so on is added to the year to distinguish works by the same author that appeared in the same year.
• “Cf.” is used when a comparison of sources is intended.
• Op. cit., loc. cit., infra, supra, and the like are not used.
• Each textual reference should correspond to a complete reference in the reference list.
• Entries in the reference list are arranged alphabetically by author, then chronologically, earliest to most recent. 
• If a citation is given to an online work, an access date is required only if no publication date is provided.
• Please always include page numbers for journal articles, chapters, and quotations.
• Citations of interviews, archival sources such as manuscript collections, website content, and newspapers are usually placed in notes.
• For website content include as much of the following as can be determined: the title or description of the page, the author of the content (if any), the owner or sponsor of the site, and a URL. Also, include a publication date or date of revision or modification; if no such date can be determined, include an access date.

Sample citations and references

In-text citations

(Drinot 2012, 731; Degregori 1996)

(Durand et al. 1996; Duquette-Rury and Bada 2013)

(Rist 2007; Guerra 2010a, 2010b)

(Portes, Escobar, and Arana 2008, 1058)

Book

Degregori, Carlos Iván, ed.

1996 Las rondas campesinas y la derrota de Sendero Luminoso. Lima: IEP.

 Power, Margaret

2002 Right-Wing Women in Chile: Feminine Power and the Struggle against Allende, 1964–1973. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

 Rappaport, Joanne, and Thom Cummins

2012 Beyond the Lettered City: Indigenous Literacies in the Andes. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Chapter in a collection

Guerra, Lillian

2010a “Beyond Paradox: Counterrevolution and the Origins of Political Culture in the Cuban Revolution, 1959–2009.” In A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent

Violence during Latin America’s Long Cold War, edited by Greg Grandin and Gilbert M. Joseph, 199–235. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

 Villa Rivera, William

2004 “El territorio de comunidades negras, la guerra en el Pacífico y los problemas de desarrollo.” In Panorámica afrocolombiana: Estudios sociales en el Pacífico, edited by

Mauricio Pardo Rojas, Claudia Mosquera, and María Clemencia Ramírez, 331–342. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia.

Journal article

Drinot, Paulo

2012 “Creole Anti-Communism: Labor, the Peruvian Communist Party and APRA, 1930–1934.” Hispanic American Historical Review 92 (4): 703–736.

 Duquette-Rury, Lauren, and Xochitl Bada

2013 “Continuity and Change in Mexican Migrant Hometown Associations: Evidence from New Survey Research.” Migraciones Internacionales 7 (1): 65–99.

 Durand, Jorge, William Kandel, Emilio A. Parrado, and Douglas S. Massey

1996 “International Migration and Development in Mexican Communities.” Demography 33 (2): 249–264.

 Guerra, Lillian

2010b “Gender Policing, Homosexuality, and the New Patriarchy of the Cuban Revolution, 1965–70.” Social History 35 (3): 268–289.

 Licio, Elaine C., Lucio R. Rennó, and Henrique C. O. Castro

2009 “Bolsa Família e voto na eleição presidencial de 2006: Em busca do elo perdido.” Opinião Pública 15 (1): 31–54.

 Portes, Alejandro, Cristina Escobar, and Renelinda Arana

2008 “Bridging the Gap: Transnational and Ethnic Organizations in the Political Incorporation of Immigrants in the United States.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 31 (6): 1056–1090.

 Rist, Peter

2007 “Agit-prop Cuban Style: Master Montagist Santiago Álvarez.” Offscreen 11 (3). http://offscreen.com/view/agit_prop_cuban_style.

 Seidman, Sarah

2012 “Tricontinental Routes of Solidarity: Stokely Carmichael in Cuba.” Journal of Transnational American Studies 4 (2). http://escholarship.org/uc/item/0wp587sj.

Magazine or newspaper article

Bacab Chulim, Jesús

2012 “Constatan obras del ‘3x1’: Mejorarán la casa ejidal y harán casetas policiacas.” El Diario de Yucatán, May 4. http://yucatan.com.mx/yucatan/constatan-obras-del-3-por-1.

 Malkin, Elisabeth, and Victoria Burnett

2015 “Cuba Frees 53 Prisoners, U.S. Says.” New York Times, January 15.

Dissertation and Theses

Vergara Figueroa, Aurora

2013 “Race, Gender, Class, and Land Property Rights in Colombia: A Historical Ethnography of the Afro-Colombians’ Struggles over Land, 1851–2011.” Ph.D. dissertation, University

of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Paper presented at a conference

 Gooren, Henri

2010 “The Pentecostalization of Religion and Society in Latin America: First Findings from Paraguay.” Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of

Religion, Baltimore, MD, October 29.

Organizational publications

World Health Organization. 2010. The World Health Report: Health Systems Financing; The Path to Universal Coverage. Geneva: World Health Organization.

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and 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 (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
2. Any third-party-owned materials used have been identified with appropriate credit lines, and permission obtained from the copyright holder for all formats of the journal.
3. All authors have given permission to be listed on the submitted paper and satisfy the authorship guidelines.
4. The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
5. All DOIs for the references have been provided, when available.
6. Tables and figures are all cited in the text. Tables are included within the text document, whilst figure files are uploaded as supplementary files.
7. Figures/images have a resolution of at least 150dpi (300dpi or above preferred). Each file is no more than 20MB per file. The files are in one of the following formats: JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, EPS (to maximise quality, the original source file is preferred).
8. The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal. Every effort has been made to ensure that author names are removed from the manuscript (following the instructions to ensure blind peer review).

Copyright Notice

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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).

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Publication Fees

MARLAS does not charge publication fees. MARLAS does not have any submission charges.