Editorial Guidelines

A.  General guidelines

Languages

Africa e Mediterraneo accepts articles in English, Italian and French.

Please note that we use British-English, so you should always use British-English spelling, grammar and punctuation. Please use English (UK) spellcheckers in your editor.

Length

Academic articles should be between 3,500 and 5,000 words.

Africa e Mediterraneo also accepts non-academic shorter articles, linked to projects or events. In this case, the text should be between 1,000 and 2,000 words.

Article’s structure

The article should be clearly divided as such:

  • Title (with no full stop at the end)
  • Headlines (a few lines introducing the article, between 150 and 300 characters)
  • Article body
  • Footnotes
  • Bibliography
  • A short presentation of the author (between 200 to 400 characters as a maximum)
  • Abstract in two versions: long one (2,500 characters) and brief one (470 characters)

Images

  • It is the responsibility of an author to verify the copyright of the illustrations sent and, in case it is necessary, obtain permission.
  • Images must be sent as separate files.
  • Images need to be sent in high resolution (at least 300 dpi resolution, base 21 cm).
  • Images must be accompanied by captions.

Information on copyright

Articles published on Africa e Mediterraneo, after three years from publication, will be published on Africa e Mediterraneo’s website (www.africaemediterraneo.it), with the open access licence CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons, Attribution, NonCommercial, ShareAlike).

B. Editorial rules

Quotations

  • Short quotations (up to three lines) must be inserted in the body of the text, between inverted commas «» (the so-called Guillemets), with no space before and after the text (except for texts in French, that must have the espace insécable before and after the guillemets and before the ; : ! ? punctuations marks).
  • Long quotations should be broken off by an increased space from the preceding and following lines of text, with no quotation marks.

References in the text

References in the text must follow the author-date referencing system: author’s name, date of publication and (if one is needed) page reference are given in parentheses in the text, following this format: (West 1979: 131-132)

If more than one work is cited, separate the citations with semicolons: (Leach & Fairhead 2000; Ross 2017)

If the author’s name forms part of the sentence, it is not necessary to repeat it in the reference:

Example: the use of tactile cue fading initiated by West (1979: 131-132) was…

For works with two or three authors, the names are separated by comma and &  

Example: (Kelly & Meyers 1995) (Elliott, Silverman & Bowman 2016)

Works with four or more authors should be shortened to Smith et al. All names must be given in the References section.

Works where the date of publication is not known should be cited with “n.d.” instead of the year:

Example: (Smith n.d.)

Those works at press or in the process of publication at the time of writing should be cited with “forthcoming”. Citations to forthcoming works should not include page numbers, as these may change before publication.

Example: the use of tactile cue fading (West, forthcoming) was…

Endnotes

  • Notes, if present, should be inserted at the end of the text.
  • The note reference number must be written in Arabic numerals.
  • The note reference number must be inserted after the punctuation marks.

Example: Our story takes place in Kampala,1 a city….

  • In the note, the number is followed by a space, a short line and by another space again; the note ends with a full stop.

Example: 1 – This is a condensed version of the longer article xxx.

References section

The References section should include all the works cited in the article.

Works in the References section should be listed alphabetically, using the following formats.

Do not put a full stop at the end of each bibliographic item.

Books

Family name, N. (date), Title, Place, Publishing house

De Waal, A. (2015), The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa, Cambridge, Polity

Articles from journals and magazines

Family name, N. (date), “Title”, in «Journal name», n.: pages

Harris, J.R., Todaro, M.P. (1970), “Migration, unemployment and development: a two sector analysis”, in «American Economic Review», n. 1: 21-30

Articles or chapter in edited book

Family name, N. (date), “Title”, in N. Family Name (ed. or eds) Title, Place, Publishing house: pages

Dolp, L., Ferraro, R. (2016), “Songs of Passage and Sacrifice: Gabriella Ghermandi’s Stories in Performance”, in D.J. Elliott, M. Silverman, W. Bowman (eds), Artistic Citizenship: Artistry, Social Responsibility, and Ethical Praxis, Oxford, Oxford University Press: 415-445

Online resources

For online journal, magazine and newspaper articles, the reference should be formatted as normal, with the addition of a full URL and access date. Blogs, online magazines, etc. can be treated in the same way.

Example:

Trebay, G. (2007), “Ignoring Diversity, Runways Fade to White”, in «New York Times», 14 October. Available online: (accessed 30 July 2013).

Social media

Reference to postings to social media should be given mentioning the source, the relevant social media, the date and the URL, as follows.

Example:

Twyg (@twygmag) (2021), “About 7% of the formal and informal enterprises in townships are in fashion and textiles”, Instagram photo, 17 March. https://www.instagram.com/p/CMg88bhpC-g/

Capitalization

As a general rule, use a minimum of capital letters throughout, including headings, figure captions and labels

Geographical

  • Use North, South, East, West if part of a political division (Example: Southwest Africa, Western Europe, Western Capitalism, the West). Other instances should remain lower-case (Example: south of Scotland, southern Scotland, western winds).
  • sun, moon and earth also remain lower-case.

Institutions

Use an upper-case initial when the name is being used specifically or is a proper noun, but not when used generically.

Example:

The state (i.e. the body politic), the church (institution); the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England; Parliament, the Houses of Parliament but parliamentary behaviour, parliamentarians.

Titles and Institutions

Use an upper-case initial when referring to the title as, or part of, a proper noun; otherwise, use a lower- case initial.

Example:

President Biden; Joe Biden, the president of the USA; King Abdullah II; the king of Jordan; Pope Benedict XVI; the pope; the foreign secretary.

Special cases

Covid-19 is written with the capital letter

Italics

Italics must be used for the following:

  • Foreign words or phrases.
  • Within the text: titles of books, periodicals, long poems, plays, films, video games, television and radio programmes, laws and regulations.
  • The words you want to emphasize.

Numbers

Figures

  • Divide the thousands with a comma.
  • Decimals should be formatted with a full stop.

Example: 200,000.60

Numbers in letters or in figures

In the text, numbers one to nine should be in letters, 10 onwards in figures.

Example: I want five copies; I want 10 copies.

Currencies

The currencies should be spelled out.

Example: 40 euros, 200 million US dollars

Percentages

Percentages are expressed with the symbol %, not spelled out

Example: 10% [not 10 per cent]

Fractions

Always spell out simple fractions and use hyphens with them, when used as an adverb or adjective.

Example: one-third, one-quarter, two-fifths

However, as a noun there is no hyphen. Example: an increase of two thirds.

Units of measurement

Units of measurement of common use should be expressed with the abbreviation.

Example: 10 km, 2 cm

Units of measurement which are not commonly known/used, should be spelled out. If a specific unit of measurement not commonly used often recurs in the text, it should be spelled out with the abbreviation between parentheses the first time it appears in the text; in the following cases, it can be expressed with the abbreviation.

Example: 10 hectares (ha), 500 watt-hour (Wh)

Time and dates

Date format

Use the following format for dates:

2 March 2020

Decades

Decades should be expressed in complete numerals. Don’t use an apostrophe between the year and the s.

Example: 1990s

Centuries

In references to centuries the ordinal should be spelled out.

Example: the sixteenth century (not the 16th century)

Brackets

  • Within the text, generally use round brackets
  • Square brackets should be used:
  • To mark, within a quote, the integration of a text by the article’s author;
  • To mark an ellipsis (i.e. the omission of a portion of the text) from the original quotations – using points enclosed within square brackets.

Example: «Her enquiries […] were not very favourably answered»

Use of quotation marks

The so-called Guillemets «» should be used for short quotations .

Double quotation marks “ ” should be used:

  • For terms indicating a specific concept

Example: The concept of “social metabolism” is used to indicate…

  • For projects titles

Example: The European project “MIraGE. Migrants Integration for Growth in Europe”

  • To indicate words used ironically or with some reservation.

Example: The great march of “progress” has left millions impoverished and hungry.

  • For quotations within quotations

Example: Plato wrote: «One day Socrates said: “This is a man”»

Single quotation marks ‘ ’ should never be used.