GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS
We invite the following individuals to collaborate with us: art historians * cultural anthropologists * conservators * cultural studies scholars * museum curators * religious scholars * theologians * art theorists from Polish and foreign academic centres, museums, including diocesan museums, church institutions and organisations researching sacred art of the last two centuries in Poland and worldwide.
We also encourage artists inspired by Christianity, who seek the sacred in art and create their works on commission from the Church, for sacred interiors or personal contemplation, to publish in Sacrum et Decorum. We dedicate the ‘Miscellanea’ section to artists, where essays are published as a form of self-presentation of their work and reflections on art and the Christian religion.
We are guided by the principles of diversity, inclusivity and equality in academic discourse. Our scope of interest encompasses all topics relating to sacred art of the 19th–21st centuries, as it pertains to the Christian faith across all its denominations and branches.
We do not discriminate against those submitting articles, editing or reviewing texts on the basis of their identity or personal characteristics, such as: ethnic origin, age, denomination, gender identity, sexual orientation, nationality, citizenship, religion, beliefs or degree of ability. Given the sensitive nature of sacred art, we ask those submitting articles, as well as reviewers and readers of our journal, to show respect for every religion and denomination, to refrain from offending religious sensibilities, and to treat religious symbols and places commonly regarded as sacred with respect.
GENERAL INFORMATION
Sacrum et Decorum accepts submissions of articles in Polish or English on an ongoing basis via the OJS platform or by email to sacrumetdecorum@ur.edu.pl.
We only accept original, previously unpublished articles, reports, essays, reviews and source materials that have not been submitted to other publications, relating to:
* Christian sacred art of the 19th-21st centuries
* works inspired by the Christian religion
* metaphysical issues in sacred art
* research exploring Christian sacred art of the 19th-21st centuries in a broad cultural context
* works that make a significant contribution to the development of Polish and/or global research on sacred art of the 19th-21st centuries
We do not charge any fees to authors.
We ask authors to familiarise themselves with the guidelines and ethical principles set out below, which apply to Sacrum et Decorum, and to adhere to them.
AUTHOR DECLARATIONS
Submission of the text is tantamount to:
* all authors declaring responsibility for all aspects of the work;
* an assurance that all stages of the research have been conducted in a transparent and ethical manner, in accordance with the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity;
* a declaration that the work does not infringe the copyright of third parties.
Submission of the text implies consent to subject it to an anti-plagiarism procedure and double-blind peer review. A description of our review process can be found here.
In the event of controversial comments related to a published article, we provide authors with the opportunity to respond to them, and all texts contributing to the discussion are marked accordingly.
Please complete, sign and attach the following documents to your article:
* a statement of authenticity and authorship of the submitted text,
* a statement of possible participation of other authors,
* consent to the publication of personal data.
ETHICS
We expect authors to read and accept the Sacrum et Decorum ethical guidelines, which are available here.
ORCID
The editorial board of Sacrum et Decorum uses the permanent digital identifier ORCID® as a system for standardising authorship. We require all submitting authors to provide their ORCID identifiers. In order to promote discoverability and credibility, these are published in the final version of the article.
SUBMITTING AN ARTICLE
Articles can be submitted to four sections: ‘Studies’ (original scientific articles subject to double-blind peer review), ‘Materials’ (scientific articles reviewed in a double-blind mode, whose value lies primarily in presenting a new research problem), 'Miscellanea' (internally reviewed essays by artists inspired by the sacred or creating works for religious and sacred purposes), ‘In memoriam’ (internally peer-reviewed texts devoted to deceased artists and researchers of Christian sacred art). Sometimes there is also a separate section containing reports, reviews and source materials (internally peer-reviewed).
* sent exclusively to the editorial office of Sacrum et Decorum
* edited in accordance with the principles of publishing ethics and The Chicago Manual of Style.
Manuscripts may not be submitted elsewhere while under consideration by Sacrum et Decorum. If a manuscript contains personal information, a written statement of consent must be provided from each person quoted. Consent sent by email is acceptable.
COVER LETTER
Each manuscript submitted must be accompanied by a cover letter. It should be concise and explain why the content of the article is relevant and why it fits the scope of the journal. Please confirm that neither the manuscript nor any part of its content is currently under consideration or being published in another journal.
The editors of Sacrum et Decorum do not require all authors of a research paper to sign the cover letter at the time of submission, nor do they impose any order on the list of authors.
The author submitting a text with several co-authors is solely responsible for communicating with the editors of Sacrum et Decorum and for managing communication between co-authors. Before submitting the work, the submitting author is required to ensure that all authors are included in the list of authors, that the order has been agreed upon by all authors, and that all authors are aware that the work has been submitted.
Submission of a paper to Sacrum et Decorum means that all listed authors have agreed to its content. The submitting author is responsible for ensuring that this agreement has been reached and for managing all communication between the publication and all co-authors, before and after publication.
EDITORIAL REQUIREMENTS
TEXT LENGTH: Scientific articles should be between 20,000 and 60,000 characters with spaces; reports, essays for the ‘Miscellanea’ section, memoirs from the ‘In memoriam’ series, reviews of books or artistic events, and other source materials should be between 5,000 and 15,000 characters with spaces.
ABSTRACT: maximum 900 characters with spaces, should include the thesis of the article, a description of the methodology, and information generally placing the problem in the context of previous research.
KEYWORDS: five or six keywords
FORMAT: standardised text, Times New Roman font, 12 points, 1.5 line spacing, paragraphs with 1.25 cm indents. Article title consisting of a maximum of 20 words, text in a single column.
QUOTATIONS: Quotations in the main text up to two lines long should be given in quotation marks, without italics. Quotations longer than two lines should be given in a separate paragraph, without quotation marks and without italics, in 10-point font. Quotations within quotations in quotation marks should be enclosed in «» marks. Quotations from verse texts should be given with the original versification.
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND FOOTNOTES: For submissions in English, please adhere to all the guidelines set out in The Chicago Manual of Style. For texts submitted in Polish, please follow the same rules, but with Polish punctuation in the bibliography.
ILLUSTRATIONS: please provide in separate files in .jpg, .tif or .pdf format, in sufficiently high resolution (minimum 1000 pixels in width/height or 300 dpi resolution or higher). Illustrations should be numbered and captions should be sent in a separate file according to the following format: name and surname of the author of the work in the photograph, name of the work, place and year of creation, place of storage, name and surname of the author of the photograph or source of its origin. The author or authors of the text are responsible for securing the rights to reproduction.
ABBREVIATIONS: should be defined in brackets the first time they appear in the abstract, main text, footnotes or illustration captions, and then used consistently. Ensure consistency of abbreviations throughout the article.
INFORMATION ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S): the name, surname, title or academic degree, place of work, contact details – e-mail address, work telephone number and ORCID number should be included below the text.
The editorial board reserves the right to make abbreviations and changes to published texts.
We require authors to follow the reviewers' comments and include them in the final version of the article, which the editorial board submits to the reviewers for approval.
The time for responding to the reviewers' suggestions and making the appropriate corrections cannot exceed 14 days from the date of receipt of the review by the author.
CHECKING THE TEXT BEFORE SUBMISSION
Authors are requested to check that their text meets the following criteria. Texts that do not meet the editorial requirements may be rejected.
• The article has not been published and has not been submitted to another journal or publisher.
• The text has been saved in doc or docx format.
• The article has been edited in accordance with the editorial guidelines.
• The affiliation specifying the place where the author worked or studied while working on the text and the ORCID number, if possible, have been entered.
• Each illustration is prepared as a separate .jpg, .tif or .pdf file. The author declares that they will ensure the rights to their reproduction. Captions for the illustrations are provided in a separate .doc or .docx file.
• The author has prepared an abstract, keywords, and a bibliography (in Chicago format, with DOI numbers, if possible). Entering them in the appropriate fields will be necessary to complete the article submission process.
• The author grants the publisher a non-exclusive and royalty-free licence (CC BY 4.0) to use the text.
COPYRIGHT
The author grants a non-exclusive and royalty-free licence (CC BY 4.0) for the use of the text in Sacrum et Decorum, retains unlimited copyright, but undertakes to indicate the place of first publication when reusing the article (licence agreement available for download).
SELF-ARCHIVING
We encourage authors to archive the published version of their article on their websites or in academic repositories, providing bibliographic details (especially the DOI number) that confirm the fact of publication in the journal.
PUBLICATION OF THE ARTICLE
Once accepted, the manuscript will undergo professional proofreading, editing in English or Polish, final corrections, pagination, and publication on the website. The editors of Sacrum et Decorum reserve the right to make final decisions regarding the style and size of illustrations.
Table of contents: Supplementary materials, Acknowledgements, Funding statement, Author contributions, Conflict of interest, Data availability, Ethical approval, References.
Data availability: Authors must include a statement on data availability with all submitted manuscripts; for more information, see the section on Material and data availability.
TIMELINES
* Average time for initial text assessment: 30 days
* Average time for article review: 30 days
* Average waiting time for text publication: 90 days
