Submissions

Author Guidelines

Authors should submit their proposed manuscript online. We recommend that authors review the About the Journal page for our Open Access Policy first.

In submitting the manuscript the author agrees that the proposed manuscript: a) has been submitted only to JSRE; b) it is the author's original work; c) it does not reproduce any other previous published work, including the author's.

1. Registration:

Authors need to register. Please visit our Information for authors page prior to submitting, or if already registered authors can simply log-in and begin the 5 step process.

During registration authors will be asked to fill out a form giving details on their name, affiliation, address, email, phone, discipline and a short bio statement. This data is used for internal communication and enables authors to foster their personal presence on the web (e.g. the bio statement and affiliation will be available with every article they will publish with our journal). Authors can administrate or update their profile at any time.

During registration authors may choose also to take on the roles of readers and reviewers. Readers will be notified about any new publication with our journal. Reviewers are asked to fill out their review interests. Reviewers might be asked to peer review submissions with our journal from time to time. Reviewing support is very welcomed and is a great contribution to strengthen the community of authors with our journal.

2. Submission:

2.1 Authors start with choosing the section they want to submit their paper to; check the submissions checklist and agree to the terms of the Copyright notice.

2.2 The authors data is automatically imported from the registration database. If a submission has multiple authors, additional authors should be entered now. The author has to add title, metadata for indexing (academic discipline and sub-disciplines, keywords, methodology or approach, and language), and, if appropriate, supporting agencies. Authors can administrate or update the metadata (important for visibility on the web) during the review process until the article is published online.

2.3 Authors upload the first draft of their paper.  Authors should have a close look at Ensuring a Blind Review before submitting their draft papers. The authors of the document have to delete their names from the text, with "Author" and year used in the references and footnotes, instead of the authors' name, article title, etc.

3. Types of reviewing:

The Journal for the Study of Religious Experience operates a double- review process. In order not to disclose your identity to the peer-reviewers, you should remove all information that may refer to you in your first manuscript (including references and funding acknowledgements). You will need to include these references back in your final draft intended for publication. 

4. Title page:

• Title (Arial 16 Bold)
• Author's Name (Arial 12)
• Author's Contact, Affiliation and Mailing Address (Department, Institution, City, State, E-Mail, Phone), (Arial 11 italics)
• Abstract: 150 words
• 5 Keywords separated by semi-colon.

The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article online through online search engines.

The title should be concise, informative, and should contain words that readers might be searching for.

The abstract should reflect the content of the article. It should state the aim of the research, the key issue addressed, the approach, and the main conclusions drawn from the data presented in the article.

5. Style and layout:

• Text fully justified.
• Single-spaced, 12 point body text in Arial font with a line space between each paragraph.
• 3 levels of heading with a clear line space before each heading:

- Level 1 heading 14 point bold

- Level 2 heading 14 point bold  italic

- Level 3 heading 12 point bold

If authors use sections and subsections to structure their article, sections must be numbered with Arabic numerals (such as e.g.: 1. Introduction), and must be identified with section and sub-section numbers (e.g., 1.1. Subsection).

Manuscripts are accepted in English. British English spelling and punctuation are preferred. For example, use the British spelling for all words ending in -ise or -sation (scandalise, organisation), and use modelled and travelled for past-tense verbs rather than the American variants modeled and traveled. This also applies to adjectives (for example moveable vs movable), and nouns (license vs licence; theatre vs theater). When working in Word set the language to British English and activate the Spelling and Grammar icon within the Review tab.

Please use single quotation marks, except where a quotation is in a quotation. Long quotations of 40 words or more should be indented without quotation marks. Foreign words (except proper names) should be italicised. All numbers under one hundred are to be spelled out in words. This rule does not apply if the reference is to a specific quantity (i.e. 50 cm). Dates should be written in the form of the nineteenth century, not the 19th century. For decades, use 1920 not twenties.

Footnotes should be used instead of endnotes, and they should be in Arial 11 point. They should be numbered consecutively using Arabic numerals and should be typed at the bottom of the page to which they refer. Authors should place a line above the footnote, so that it is set off from the text. Please refrain from using footnotes as a substitute for the reference list which is at the end of the paper. Footnotes should only be used if the information provided is not suitable to include in the text.

6. Illustrations (tables, images, diagrams, charts etc.):

Illustrations must be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals (such as Table 1: Description of Table 1, or: Figure 2: Description of Figure 2). Text for tables should be italic 11 point, and italic 11 point caption should appear immediately below each figure, diagram, screenshot or table. Figures, diagrams and screenshots should be in colour jpg, tiff or eps format and of good quality. Illustrations should be inserted wherever they should appear in the text. Illustrations should not be inserted on separate pages, files or documents, or at the end of the document.

7. References:

The Journal for the Study of Religious Experience uses the Havard Referencing system. There are different versions of the Harvard referencing style. Authors should refer to the version of Pears, R. and Shields, G. (2016) Cite them right: the essential referencing guide. 10th rev. edn. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Reference citations are provided in the text, not in footnotes, following the author-date system (Surname, year) indicating the page where needed (Surname, year, page number). This concerns books, papers in journals, newspaper articles and other documents. For some examples of correct referencing see below. For multiple works by the same author in the text simply label them a and b within the same year (author, 2025a; author, 2025b). This does not apply to the same author with multiple works in different years (2024; 2025).

The Reference List should include only works cited in the text listed in alphabetical order. If electronically published and a doi (digital object identification) is provided add this to the reference list.

Journal article: Surname, Initial. (Year). 'Title of article', Journal Title, Vol(issue), pages. If in an electronic journal, add the doi:
Csordas, T. J. (1990). 'Embodiment as a paradigm for anthropology', Ethos, 18(1), pp.5-47. doi: 10.1525/eth.1990.18.1.02a00010.

Book: Surname, Initial. (Year). Title of book. Place of Publication: Publisher.
Hardy, A. (1979). The spiritual nature of man. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter within an edited book: Surname, Initial. (year) 'Title of chapter', in Surname, Initials. (ed.) Title of book. Place of Publication: Publisher, pages.

Internet document (general): Surname, Initials. (year) Title of document Available at: http://URL (Accessed: day Month year).

Newspaper article printed: Surname, Initials. (year), ‘Title of article’, The Name of the Newspaper, date, pages.

Electronic newspaper article not in print: Surname, Initials. (year), ‘Title of article’, The Name of the Newspaper, day month, Available at: URL (Accessed: day Month year).

Thesis: Surname, Initial(s). (year) Title of thesis. Unpublished doctoral dissertation or master's thesis. Name of Institution.

Conference (proceedings): Surname, Initials (ed.) (year) ‘Title of paper’, conference name. Institution, Place, days Month. Place of publication: Publisher.

Conference (paper in journal): Surname, Initials. (year) ‘Title of paper’ (from the Proceedings of the name of conference, Institution, Place, date of conference). Name of the journal, vol(issue), pages.

8. Word count limits:

Research Article: 7,500-10,000 words; Field Report: 2,000-4,000 words; Book Review: 400-700 words.

9. Max. upload filesize:

The max. upload filesize is 7 MB for server security reasons. If a submission has a lot of pictures enclosed, the pictures have to be resized to meet this upload limit.

10. Acknowledgements:

Acknowledgements should appear first at the end of your article prior to your References. Authors may acknowledge the relevant external assistance with the publication of the article and the support received by funding bodies. Research articles should have a funding acknowledgement in the form of a sentence as follows, "This work was supported by.." with the funding agency written out in full, followed by the grant number in square brackets. Where the research was supported by more than one agency, the different agencies should be separated by semi-colon. If you have any concerns that the provision of this information may compromise your anonymity dependent on the peer review policy of this journal outlined above, you can withhold this information until final accepted manuscript.

11. Permissions:

Authors are responsible for obtaining written permission from copyright holders, prior to submission, for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. The permission granted to the author by the copyright holder must be acknowledged in each illustration.

12. Publication Charges:

There are no publication charges for JSRE.