marriage, families & spirituality

GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS

Rules for submission

  • Marriage, Families & Spirituality (MFS) welcomes unsolicited contributions.
  • Manuscripts submitted to MFS should not be under assessment by another journal at the same time.
  • Major articles for publication will normally be refereed (see below). The final decision about inclusion rests with the Editorial Board.
  • The editors reserve the right to make editorial changes in all articles, solicited or unsolicited, in the interests of clarity, brevity or uniformity of style.
  • Overall copyright is assigned to MFS.
  • One copy of the number in which the article appears and off-prints of the article will be supplied to the author free of charge.

Manuscript

Manuscripts should be between 4000 and 6000 words in length, excluding bibliography and footnotes, and should be typed double-spaced. Manuscripts submitted by e-mail should by preference be written in MicrosoftWord format. It is not necessary to send a printed version.

Summary

Articles should be accompanied by an abstract. An abstract is a comprehensive summary of the essential contents of the article which enables readers quickly to survey the contents of an article. It should be 300-500 words in length.

Note on the author

Each manuscript should include a separate note indicating the author's name, title, present post, employer, most recent or major publications, and current projects.

References

References should conform to traditional footnote style, giving full first references and author's surname and a short title in subsequent references. 
Each reference should contain the following elements:

Reference to a book:

• AUTHOR 1/AUTHOR 2/AUTHOR 3/AUTHOR 4: Title of the book: 1st sub-title; 2nd subtitle, place of publication: publisher, editionyear (name of the series; volume number), page numbers.
• EDITOR 1/EDITOR 2 (ed.): Title of the book: 1st subtitle; 2nd subtitle, place of publication: publisher, editionyear (name of the serial; series number), page numbers.

 

Example:
P.L. REYNOLDS: Marriage in the Western Church: The Christianization of Marriage during the Patristic and Medieval Periods, Leiden: Brill, 1994 (Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae; 24), 23-24.

Reference to an article or a chapter in an edited book:

• AUTHOR 1/AUTHOR 2: "title of the article/chapter", in: NAME OF THE AUTHOR/EDITOR: title of the book: 1st subtitle; 2nd subtitle, place of publication: publisher, editionyear (name of the serial; series number), page numbers.

 

Example:
L. ÖRSY: "Married Persons: God's Chosen People", in: K. DEMMER/A. BRENNINKMEIJER-WERHAHN (eds.): Christian Marriage Today, Washington: CUA Press, 1997, 38-54.

Reference to a journal article:

• AUTHOR 1/AUTHOR 2: "title of the article", in: name of the periodical volume/number (year), page numbers. 
Example:
M. HENGEL: "Apostolische Ehen und Familien", in: Marriage, Families & Spirituality 23/1 (2017), 62-75.

Alternatively, the author-date method of citation may be used, i.e. the surname of the author and the year of publication are inserted in the text at the appropriate point, in parentheses (REYNOLDS, 1994), and a complete reference list is given at the end.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations should be spelled out whenever possible. 
References to the books of the Old and New Testament can be given in an accepted abbreviation style.

Italics

Italics should be used whenever words or passages are to be accentuated. Terms in a foreign language which are not yet part of the language of the article should be italicized as well. In type-written manuscripts, italics are replaced by the use of underlining.

 

Margins

All margins (right, left, at the top, at the bottom): 2,5 cm

Font size

Text = 12; Footnotes = 10

No indent or blanks spaces before, after or at the beginning of paragraphs.

Peer Review of your articles

We ask authors to provide several names of scholars who would be capable of assessing the manuscript. The editors remain, of course, free to draw on the author's suggestions or seek another scholar. A peer reviewer should have expertise that is specific to the manuscript or work in a field that is close in nature to the manuscript, and should have recently published in the area; i.e. within the last decade. See also our Guidelines for Peer Reviewers.