Manuscript Preparation Guidelines

These guidelines and instructions are for all authors submitting manuscripts for publication by Books@Atla Open Press. Unsolicited manuscripts are not accepted but must be accepted first as part of an Association or Scholarly Edition. Submission of a book proposal is required prior to acceptance for publication as a Scholarly Edition. For information about submitting a Scholarly Edition proposal, please visit the submissions page.

File Format

  • Atla Open Press only accepts submissions in Microsoft Word (DOCX), Open/LibreOffice (ODT) and rich text (RTF) formats. 
  • Your manuscript file should only include the text of your manuscript. Please do not include any extraneous material such as running headers for each chapter, page numbers, drop-caps, chapter headers beyond the title, etc. These items will be incorporated into the book during the final formatting.

Typeface

  • Only Unicode fonts will be accepted (this includes Times New Roman, Arial, and most common fonts found in Microsoft Office and other major suites; consult a full list of Unicode fonts if you are unsure whether your fonts are Unicode-compliant). 
  • SBL Hebrew and SBL Greek, both freely available, are preferred for those languages. 
  • If specialized fonts are necessary to your manuscript, please state this at the time of submission. In that case, the author will be required to provide fonts for production and publication and also to supply proof that the fonts are available for this use via an open license, or else that permissions have been granted through a purchased license agreement or otherwise obtained from the owner.

Headings

  • Headings of different levels must be clearly distinguished by standard means, such as indentation, size, use of bold/italics, etc. 
  • During the final stages of production, all headings will be formatted in accord with our house style, but we must be able to discern heading levels accurately from the formatting of the original manuscript.

Visual Materials

Please consult our Visual Materials Guidelines for full details on acceptable file types, file naming, and formatting requirements for any photos, charts, tables, graphs, maps, and screenshots taken from web sites or software applications that will be part of your manuscript.

Citation Style

  • Atla Open Press uses the Chicago Manual of Style and all references should conform to this style using the in-line author-date format. 
  • The author is responsible for ensuring that all required bibliographic content is included and that all citations correctly conform to the CMoS. For further guidance, please refer to the Atla Open Press Citation Guidelines. 
  • Manuscripts submitted for publication that have missing bibliographic data or that have excessive errors in formatting will be returned to the author for revision. It is not the responsibility of any editor or Atla staff to complete citations or format notes. 

Endnotes

  • Atla Open Press publications use endnotes, not footnotes. 
  • These endnotes are discursive, or substantive; that is, they “amplify the text” (CMoS 14.39) and do not contain source citations (which remain in-line within the body of the text). Please deploy endnotes sparingly, and only when the material is truly necessary but cannot be incorporated into the main text.
  • Because the Press’s current editing system (Google Documents) does not have an endnotes feature, documents submitted via Google Drive will have footnotes during editing. During production and layout, however, these footnotes will be converted to endnotes.

House Style Guidelines

All authors must consult Atla Open Press House Style Guidelines prior to submitting their manuscript. Authors are required to comply with the rules and interpretations offered there. The House Style Guidelines also provide instructions on constructing an author biography as well as use of the name “Atla” in historical contexts.