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CLR submissions are done with Scholastica!

Submit to Christian Libertarian Review
The Scholastica platform integrates submission, peer-review process, and open-access article production, making it easier on all parties to get our scholarship right.

General Submission Information

CLR charges no fees for article submission or processing at this time.

Submissions should be of academic quality and tone, and should generally conform to the standards laid out within the Chicago Manual of Style: Sixteenth Edition supplemented by The SBL Handbook of Style for Biblical Studies and Related Disciplines: Second Edition for ancient text citation and abbreviation. All submissions will be evaluated through blind peer-review and edited for publication. The initial review process generally takes a minimum of two months. Once final edits are completed, accepted articles are released as soon as possible online in the open-access platform. Volumes for CLR now follow calendar years, and print editions will be made available from time to time consisting of at least one Volume.

Submission Requirements

  1. Only digital, typed, English-language submissions will be accepted.
  2. Authors may choose consistent American, British, or Canadian English spelling. However, American punctuation must be used.
  3. Articles must be submitted with the Scholastica platform. Contributors must create a Scholastica account with a valid email address that they check regularly, as it will be the primary means by which peer-reviews will be communicated to the Contributor.
  4. Should the submission be accepted for publication, all contributors understand and agree to their work becoming licensed under Creative Commons 4.0 by virtue of their submission to the General Editor and its being published in CLR. Authors will be required to sign a short, straight-forward publication agreement to this effect before publication.
  5. Articles must fall between 5,000 – 10,000 words, and book reviews must fall between 1,000 – 2,500 words. Both of these figures exclude footnotes.

Formatting Requirements

The easiest way to format your submission is to imitate published articles as closely as possible (see Archives) – except for an anonymous cover page for the review process. Grossly under-formatted submissions will be returned to the author before submission to peer-review. Otherwise, the full list of properties are listed below:

  1. Cover page with title, 100 – 250 word abstract, and 3 – 5 keywords/search terms.
    1. No author should be mentioned (references to the author trivialize blind review and may decrease your chance of acceptance.)
    2. The cover page and abstract are not necessary for book reviews.
    3. Title should be 11.5-point Palatino Linotype font, bold, centered, and all-caps.
  2. Please include a separate document in your submission labeled “Author-Affiliations” that includes the full name of each author as you would like it to appear in the final article along with a one-sentence statement of affiliation, such as: “John A. Doe (Ph.D. Philosophy, University of Texas) is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago and Director of the Center for XYZ Studies.” Again, this should be a separate document from the primary manuscript, and is requested so that we can honor your preferences for recognition. Please indicate in this document if you would like your email address to be included in the final publication for contact (and include the proper email address as well).
  3. 6×9 page size
  4. .75” page margins on sides; 1″ page margins on top and bottom
  5. Regular 1.15 spacing (not double-spaced) for both main text and footnotes
  6. .25” paragraph indentation
  7. No paragraph spacing
  8. Justified alignment for all text
  9. 10-point Palatino Linotype for the main text
  10. 8-point Palatino Linotype for footnotes (but not footnote numbers; use default superscript); no footnote indentations
  11. Quotes longer than two sentences must take the form of block quotes (an indented paragraph by itself, .25″ from edges).
  12. Block quotes lack opening and closing quotation marks, are indented by .25” on both sides, exhibit 9 pt font size, and have one space above and below.
  13. As noted above, American punctuation is required. This includes first-level quotations, which are double (e.g., “words”) instead of European single (e.g., ‘words’). Second-level quotes (quotes within a quote) are single.
  14. Headings must be bold, centered, all-caps, and numbered in Roman numerals (e.g., I, II, III, IV.); headings should also be 10-point Palatino Linotype font.
  15. Subheadings should be centered, italic text with a space above and below.
  16. Words to be printed in italics (e.g., titles of books and periodicals, foreign words) should be italicized.
  17. Words and letters to be printed in caps should appear in caps.
  18. Respect for accuracy in verbatim quotations demands that the spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and abbreviations of the original be reproduced exactly, even if they differ from the style of this journal. Should a quotation contain an error, this may be indicated by [sic] or [?], at the author’s discretion.
  19. As with all matters of grammar, the author should take care to use ellipses correctly (i.e., using three or four dots depending on if the first quote ends with a period).
  20. Citations and abbreviations of ancient texts, as well as commonly used journals, periodicals, reference works, and serials should conform to The SBL Handbook of Style (note that the full title of all secondary sources should appear in footnotes). Thus, when quoting biblical and ancient texts…
    1. Titles should be abbreviated without periods when in parenthesis (e.g., Lk 1:1). Otherwise full titles and chapters should be given (e.g., “Chapter 4 in the Gospel of Luke records that…”).
    2. All digits should be linked by means of an en-dash (e.g., Phil 3:1–3; 1 Tim 2:8–3:13; Chr 9–11; Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 244–47).
    3. Additional verse references to the same writing are separated by commas while references to other writings are separated by semi-colons (e.g., “1 Tim 2:2-4, 5, 9; Hebrews 3:1, 4, 9, 10-11; Jn 3:2”).
    4. The abbreviation v. and vv. can be used in parentheses to denote “verse” and “verses.” (e.g., vv. 8-9).
    5. All citations of major translations not produced by the author must be cited by abbreviation after the quotation. (e.g., NIV, NRSV, ESV, etc.), not in a footnote. Unusual translation publications can be cited in full like any other source. Translations not cited are assumed to be the author’s own.
  21. Translations of biblical texts from the NRSV, CEB, or NIV (2011) are preferred. Where necessary, authors are free to use other translations, including their own, for their preferred renderings. Texts of the Greek New Testament from either the United Bible Society (5th ed) or Nestle-Aland (28th ed) are preferred. Texts of the Hebrew Bible from the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia are preferred.
  22. For non-English text, authors should only use transliteration if they do not know the foreign language themselves and cannot translate it into English for readers. Otherwise, the original languages must be used (in unicode font) along with an English translation (e.g., “Οὕτως γὰρ ἠγάπησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν κόσμον” (“For God so loved the world”) is preferred over “houtōs gar ēgapēsen ho theos ton kosmon”).
  23. Because of blind review, the submission should not include any first-person reference to the author, whether in the body of the article or in its footnotes (for example, statements such as “See my article…,” or “As I have argued in…”). Should the submission be accepted for publication, such references, if preferred by the author, may be included in the final draft at the discretion of the General Editor.
  24. Gender-neutral pronouns (e.g., “they,” “one,” “person,” “humankind,” etc.) are preferred for general references to groups instead of androcentric terms (e.g., “men,” “man,” “mankind,” “he,” etc.).
  25. When applicable, except when linking digits, em-dashes (—) without spaces should be used in all text. (“Notice that when she ‘says taxation is theft,’ she is—contrary to contemporary, popular belief—not suggesting that…”).
  26. No endnotes, reference lists, or bibliography are necessary.
  27. Special Specifications for Book Reviews:
    1. It is the responsibility of the contributor, not the journal staff, to secure a complimentary review copy (should they desire one). Publishers will often provide complementary review copies to reviewers if they have been assured by the Editor of a journal that the review will probably be published in the journal. For that reason, reviewers may want to contact the Assistant Editor of CLR about writing a book review before asking publishers for a complimentary copy.
    2. Preference will be given to more recently published books. Otherwise, there is no limit to the age of the publication.
    3. Please include a small image file of the book cover in your book review submission (you can usually obtain this from the publisher’s website or from Amazon).
    4. No more than 2/3 of a review may contain chapter summaries; at least 1/3 of the review must contain critical analysis and an assessment of the book’s contribution(s) and what readers can expect to find.
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