Ohio Valley History Submission Guide

Ohio Valley History is a quarterly journal committed to publishing the best scholarship on the history and culture of the Ohio Valley and the Upper South from the 16th through the 21st centuries. The journal is a collaboration of The Filson Historical Society, the Cincinnati Museum Center, and the University of Cincinnati. It is the nation's largest regional journal with close to 6,000 subscribers.

This brief guide for authors and abbreviated style manual is intended for use by contributors to OVH.

For the most part, we follow the Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition or above. Where options exist in the Chicago Manual of Style, we indicate OVH's preferred use. We suggest that authors refer to previous issues of OVH to get a sense of our format and style. 

To facilitate our policy of anonymous manuscript review, the author's name and address (both postal and email) should appear only on a separate title page. Be sure that the title also appears on the first page of text. 

Please send three high-quality hard copies on standard 8 ½ by 11 inch paper and one electronic copy of the manuscript. The file must be in IBM format, Microsoft Word 95 or later versions. We cannot accept Macintosh diskettes. The lines should be double-spaced and unjustified, including quotations and notes, which should be at the end of the text. Articles should not exceed 7,500 words in length, including endnotes. NOTE: Use omnibus endnotes (see below). Research Notes and Review Essay submissions should be approximately half the length of articles.

Please include a working postal address, with telephone, fax, and email information for home or office.

Submit your manuscript and any correspondence regarding editorial matters to: 

Christopher Phillips, Senior Editor
Ohio Valley History 
Department of History
P.O. Box 210373
University of Cincinnati
Cincinnati, OH 45221-0373
Tel.: 513-556-5001
Fax: 513-556-7901
E-mail: phillicr@email.uc.edu

Web sites: Cincinnati Museum Center; or www.filsonhistorical.org/editinfo.html; or www.artsci.uc.edu/history/resources/index.html.

If your manuscript is currently in a justified format, please un-justify it before saving and printing your final copy. Before your essay can be typeset to fit OVH format, it must have ragged right margins. Please do not make changes to your electronic file that do not appear on your hard copy.

We encourage you to provide illustrations and can accept either glossy photographs or 300 dpi TIF files. Supply each illustration with a caption, accompanied by a source line and such acknowledgments as are required. You are responsible for obtaining the necessary permissions to publish the illustrations.

Journal style calls for omnibus endnotes; that is, one endnote per paragraph. The total number of endnotes thus should not exceed the number of paragraphs. Quotations should be placed first in the endnote and in exact order of appearance. Citations, in exact order, should follow the quotations. Please ensure the accuracy of your quotations and citations. They must be verified before submitting the article. Quotations from books and articles should cite the specific page(s):

¹Stephen Aron, How the West Was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to Henry Clay (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 141.

²Arthur Rolston, "A Tale of Two States: Producerism and Constitutional Reform in Antebellum Kentucky and Ohio," Ohio Valley History 5 (Summer 2005), 42.

Quotations longer than five lines should be set off from the text by indenting both margins five spaces, but not by single spacing. 

For books, give the name of the author(s) or editor(s) in normal order; the complete title of the work in italics; and, within parentheses, the number of volumes (if more than one), and the place of publication, publisher, and date of publication. For place of publication, use the two-letter postal abbreviation for states. Finally, include the page numbers you are citing. Do not use p, pp or pg before the page number.

Examples: 

³Kim M. Gruenwald, River of Enterprise: The Commercial Origins of Regional Identity in the Ohio Valley, 1790-1850 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 156-58.

⁴R. Carlyle Buley, The Old Northwest: Pioneer Period, 1815-1840, 2 vols. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1950), 2: 360-61.

In edited volumes:

⁵Julian P. Boyd, ed., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 31 vols. (Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1950-2003), 12:171-201. 

⁶Boyd, Papers of Jefferson, 10:180. 

⁷Elizabeth A. Perkins, "Distinctions and Partitions Amongst Us: Identity and Interaction in the Revolutionary Ohio Valley," in Contact Points: American Frontiers from the Mohawk Valley to the Mississippi, 1750-1830, eds. Andrew R.L. Cayton and Fredericka J. Teute (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 205-35.

⁸William C. Davis and Meredith L. Swentor, eds., Bluegrass Confederate: The Headquarters Diary of Edward O. Guerrant (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999), 6-8. 

In reprints or second editions, include the original date of publication: 

⁹Levi Coffin, Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the Reputed President of the Underground Railroad (1876; rep., New York: A.M. Kelley, 1968), 22. 

¹⁰Eugene D. Genovese, The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and Society of the Slave South (1961; 2nd ed., Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1989), 35.

In subsequent citations, use ibid. if the citation immediately following is the same, or ibid. with a different page number if the citation is identical except for the page reference. If other citations intervene, use the short title format.

Examples: 

¹¹Gruenwald, River of Enterprise, 17. 

¹²Ibid. 

¹³Ibid., 21. 

¹⁴Buley, Old Northwest, 1: 95. 

For articles, give the author's name, article title, journal, date (month and year), and page reference. Months should be as follows: Jan., Feb., Mar., Apr., May, June, July, Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov., and Dec. Use short title format for subsequent, nonconsecutive citations. 

Examples: 

¹⁵Michael Bowen, "Addition Through Subtraction: Robert Taft, the Labor Vote, and the Ohio Senate Election of 1950," Ohio Valley History 5 (Fall 2005), 21-42. 

¹⁶Gary J. Kornblith, "Rethinking the Coming of the Civil War: A Counterfactual Exercise," Journal of American History 90 (June 2003), 76-105.

¹⁷Bowen, "Addition Through Subtraction," 25. 

Treat dissertations like books, except place the title within quotation marks and include the type of thesis and the institution where it was submitted within the parentheses containing publication data. 

Example: 

¹⁸Bridget Ford, "American Heartland: The Sentimentalization of Religion and Race Relations in Cincinnati and Louisville, 1820-1860" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Davis, 2002), 101-21.

For newspapers, the name of the paper should be italicized. If the city is not part of the title it should be indicated, along with the state, if needed, immediately after (within parentheses) the newspaper title. Section, page, or column should not be included.

Examples: 

¹⁹Western Star (Lebanon, OH), March 5, 1821. 

²⁰Kentucky Gazette (Lexington), Oct. 1, 1849. 

²¹Ibid., Oct. 12, 1849. 

²²Western Star (Lebanon, OH), June 22, 1830. 

²³New York Times, May 27, 1950. 

For manuscript collections, the intent is, as with books and articles, to give the author, date, and place of the item cited. This requires the name of the collection containing the item and the location of the collection. The name of the repository is abbreviated in subsequent citations. The location of the repository is given only in the first citation unless required for the sake of clarity. 

Examples: 

²⁴James Speed to John Speed, February 9, 1831, Speed Family Miscellaneous Papers, The Filson Historical Society, Louisville, Kentucky [hereafter FHS]. 

²⁵Sidney Maxwell to J.H. Fisher, April 6, 1891, Sidney Maxwell Papers, Box 1, Folder 4, Cincinnati Historical Society Library, Cincinnati Museum Center [hereafter CHSL].

²⁶James Speed to Mary L. Booth, January 10, 1863, Speed Family Miscellaneous Papers, FHS.

²⁷Commercial Club of Cincinnati, Minutes, December 24, 1884, Commercial Club of Cincinnati Papers, 1880-1973, CHSL.

Finally, in the miscellaneous category, please observe the following:

1. No apostrophe is used in dates such as the 1790s or the 1830s
2. The possessive of proper names ending in "s" requires an "'s" (thus, John Adams's presidency)
3. Both hyphens and capital letters are used sparingly. Thus, we do not capitalize words such as president or secretary of state unless they are used with a proper name (President Lincoln, Secretary of State Clay), nor do we capitalize words such as republic or state when they stand alone. 
4. Use spaces between the initials of persons (thus, J. Q. Adams), but not between U.S.
5. Periods and ends of sentences are followed by two spaces.

The Filson Historical Society
1310 South Third Street - Louisville, KY 40208
Phone: (502) 635-5083 Fax: (502) 635-5086