CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture is an open access journal. This means that it uses a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access. Readers may freely read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles. This journal is covered under the CC BY-NC-ND license.

Who Can Submit?

Anyone may submit an original article to be considered for publication in CLCWeb, provided he or she owns the copyright to the work being submitted or is authorized by the copyright owner or owners to submit the article. Authors are the initial owners of the copyrights to their works (an exception in the non-academic world to this might exist if the authors have, as a condition of employment, agreed to transfer copyright to their employer).

This journal does not require author processing charges or other publication fees.

General Submission Rules

Articles published in the journal are double-blind peer reviewed. Upon publication articles are assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) URL, and are indexed—among others—in the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, Scopus (Elsevier), and Clarivate Analytics’ ISI Arts and Humanities Citation Index.

CLCWeb articles should be in the 6000-12000 word range (including the article's abstract, works cited, and the bio of the author). Book review articles (with a minimum two books linked thematically) should be in the 3000-4000 word range. Single-book reviews should be in the 750-1200 word range. All submissions should follow the Modern Language Association of America (MLA) style and format.

Submitted articles cannot have been previously published, nor be forthcoming in an archival journal or book (print or electronic). Please note: "publication" in a working-paper series does not constitute prior publication. In addition, by submitting material to CLCWeb, the author is stipulating that the material is not currently under review at another journal (electronic or print) and that he or she will not submit the material to another journal (electronic or print) until the completion of the editorial decision process at CLCWeb. If you have concerns about the submission terms for CLCWeb, please contact the editors.

Formatting Requirements

• Do not include a title page or abstract. (Begin the document with the introduction; a title page, including the abstract, will be added to your paper by the editors.)
• Do not include page numbers, headers, or footers. These will be added by the editors.
• Write your article in English (unless the journal expressly permits non-English submissions).
• Submit your manuscript, including tables, figures, appendices, etc., as a single file (Word, WordPerfect, RTF, or PDF files are accepted).
• Page size should be 8.5 x 11-inches.
• All margins (left, right, top and bottom) should be 1.5 inches (3.8 cm), including your tables and figures.
• Single space your text.
• Use a single column layout with both left and right margins justified.
• Font:
  1. Main Body—12 pt. Times or the closest comparable font available
  2. Footnotes—10 pt. Times or the closest comparable font available
• If figures are included, use high-resolution figures, preferably encoded as encapsulated PostScript (eps).
• Copyedit your manuscript.
• When possible, there should be no pages where more than a quarter of the page is empty space.

Additional Guidelines

Please use the  MLA in-text citation format.

In case a short title must be provided in the citation (i.e., if more than one source by the same author is cited in the essay), then the following additional guidelines must be observed for sources in languages other than English:

If the source language is written using a Latin alphabet, write the short title in the original language. Example:

In another book, Foucault (Les Mots 236) writes...

If the source language is written using a non-Latin alphabet, transcribe the short title in English (rather than write it in the original language). Example:

 Later, some Bolsheviks maintained (Lenin, "Chto delat" 24) that...

It is the author's obligation to provide complete references with the necessary information. After the last sentence of your submission, please insert a line break—not a page break—and begin your references on the same page, if possible. References should have margins that are both left and right- justified. You may choose not to right-justify the margin of one or more items if the spacing looks too awkward. Please follow the MLA style guide for listing your references .

To list sources in languages other than English, which use the latin alphabet: write titles in the foreign language, followed by a translation in parenthesis. The traslation in the parenthesis should not be italicized, in bold or in quotation marks. Leave names of journals and publishers untranslated. Example:

Baudelaire, Charles. Les Fleurs du Mal (The flowers of evil). Gallimard, 1972.

To list sources in the Works Cited page in languages other than English, which use a non-latin alphabet: write titles in transcription (and not the foreign-language title). After the transcribed title, include the English translation of the title in parenthesis. The translation in the parenthesis should neither be italicized nor in quotation marks. Transcribe, rather than translate, names of journals and publishers. Example:

Hever, Hannan. "Mapa shel khol: mesifrut ivrit lesifrut yisraelit" (A map of everydayness: from Hebrew literature to Israeli literature). Teoriya ubikoret, vol. 20, 2002, pp. 165-190.

Indent all paragraphs except those following a section heading. An indent should be at least 2 em-spaces.

Do not insert extra space between paragraphs of text with the exception of long quotations, theorems, propositions, special remarks, etc. These should be set off from the surrounding text by additional space above and below.

Don't "widow" or "orphan" text (i.e., ending a page with the first line of a paragraph or beginning a page with the last line of a paragraph).

All text should be left-justified (i.e., flush with the left margin—except where indented). Where possible, it should also be right-justified (i.e., flush with the right margin). "Where possible" refers to the quality of the justification. For example, LaTeX and TeX do an excellent job of justifying text. Word does a reasonable job. But some word processors do a lousy job (e.g., they achieve right justification by inserting too much white space within and between words). We prefer flush right margins. However, it is better to have jagged right margins than to have flush right margins with awkward intra- and inter-word spacing. Make your decision on whichever looks best.

All submissions must be in English. Except for common foreign words and phrases, the use of foreign words and phrases should be avoided.

Authors should use proper, standard English grammar. The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White (now in its fourth edition) is the "standard" guide, but other excellent guides (e.g., The Chicago Manual of Style, University of Chicago Press) exist as well.

Colored text

Set the font color to black for the majority of the text. We encourage authors to take advantage of the ability to use color in the production of figures, maps, etc., however, you need to appreciate that this will cause some of your readers problems when they print the document on a black & white printer. For this reason, you are advised to avoid the use of colors in situations where their translation to black and white would render the material illegible or incomprehensible.

Please ensure that there are no colored mark-ups or comments in the final version, unless they are meant to be part of the final text. (You may need to "accept all changes" in track changes or set your document to "normal" in final markup.)

Whenever possible use italics to indicate text you wish to emphasize rather than underlining it. The use of color to emphasize text is discouraged.

Except, possibly, where special symbols are needed, use Times or the closest comparable font available. If you desire a second font, for instance for headings, use a sans serif font (e.g., Arial or Computer Modern Sans Serif).

The main body of text should be set in 12pt. Avoid the use of fonts smaller than 6pt.

Whenever possible, foreign terms should be set in italics rather than underlined.

Headings (e.g., start of sections) should be distinguished from the main body text by their fonts or by using small caps. Use the same font face for all headings and indicate the hierarchy by reducing the font size. There should be space above and below headings.

The font for the main body of text must be black and, if at all possible, in Times or closest comparable font available.

Whenever possible, titles of books, movies, etc., should be set in italics rather than underlined.

Footnotes should appear at the bottom of the page on which they are referenced rather than at the end of the paper. Footnotes should be in 10 pt. Times or closest comparable font available, they should be single spaced, and there should be a footnote separator rule (line). Footnote numbers or symbols in the text must follow, rather than precede, punctuation. Excessively long footnotes are probably better handled in an appendix. All footnotes should be left and right-justified (i.e., flush with the right margin), unless this creates awkward spacing.

To the extent possible, tables and figures should appear in the document near where they are referenced in the text. Large tables or figures should be put on pages by themselves. Avoid the use of overly small type in tables. In no case should tables or figures be in a separate document or file. All tables and figures must fit within 1.5" margins on all sides (top, bottom, left and right) in both portrait and landscape view.

Roman letters used in mathematical expressions as variables should be italicized. Roman letters used as part of multi-letter function names should not be italicized. Whenever possible, subscripts and superscripts should be a smaller font size than the main text.

Short mathematical expressions should be typed inline. Longer expressions should appear as display math. Also expressions using many different levels (e.g., such as the fractions) should be set as display math. Important definitions or concepts can also be set off as display math.

Equations should be numbered sequentially. Whether equation numbers are on the right or left is the choice of the author(s). However, you are expected to be consistent in this.

Symbols and notation in unusual fonts should be avoided. This will not only enhance the clarity of the manuscript, but it will also help insure that it displays correctly on the reader's screen and prints correctly on her printer. When proofing your document under PDF pay particular attention to the rendering of the mathematics, especially symbols and notation drawn from other than standard fonts.