Submissions

🇮🇩 Pengiriman Makalah
🇰🇭 ការផ្ញើអត្ថបទ
🇲🇲 စာတမ်းတင်သွင်းခြင်း
🇹🇭 ส่งบทความ
🇻🇳 Quy trình gửi bài

Pratu welcomes original articles and reports on ongoing research on subjects relevant to the journal’s remit.

Submissions can be made in English or Southeast Asian languages, with accompanying correspondence in English, or another language used by a member of the editorial team or guest editor. The word length of the contribution must be given in a covering email and the author(s) must confirm that the work has not been published elsewhere in any form, nor is currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. (Please see exceptions to sharing the work elsewhere under the Creative Commons license.)

Articles and Reports

Articles submitted to Pratu are subject to review by external referees. Article typescripts should normally be 5,000-7,000 words (including footnotes). Papers should be the result of original research, include critical analysis of the subject and relevant literature (both regional and international literature is encouraged), and present a clearly defined argument for an academic readership.

Reports should normally be 1,000-2,000 words (including footnotes). Pratu is particularly interested to receive reports on current or recently completed fieldwork undertaken by the contributor. Reports may describe archaeological surveys and excavations, iconographic surveys and material from museum collections, and conservation, curatorial or other exhibition-related work. Reports should present new data, and provide a summative account written in succinct language. Extensive interpretation or critical analysis is not expected.

Texts should be submitted by email to pratujournal@soas.ac.uk in two formats, as a Word document and as a PDF. All submissions should be labelled ‘Pratu article/report submission’ in the email subject box.

Abstract

A brief abstract (maximum 250 words) appears at the beginning of each article or report. Authors must provide an abstract in the language of the article; abstract translations are also welcomed.

Institutional affiliation

Author names should appear after the title, followed by an institutional affiliation where appropriate. Authors are invited to give their name in the form that they would like it to appear in the finished article, with respect to the sequence of given name, family name, other names and initials, as desired. Please indicate the name by which your work should be cited.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments should be brief, written in the first person, and appear as an unnumbered first footnote, e.g. “An earlier version of this essay was presented at the annual meeting of the Association of Asian Studies, Toronto, March 30, 2011. I would like to thank Juliane Borchert and Rajini Thomas for their helpful comments.”

Biography

Authors should include in the final submission a biography of no more than 150 words written in the third person.

Article Text – Style and Formatting

The guidance below on formatting text, spelling, quotations and citations should cover the most pertinent issues concerning style. If an issue relating to style is not covered below, please refer to The Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition) where possible, because Pratu follows this, accommodating Southeast Asian conventions where appropriate. If issues relating to style remain at the time of article submission, please ask a member of the editorial team who will help to resolve your query.

Formatting

Articles should be in a Unicode-compliant font to ensure that diacritics and other scripts are retained, e.g. Arial, Calibri. Multiple fonts should not be used.

Text should be 12 point and double-spaced. Block quotes and footnotes are single-spaced. Do not indent for paragraphs and do not give any right-hand alignment. Paragraphs should be separated by one blank line.

Italics

Italics for emphasis should be used sparingly. Seldom should an entire sentence be italicized and never a whole passage. Titles of books should be italicized, not underlined.

Spelling

Follow British spelling. Consult The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) where possible, or check the free Cambridge English Dictionary online: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/.

Non-English words

As a general rule, non-English words are italicised, unless they have become more common in English usage and appear in the OED. Accents in non-English words should be maintained on capital letters e.g. École, Śāstra, Žižek.

A phrase or word may be provided in the original language for clarification. It should be italicised and placed in parentheses after the English equivalent, or the non-English term may appear first, in italics, followed by a gloss in parentheses. No quotation marks are needed.

Original non-English-language titles and translations of titles appear in parentheses and are treated as titles, whether or not they represent published translations, e.g.:

Ang’s Les êtres surnaturels dans la religion populaire khmère (The Supernatural in Khmer Folk Religion) examines the….

Sanskrit and Pali words are ordinarily italicised throughout, the main exception being proper nouns. However, certain words are now found in the OED and should not normally be italicised e.g. mandala, dharma, dhoti. Diacritics should be used with Sanskrit and Pali terms, following the IAST system. Spellings should follow the Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary or The Pali Text Society’s Pali-English Dictionary, as appropriate.

Please contact the editorial team for guidance relating to other ancient languages.

Southeast Asian scripts should appear in their original form and in romanised transliteration or phonetic transcription, depending on the article context. The following provides language-specific guidance on fonts, dictionaries, and transliteration standards for use with Pratu submissions. Guidance for additional Southeast Asian languages will be added as the need arises: 

For Bahasa Indonesia words, authors are requested to use the same Unicode-compliant font used for the English-language content, e.g. Arial, Calibri. Spellings should follow the Cambridge English-Indonesian Dictionary.

Burmese words should appear in Burmese script and in romanised transliteration or phonetic transcription, depending on the article context. Authors are requested to use the Unicode-compliant font ‘Myanmar Text’ provided with Microsoft Word. Spellings of Burmese words should follow the အင်္ဂလိပ်-မြန်မာ အဘိဓာန် [English-Myanmar Dictionary] (မြန်မာစာအဖွဲ့ ဦးစီးဌာန [Department of the Myanmar Language Commission], 2014). A transliteration standard for modern Burmese will be decided in the future, however in the meantime please contact the editorial team. 

Khmer words should appear in Khmer script and in romanised transliteration or phonetic transcription, depending on the article context. Authors are encouraged to use the Unicode-compliant font Khmer OS Siemreap. Contributors using fonts other than this should consult the editorial team in advance. Spellings of Khmer words should follow the Cambodian-English Dictionary by Robert Headley Jr. et al (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1977). For transliteration of modern Khmer, see Michel Antelme, “Note on the Transliteration of Khmer,” Udaya 3 (2002): 1–16. Proper names are the exception to this rule, and should appear as in common usage (e.g. Phnom Penh, Sihanouk).

Thai words should appear in Thai script followed by romanised transliteration or phonetic transcription, depending on the article context. Authors are encouraged to use the Unicode-compliant font Cordia New. Spellings of Thai words should follow the Cambridge English-Thai Dictionary. For transliteration of modern Thai, follow the Royal Institute of Thailand’s principles issued in 1999, with exceptions made for proper names. For further guidance check: https://dictionary.orst.go.th/.

For Vietnamese words, authors are requested to use the same Unicode-compliant font used for the English-language content, e.g. Arial, Calibri. Spellings should follow the Cambridge English-Vietnamese Dictionary. 

If the above dictionaries do not contain the words required, please consult the SEAlang Library for additional resources.

Quotations

Quotations of more than 50 words should be indented as single-spaced block quotations. Overly long quotations should be avoided.

Double quotation marks should be used for quotations regardless of the type of quotation marks used in the original source. Single quotation marks should be used for key terms and problematic terms.

Words omitted from quotations are indicated by ellipsis points (three spaced periods). Ellipses points are not used before the first word of a quotation, even if the beginning of the original sentence has been omitted. Nor are they used after the last word of a quotation. Capitalisation may be silently altered, if necessary.

Citations – Footnotes and References List

Citations appear as short-form footnotes, and a References list.

Short-form footnotes contain the name by which the author is cited, a short version of the publication’s title (excluding the subtitle) and a page number or page range.

The References list should only include works referred to in the article text or figure captions. It is sequenced alphabetically by author and formatted with a hanging indent. DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) for the cited version of the publication should be added where possible. DOIs may be identified at www.crossref.org and checked at www.doi.org.

The following gives examples of how to cite publication types that are commonly encountered, in both the footnote and the References list formats.

Book

For a footnote:

  1. Tambiah, World Conqueror and World Renouncer, 25.
  2. Swearer, Buddhist World of Southeast Asia, 82–87.
  3. Miksic and Goh, Ancient Southeast Asia, 407–9.

For the References list:

Miksic, John N., and Geok Yian Goh. Ancient Southeast Asia. London: Routledge, 2017. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315641119.

Swearer, Donald K. The Buddhist World of Southeast Asia. 2nd ed. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2010.

Tambiah, S.J. World Conqueror and World Renouncer: A Study of Buddhism and Polity in Thailand against a Historical Background. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511558184.

Edited and translated books

For a footnote:

  1. Mus, India Seen from the East, 25–26.
  2. Coedès, The Indianized States of Southeast Asia, 10.

For the References list:

Coedès, George. The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. Edited by Walter F. Vella. Translated by Susan Brown Cowing. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1968. Originally published in French as Histoire ancienne des états hindouisés d’Extrême-Orient, 3rd ed. (Paris: Éditions E. de Boccard, 1964). 

Mus, Paul. India Seen from the East. Translated by I.W. Mabbett. Edited by I.W. Mabbett and D.P. Chandler. 2nd ed. Caulfield: Monash University Press, 2011. Originally published in French as “Cultes indiens et indigènes au Champa” (Bulletin de l’Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient 33 (1933): 367–410). 

Section in an edited book; essay in an exhibition catalogue; paper in a conference proceedings volume

For a footnote:

  1. Bellina et al., “Development of Coastal Polities in the Upper Thai-Malay Peninsula,” 85–87.
  2. Brown, “Dvāravatī Sculpture,” 190.
  3. Klokke, “Art Historical Evidence for the Building Phases at Borobudur,” 16.

For the References list:

Bellina, Bérénice, et al. “Development of Coastal Polities in the Upper Thai-Malay Peninsula.” In Before Siam: Essays in Art and Archaeology, edited by Nicolas Revire and Stephen A. Murphy, 68–89. Bangkok: River Books; The Siam Society, 2014.

Brown, Robert L. “Dvāravatī Sculpture.” In Lost Kingdoms: Hindu-Buddhist Sculpture of Early Southeast Asia, by John Guy, 189–91. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2014.

Klokke, Marijke J. “Art Historical Evidence for the Building Phases at Borobudur.” In Materializing Southeast Asia’s Past: Selected Papers from the 12th International Conference of the European Association of Southeast Asian Archaeologists, Volume 2, edited by Marijke J. Klokke and Véronique Degroot, 10–26. Singapore: NUS Press, 2013. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1qv3kf.6.

Journal article

For a footnote:

  1. Acri, “‘Local’ vs. ‘Cosmopolitan’ in the Study of Premodern Southeast Asia,” 13–14.
  2. Stark, Sanderson and Bingham, “Monumentality in the Mekong Delta,” 117–18.
  3. Sengpan, “Recital of the Tham Vessantara–Jātaka,” 126–27.
  4. Moore and Nyunt Han, “New Finds at Tagaung,” 8–10.

For the References list:

Acri, Andrea. “‘Local’ vs. ‘Cosmopolitan’ in the Study of Premodern Southeast Asia.” Suvannabhumi 9, no.1 (2017): 7–52.

Moore, Elizabeth, and Nyunt Han. “New Finds at Tagaung, an Ancient City of Myanmar.” SPAFA Journal 16, no.3 (2006): 4–16.

Sengpan Pannyawamsa. “Recital of the Tham Vessantara-Jātaka: A Social-Cultural Phenomenon in Kengtung, Eastern Shan State, Myanmar.” Contemporary Buddhism 10, no. 1 (2009): 125–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/14639940902969127.

Stark, M.T., D. Sanderson and R.G. Bingham. “Monumentality in the Mekong Delta: Luminescence Dating and Implications.” Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association 26 (2006): 110–20. https://doi.org/10.7152/bippa.v26i0.11999.

Figures and illustrations

Authors are requested to limit the number of illustrations accompanying articles or reports to 20, and to keep to the minimum necessary for best comprehension. More than 20 illustrations may be possible following discussion with the editorial team. Audiovisual material will also be considered in exceptional circumstances. Graphics can be embedded in the text, but should also be sent separately as individual image files (JPEG, TIFF, etc.). Figures, maps, and plates should be titled and numbered. A list of captions to figures and plates must be provided at the end of the text.

Generally digital images should have a 300 dpi resolution, whilst illustrations should have a 600 dpi resolution. Authors must consult the editors on graphics specifications in advance of final submission. Authors must obtain approval, before final submission, for the reproduction of illustrations or other material not their own. A model letter requesting authorisation for image reproduction is available:

Model permission letter (English)
Contoh surat permohonan ijin (Bahasa Indonesia)
ခွင့်ပြုချက်တောင်းခံသည့် ပုံစံ (Burmese)
លិខិតអនុញ្ញាតជាផ្លូវការ (Khmer)
คำร้องขออนุญาตในการเผยแพร่ซ้ำภาพ (Thai)
Đơn xin sao chép tư liệu (Vietnamese)

Redrawing or lettering of maps or figures cannot be undertaken by the Pratu team, but please contact us to discuss the modification of image files if necessary.

Proofs

Page proofs will be sent to authors. These are intended for checking only, and the text cannot be further edited at this stage. Failure to return proofs by the required date will be taken as agreement to use editor’s final corrected proofs.

Disclaimer and resolution of conflict

The opinions expressed in Pratu are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Pratu Editorial Team.

Submissions preparation checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission’s compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

  1. The submission has not been previously published, nor is it being submitted to another journal for consideration (if in doubt, please contact the editorial team).
  2. The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
  3. Where available, DOIs for the references have been provided (or URLs for online-only reference material).
  4. The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point Unicode-compliant font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are numbered within the text at the appropriate points.
  5. Illustrations, figures and tables should be numbered and submitted separately from the text in a folder.
  6. The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the guidelines, found above on this page.
  7. A signed Author Declaration form is sent with the submission – download this document from the About page.

Privacy statement

Names and email addresses will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.