Manuscript Style

Mobility Humanities Manuscript Style Guidelines

Mobility Humanities adheres to the MLA style. View the MLA guidelines(https://style.mla.org/works-cited/works-cited-a-quick-guide) to ensure your manuscript conforms to this style. The key guidelines are summarised below.

• Articles should be approximately 8,000 words in length. Creative/visual essays should be between 3,000 and 8,000 words, written in either a traditional or creative mode. These word counts include the Abstract, Keywords, footnotes, Additional Information, and Works Cited.Book Reviews should be between 2,000 and 3,000 words.
• Introduction for special issues, interviews, and dialogues should be between 2,000 and 8,000 words.

• The language of the journal is British English. Spelling should be consistent throughout.

• The article must include an approximately 200-word abstract and 5 to 8 keywords.
• The abstract should not duplicate the text verbatim but rather include the research question or puzzle, identify the data, and give some indication of the findings.
• Keywords should be drawn from the content of the article and should not duplicate the article title. Keywords should be placed below the abstract and separated by commas. All keywords should be written in lowercase except for proper nouns.

• Short prose quotations (up to four lines) should be retained (with quotation marks) within the body of the text.
• Use double quotation marks, and only use single quotation marks for quotes within quotes.
• Spelling within quotes should reflect the original.

• A quotation that runs more than four lines in the manuscript should be set off from the text as a block indented half an inch from the left margin, as a separate paragraph and without quotation marks.
• In general, the prose introducing a quotation displayed in this way should end with a colon.
• A parenthetical citation for a prose quotation set off from the text follows the last line of the quotation. The punctuation mark concluding the quotation comes before the parenthetical citation; no punctuation follows the citation.

• Use “double” quotation marks, not Italics, for emphasis.
• The journal approves the use of italics for book titles, foreign-language terms, and the titles of works.

• Where the audience is likely to include readers unfamiliar with languages other than English, provide a translation in square brackets after the original title, using the same formatting as the original (i.e., italics for book titles)

E.g.) Erpenbeck, Jenny. Gehen, ging, gegangen [Go, Went, Gone]. Penguin Verlag, 2015.

• Use quotation marks to indicate when you have translated a foreign word or phrase. Place the translation in double quotation marks with parentheses.

E.g.) The first idiomatic Spanish expression I learned was irse todo en humo (“to go up in smoke”).

• If the quotation and the translation are incorporated into the text, distinguish them from each other by placing whichever comes second in double quotation marks and parentheses. Separate elements in parentheses with semicolons.

E.g.) At the beginning of Dante’s Inferno, the poet finds himself in “una selva oscura” (“a dark wood”;1.2; Ciardi 28).

• If you created the translation, insert my trans. in place of a source in the parenthetical citation.

E.g.) Sévigné responds to praise of her much admired letters by acknowledging that “pour figées, elles ne le sont pas” (“there is nothing stiff about them”; my trans.; 489).

• If two or more works appear under the same author name or names in the works-cited list, a title should be included in in-text citations so that readers know which work is referred to.
• If lengthy titles of books or articles are referred to in the text, the shortened forms of titles should be used.
• One of the following three ways should be used.

*E.g.) Morrison writes, “Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it’s gone, but the place—the picture of it—stays” (Beloved 35).

*E.g.) As Morrison writes in Beloved, “Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it’s gone, but the place—the picture of it—stays” (35).

*E.g.) The character Sethe notes, “Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it’s gone, but the place—the picture of it—stays” (Morrison, Beloved 35).

When a person’s gender is unknown or unspecified, use singular “they” in accordance with MLA guidelines (see How do I use singular they? | MLA Style Center).

Use either people-first or identity-first language based on the preferences of the individuals or groups discussed.

• People-first language emphasises the person (e.g., “a person with a disability” rather than “a disabled person”).
• Some individuals or communities prefer identity-first language (e.g., “a Deaf person”). Respect these preferences when known.

Include references to religion, age, ethnicity, gender, or other identity markers only when they are directly relevant.

The additional information such as funding, acknowledgements, ORCID, competing interests, data availability, and generative AI should be placed in the following order, preceding the Works Cited list.

1. Funding
2. Acknowledgements
3. ORCID
4. Competing Interests
5. Data Availability
6. Generative AI

In interview-based research, the names of interview subjects must be pseudonymised unless explicit written consent has been obtained. Authors must include a statement in the body or in a footnote confirming that pseudonyms have been used. When a pseudonymous interview is directly quoted in the text, authors must add a footnote identifying the source as a personal interview and providing the method of communication (e.g., in-person, phone) and the year or approximate period in which the interview took place. A specific date is not required if providing one risks identifying the interviewee.

1. Identified interviewees (real names)

If written consent has been obtained, or if the interview has been published, include a Works Cited entry following MLA guidelines. The entry should include:

• interviewee’s name
• description of the interview
• method of communication (e.g., in-person, phone)
• interviewer’s name
• exact date

*E.g.) Lee, Jinhyoung. Interview. Conducted by [Interviewer Name], 4 Oct. 2024. In-person.

2. Interviewees requiring identity protection (pseudonymous)

Do not include a Works Cited entry. If directly quoted, provide a footnote including:

• identification of the source as a personal interview
• method of communication (e.g., in-person, phone)
• year or approximate period of the interview

Do not include a specific date if it risks identifying the interviewee.

*E.g.) Personal interview with Jo (pseudonym). 2019. In-person.

For further guidance, including suggested disclosure languages, refer to the journal’s Research Ethics policy.

3. Privacy and Safety of Research Participants

When interview methods involve potential risks to the privacy or safety of participants, authors must describe the specific protective measures taken in the manuscript body or in a footnote.

*E.g.) “Interviews were conducted under conditions designed to protect participant safety and privacy. [Specific measures, e.g., stationary rest periods, researcher accompaniment, location anonymisation, etc.] were employed throughout the data collection process”

Mobility Humanities encourages author(s) to include a competing interests statement in the Additional Information section.

*E.g.) “The author(s) reported that no competing interests exist.”

Mobility Humanities encourages authors(s) to include a Data Availability Statement in the Additional Information section, indicating whether and how the materials underlying their work can be accessed.

*E.g.) The data that support the findings of this study are openly available at [URL/repository].

*E.g.) The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data is not publicly available due to [reason, e.g., privacy restrictions on interview participants].

*E.g.) No new data were created or analysed in this study.

If author(s) used generative AI tools or AI-assisted technologies at any stage of manuscript preparation, they must disclose such use in the Additional Information section, specifying the name and version of the tool, the tasks for which it was used, and the extent of its contribution.

*E.g.) During the preparation of this work, the author used ChatGPT to assist with grammar checking and to improve readability. Following the use of this tool, the author reviewed and edited the content as necessary and takes full responsibility for the content of the publication.

If author(s) incorporated AI-generated images or creative content into the manuscript, including in creative or visual essays, they must disclose this in the Acknowledgements section and identify the tool, version, and prompt used in the figure caption. For citation practices, authors should follow MLA guidelines: How do I cite generative AI in MLA style? (Updated and Revised) | MLA Style Center

• Any type of illustrative visual material—for example, a photograph, map, line drawing, graph, or chart—should be labelled Figure (abbreviated Fig.) and assigned an Arabic numeral.
• The title of the figure and the source information should be provided below the image.
• Both the figure and the caption must be centre aligned.
• For artwork, the artist’s name, artwork name, creation year, and location information should be provided as a caption.
• *E.g.) Fig. 1. Berthe Morisot. Reading. 1873, Cleveland Museum of Art.
• For your own photos or pictures:

• Publicly accessible photos or images(e.g., posted on a website or social media): include your name (photographer), a description/title of the photo/image, the name of the website (where the photograph can be viewed), and the URL.

*E.g.) Mulligan, Lauren. “Fishermen at a Lake in Limpopo, South Africa.” Lauren Mulligan, www.laurenmulligan.com/2016/6/25/fishermen-at-a-lake-in-limpopo-south-africa.

• Not Publicly accessible photos or images (private/unpublished): reproduce the photo in the paper and provide a label and caption directly below it—do not include the author’s name; give a concise description/title and relevant location.

*E.g.) Figure 1. Oculus. New York City.

In this instance there is no need to credit yourself as the author of the photograph. Unless otherwise indicated, the reader should assume that you are the author of the images included in your paper. Since the caption provides sufficient information, no Works Cited entry is needed.

For more detailed instructions, please consult the MLA style guideline: https://style.mla.org/crediting-your-own-photos/

• Tables must be numbered and titled.
• The title of the table should be provided above the table.

Citation information should be placed as in-text citations. However, the author may provide additional reference information as footnotes in the following styles.

• See Nail, Being and Motion, esp. ch. 20.
• See Nail, Being and Motion 25-40.
• See Nail, Being and Motion.

• All sources cited in the text must be included alphabetically in a “Works Cited” list.
• For two or more works by the same author, list the works alphabetically, not by date.
• Abbreviate “University Press” as UP.
• For websites, give the date accessed, suitably abbreviated (e.g., Oct. 2022).
• Citation information for interview data should include: the names of the interviewee and the interviewer, and the date of the interview conducted. “Little” is the name of the interviewee, and “Pooley” is the name of the interviewer in the following example.

*E.g.) Little, Rhona. Interview. Conducted by Coline G. Pooley, Mar. 1996.

• When a DOI is available for the articles, include it in the Works-Cited-List entry. The DOI should be preceded by http:// or https://.
• Omit repeated initial digits in page ranges. For example, since 125 and 150 share the digit ‘1’ in the hundreds place, the second ‘1’ is omitted: pp. 125–50.
• Where a volume has more than one editor, the plural form (editors) should be used in the citation.

*E.g.) Sánchez Prado, Ignacio M., editor. Mexican Literature in Theory. Bloomsbury Academic, 2018

*E.g.) Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar, editors. The Female Imagination and the Modernist Aesthetic. Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1986.

• For a book, the editors’ names should be followed by “. Edited.” For a book chapter, the editors’ names should be followed by “, edited.”

*E.g.) Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Edited by Deidre Shauna Lynch, Norton Critical Edition, 3rd ed., W. W. Norton, 2009.

*E.g.) Dickinson, Emily. “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—.” The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by R. W. Franklin, Harvard UP, 1999, pp. 265–66.