Submissions

Author Guidelines

ABATON. Journal of Figuration, Representation and Images of Architecture is an annual scholarly journal devoted to the study of the theory, figuration, representation and images of architecture, the city and the territory. The journal welcomes research on drawings, prints, photographs, maps, treatises, manuscripts, painted architecture, stage designs, visual models, graphic culture and other media related to the historical, artistic, heritage and cultural construction of architecture.

The journal has an interdisciplinary and international scope and publishes work in art history, architectural history, visual culture, urban history, heritage studies, theories of representation, history of photography, historiography and related disciplines. Articles may be submitted in Spanish, English, French or Italian.

1. Journal Structure

ABATON is organised into the following sections:

Editorial. Introductory text to the issue, written by the Editorial Board, the editors or guest editors, presenting the scholarly framework of the volume.

Dossier. Monographic section comprising research articles related to the central theme of each issue. Submissions are assessed through external double-blind peer review.

Varia. Section open to research articles that are not necessarily linked to the dossier but fall within the scholarly scope of the journal. Submissions are assessed through external double-blind peer review.

Documents. Section devoted to the critical study of documents, images, drawings, photographs, prints, manuscripts, graphic collections or visual materials relevant to the history and representation of architecture. Texts take the form of short essays and are subject to external review.

Reviews. Section devoted to critical reviews of books, exhibition catalogues, catalogues raisonnés, documentary editions or recent publications related to the journal’s areas of interest. Reviews are assessed by the Editorial Board and are not necessarily subject to double-blind peer review.

2. Originality, Authorship and Responsibility

Submissions to ABATON must be original, unpublished and not under consideration by any other journal, book or publication. Submission of a manuscript implies acceptance of these editorial guidelines.

Authors are responsible for the content of their texts, the accuracy of quotations and bibliographic references, obtaining the necessary permissions for image reproduction and declaring any possible conflicts of interest.

For multi-authored works, a Statement of Authorship Contribution must be included at the end of the article, specifying the contribution of each author. The order of authorship may follow the usual criteria of decreasing contribution, emphasis on first and last authorship, or equal contribution indicated by alphabetical order, provided that the chosen criterion has been agreed by all authors.

Where applicable, authors must indicate the funding source of the work, the research project from which it derives and any institutional support connected with the study.

3. Review Process

The journal’s Secretariat will first check that submissions comply with the formal and documentary requirements. Manuscripts that do not follow these guidelines may be returned for correction before the editorial process begins.

Once the formal review has been completed and the relevance of the submission has been approved by the Editorial Board, articles submitted to the Dossier, Varia and Documents sections will be sent for external assessment by specialists under a double-blind peer-review system. Reviewers will not know the identity of the authors, and authors will not know the identity of the reviewers.

The Editorial Board will make its editorial decision on the basis of the reports received. Decisions may be: acceptance, acceptance with minor revisions, request for substantial revisions and further review, or rejection. In the case of conflicting reports, the Editorial Board may request a third review.

The journal will endeavour to communicate the first editorial decision within a reasonable period after the close of submissions and will keep authors informed through the editorial management platform.

4. Submission of Manuscripts

Manuscripts must be submitted exclusively through the OJS platform of Revistas Científicas Complutenses, after author registration. Submissions by email will not be accepted unless expressly indicated by the Editorial Team.

During submission, all metadata requested by the platform must be completed: full names of all authors, institutional affiliation, email address, country, abstract, keywords, ORCID identifier, bibliography and, where applicable, funding or research project information.

The submission must include the following files:

1. Identification file, including the title of the article in the original language and in English, full name(s) of the author(s), institutional affiliation, email address, ORCID, a brief biographical note of no more than 150 words per author, the section to which the text is submitted and, where applicable, statements on funding, conflicts of interest and authorship contribution.
2. Complete manuscript, including title, abstracts, keywords, main text, notes, figure captions, list of images and bibliographic references.
3. Anonymised manuscript, prepared for double-blind peer review. This file must not contain names, affiliations, acknowledgements, explicit self-citations in the first person, internal references that may identify authorship, personal document metadata or any other information that may compromise anonymity.
4. Image files, when the article includes illustrations, submitted separately in TIFF, JPG or PNG format and at a quality suitable for reproduction.

5. Length of Submissions

Research articles for the Dossier and Varia sections must not exceed 60,000 characters including spaces, notes and bibliography included.

Texts for the Documents section should preferably not exceed 20,000 characters including spaces, notes and bibliography included.

Critical reviews must not exceed 10,000 characters including spaces and must be accompanied by a brief biographical note of the author, no longer than 10 lines.

The Editorial Board may consider justified exceptions when the nature of the work, the documentary apparatus or the relevance of the materials studied so require.

6. Manuscript Format

Files must be submitted in Microsoft Word-compatible format (.docx), in DIN A4 page size, with top and bottom margins of 2.5 cm and left and right margins of 3 cm.

The main text must be set in Times New Roman, 12 pt, with 1.5 line spacing. Notes must appear as footnotes, in Times New Roman, 10 pt, numbered consecutively. No headers or footers should be used, except for page numbering.

Do not use tabs at the beginning of paragraphs or manual word division at the end of lines. Section headings must be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals: 1., 1.1., 1.1.1. Authors are advised not to go beyond the third level of hierarchy.

Section and subsection titles should be written in lower case, except where capitalisation is required by spelling conventions, and should not end with a full stop. Italics should be used for emphasis. Underlining, sustained capitals and unjustified bold type should be avoided.

7. Abstracts, Keywords and Identification

Every article must include:

1. Title in the original language of the article and an English translation. If the article is written in English, a Spanish title must also be provided.
2. Two abstracts of 200 to 300 words: one in the language of the article and one in English. If the article is written in English, an abstract in Spanish must be included.
3. Between 5 and 7 keywords, separated by semicolons, in the language of the article and in English.
4. Full institutional affiliation, email address and ORCID identifier for all authors, included only in the identification file and in the platform metadata.

8. Quotations, Notes and Typographical Conventions

Quotations shorter than three lines should be incorporated into the main text within double quotation marks (“ ”). Quotations longer than three lines should be presented as a separate paragraph, with left indentation, in 11 pt type, without opening or closing quotation marks and with one line of spacing before and after.

If a superscript footnote number coincides with a punctuation mark, it should be placed before that punctuation mark.

Texts in Spanish must follow the spelling rules of the Real Academia Española. Texts in English must consistently follow either British or American usage. Texts in French or Italian must respect the spelling and typographical conventions of each language.

Double quotation marks should be used for quotations, and single quotation marks (‘ ’) for translations, equivalents or definitions within a quotation. If parentheses are required within parentheses, square brackets should be used.

Latin expressions included in the Diccionario de la lengua española should be written in roman type. Foreign words or expressions not adapted into Spanish should be written in italics, except for proper names, institutions, collections or titles that follow their own conventions.

The journal recommends the use of inclusive, clear and respectful language, compatible with academic precision and with the grammatical rules of the language used.

9. Citation System and Bibliographic References

ABATON uses the author-date system, also known as the Harvard system. Full bibliographic references must be included at the end of the article in an alphabetical list.

9.1. In-text Citations

In-text citations must include the author’s surname, year of publication and, where necessary, the cited page or pages in parentheses:

Examples:

• (Foucault 1970)
• (Foucault 1970, 99-100)
• According to Foucault (1970, 99-100)

When two authors are cited, their names should be joined by “and”:

• (Wegener and Petty 1994)
• (Wegener and Petty 1994, 25-26)

When a work has three or more authors, cite the first surname followed by et al.:

• (Kernis et al. 1993)
• Harris et al. (2001, 17)

Several publications cited within the same parentheses should be separated by semicolons:

• (Harris et al. 2001; Kernis et al. 1993; LeDoux 1985)

When several works by the same author published in the same year are cited, they should be distinguished by lower-case letters:

• (García Yebra 1991a)
• (García Yebra 1991b)

9.2. Bibliographic References

The bibliography must be arranged alphabetically by surname. When several works by the same author are included, they must be ordered chronologically. If several works were published in the same year, a lower-case letter must be added after the date.

Book

Surname(s), First name or initial. Year. Title of the Book. Place of publication: Publisher.

Example: García Yebra, Valentín. 1984. Teoría y práctica de la traducción. Madrid: Gredos.

Book Chapter

Surname(s), First name or initial. Year. “Title of the Chapter”. In First name Surname(s), ed./coord./dir., Title of the Book, pages. Place of publication: Publisher.

Example: Boekaerts, Monique. 2009. “La evaluación de las competencias de autorregulación del estudiante”. In Carlos Monereo, coord., PISA como excusa: repensar la evaluación para cambiar la enseñanza, 55-69. Barcelona: Graó.

Journal Article

Surname(s), First name or initial. Year. “Title of the Article”. Title of the Journal volume, no. issue: pages.

Example: Scruton, Roger. 1996. “The Eclipse of Listening”. The New Criterion 15, no. 3: 5-13.

Article with DOI

Where a DOI exists, it must be added at the end of the reference.

Example: Scruton, Roger. 1996. “The Eclipse of Listening”. The New Criterion 15, no. 3: 5-13. https://doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyyy

Electronic Resource

Surname(s), First name or initial. Year. “Title of the Resource”. Title of the Website or Publication. URL. Date of access when the content is unstable or may be modified.

Doctoral Thesis

Surname(s), First name or initial. Year. Title of the Thesis. Doctoral thesis, academic institution, place.

Review

Surname(s), First name or initial. Year. “Title of the Review”. Review of Title of the Book, by First name Surname(s). Title of the Journal volume: pages.

10. Images, Figures, Tables and Reproduction Permissions

Images must be inserted in the manuscript at the approximate point where they should appear, accompanied by the corresponding caption, and must also be submitted as separate files.

Images should preferably be submitted in TIFF or JPG format, with a minimum resolution of 300 dpi. Tables and graphs should be provided in editable format whenever possible.

Figures must be numbered consecutively as Figure 1, Figure 2, Figure 3, etc. References in the main text should use the abbreviated form: (fig. 1), (figs. 1-2).

Figure captions must be set in Times New Roman, 11 pt, and should include, where applicable:

1. Figure number.
2. Author or artist.
3. Title of the work in italics.
4. Date.
5. Technique, support or medium.
6. Dimensions.
7. Collection, institution or archive.
8. City.
9. Shelfmark, inventory number or catalogue reference.
10. Photographic credits, source and rights statement.

Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce images and for correctly crediting their source, authorship, ownership and conditions of use. Acceptance of an article does not exempt authors from this responsibility.

11. Critical Reviews

Reviews must provide a critical and well-argued assessment of the publication under review. Texts that are merely descriptive or limited to summarising the table of contents will not be accepted.

The heading of the review must include the following information:

1. Author, editor, coordinator or director of the publication.
2. Full title of the book or catalogue.
3. Place of publication.
4. Publisher.
5. Year.
6. Total number of pages.
7. Number and type of illustrations, where applicable.
8. ISBN.
9. Price, where relevant.

The Editorial Board will assess the thematic relevance of the reviewed book, the critical quality of the text, the competence of the reviewer and the absence of conflicts of interest.

12. Debates, Comments and Replies

The journal may accept comments, replies or scholarly discussions concerning articles previously published in ABATON, provided that they meet the criteria of academic rigour, intellectual respect and thematic relevance. These texts will be assessed by the Editorial Board and, where appropriate, submitted to external review.

13. Proposals for Special Issues

ABATON may receive proposals for special issues or thematic dossiers. Proposals must include:

1. Name, affiliation and brief CV of the guest editor or editors.
2. Provisional title of the special issue.
3. Summary of the topic, scholarly aims and justification of the proposal, with a maximum length of 750 words.
4. Indicative list of possible invited authors, with institutional affiliation and relevance to the topic.
5. Indicative list of possible external reviewers, with affiliation, email address and main research interests.

The Editorial Team will assess the proposal’s affinity with the journal’s scholarly scope, internal coherence, research relevance, capacity for internationalisation and editorial feasibility. Guest editors must follow ABATON’s general editorial procedure and will collaborate with the Editorial Board in disseminating the call for papers, coordinating the dossier and reviewing editorial materials.

14. Copyright, Open Access and Licence

ABATON is an open-access journal. Published content is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0), unless another condition is expressly indicated for third-party materials.

Publication of a work implies authorisation for its editing, reproduction, distribution and public communication through the journal’s scholarly and editorial channels and those of Ediciones Complutense. Any total or partial reproduction must properly cite the source of the published text.

Authors remain responsible for the content of their work and for the reproduction rights of images, documents or third-party materials included in the article.

15. Pre-submission Checklist

Before completing the submission in OJS, authors must check that:

1. The work is original, unpublished and not under consideration by another publication.
2. The manuscript fits the thematic scope of ABATON.
3. The three required files have been prepared: identification file, complete manuscript and anonymised manuscript.
4. The anonymised file contains no personal data or references that may identify authorship.
5. Title, abstract and keywords have been included in the language of the article and in English.
6. All authors have included affiliation, email address and ORCID in the metadata.
7. Citations and references follow ABATON’s author-date system.
8. Images have sufficient quality, complete captions and reproduction permissions where necessary.
9. Funding, conflicts of interest and authorship contribution have been declared where applicable.
10. The text complies with the spelling, typographical and formatting rules indicated.