Paper Submission

BHM publishes scholarly articles spanning the social, cultural, and scientific aspects of the history of medicine worldwide. Articles are based on historical research in primary sources grounded in the robust secondary literature in the history of medicine. Article submissions should clearly make critical interpretations and place the story in a historical context. BHM subscribes to the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). BHM does not publish material that is available elsewhere, in any language, at the time of its publication in the journal, or material for which we must acknowledge permission to another publisher. We regularly publish articles that later appear as chapters in books, but the journal and its publisher, The Johns Hopkins University Press, hold the copyright, and the book publisher must request permission to reprint. Publication of the journal article must antedate publication of the book.

All new manuscripts must be submitted electronically at the https://bhm-journal.org/paper-submission. Authors should have no more than two manuscripts under review at any given time.

Conflicts of Interest: Authors are responsible for informing the editors of any institutional or organizational funding they have received for research related to the subject of the article.

Preparing Your Manuscript for Submission

  • BHM manuscripts should not exceed 12,000 words (including endnotes). Manuscripts over the word limit will not be considered.
  • Double-space your manuscript: text, notes, and quotations.
  • Use the same type size and font for all material.
  • Quotations of more than six typed lines should be indented from the left margin and typed in a block format (double-spaced).
  • Use American spelling.
  • Dates should be written as, for example, “June 7, 2010.”
  • To answer general questions about style and usage in BHM, refer to the Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition; CMS).

Notes

  • BHM requires numbered endnotes without a bibliography (See the CMS, 16th ed.).
  • Document fully. BHM prefers to identify the source of each separate quotation with its own note; please do not bundle citations into a single note at the end of the paragraph. Please note that BHM requires inclusive page numbers for book chapters in edited collections and for all journal articles, in addition to page numbers for direct quotations

Citation Examples

  1. Michael Worboys, Spreading Germs: Disease Theories and Medical Practice in Britain, 1865–1900(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 81. [Book with page number for direct quotation]
  2. Stephen Palmer, “Central American Encounters with Rockefeller Public Health, 1914–1921,” in Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural history of U.S.–Latin American Relations, ed. Catherine LeGrand, Gilbert Joseph, and Ricardo Salvatore (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999), 311–32, quotation on 320. [Chapter in edited book with inclusive page numbers and page number for direct quotation]
  3. Alexandra Stern, “Making Better Babies: Public Health and Race Betterment in Indiana, 1920–1935,” Amer. J. Public Health90 (2002): 742–52, quotation on 751. [Journal article with inclusive page nos. and page no. of direct quotation.]
  4. Ibid., 750.
  5. Palmer, “Central American Encounters” (n. 2), 312. [Short form for previously cited item]
  6. James Smith, “Public Health Experiments,” in LeGrand, Joseph, and Salvatore, Close Encounters (n. 2), 100–134. [Chapter in previously cited book]
  7. Lauren Nauta, “Medical Development in New Jersey” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2006). [Dissertation]

Illustrations

  • Illustrations are printed in black and white only. Photographs may be sent to the editorial office as glossy black-and-white 5” x 7” prints (do not send photos in color), or uploaded in TIFF or EPS formats. Halftones (art with any shades of grey) should be 266–300 dpi; line art, 900–1200 dpi. Do not use Word, PDF, or GIF files for illustrations.
  • Indicate the approximate placement of all illustrations in the text. Provide captions for all tables and figures. Captions should include credit to the sources.

Permissions

  • You will need to provide copies of letters granting permission to reprint illustrations.
  • Unpublished theses present a particular problem. If you are quoting more than five sentences from such an unpublished work, please provide a letter granting permission from the author of the thesis or from the sponsoring university.