We welcome contributions, which may be submitted either to the Silkroad Foundation at its address in California, or, better, sent directly to the current editor of The Silk Road:

Prof. Daniel C. Waugh
Department of History Box 353560
Smith Hall 315, University of Washington
Seattle, Wa. 98195 USA
e-mail: dwaugh@u.washington.edu
fax: 206-543-9451; tel.: 206-543-5790 (msg.); 616-8408 (direct)
(Be sure to indicate Prof. Waugh’s name on any faxes.)

The normal publication schedule is two issues a year, appearing in June and December. It is desirable, therefore, that material be received no later than early May for the June issue, and early November for the December one. Where we have enough lead time we are happy to print information that is time-sensitive (e.g., announcements about art exhibits or upcoming conferences); however we cannot guarantee production in a timely fashion.

Decisions regarding whether submissions are to be published are made by the editor in consultation with the Director of The Silkroad Foundation, members of its Board of Directors, and, as appropriate, academic specialists. Contributions should be in English and generally should not exceed 8000 words in length, including notes and bibliography. In normal circumstances, we will not accept unsolicited book reviews; however, you may ask the editor whether your reviewing a particular book would be acceptable.

Our newsletter is intended for a general readership. While it is important that contributions be well informed and be of interest to specialists, they should be written with a non-specialist audience in mind. This means, among other things, keeping footnoting to a minimum, using non-technical language, including transcription or transliteration of source texts only if essential to the reader’s understanding, and avoiding transliteration using diacritical marks. The production of the newsletter is by volunteers. Most of the editing and formatting is done personally by the editor. Be aware that the editor does take an “activist” stance in regard to clarity and style, but his preference would be not to spend a lot of time re-writing. He is not in a position to check all your facts and references. It is essential that submissions follow some standard rules in order to minimize time-consuming problems. In particular,

A northern Mongolian landscape on the road to Terelj

Photo © 1979 Daniel C. Waugh

• Submit text formatted in Microsoft Word, not in another word-processing program. Send the editor both electronic copy (this may be done as an e-mail attachment, which should have a .doc file extension) and hard copy. References to sources should be included in the text in parentheses — e.g. (Smith 1992: 25). Endnotes should be used only if they contain some essential explanation that does not fit in the main text. A list of references should be included, with full bibliographic citations (author, including first name where available; title; vol. and number if a journal; place and publisher if a book; date; pages if an article or section of a book). Please include authors’ or scholars’ first names if referring to them in your text.
• In references use standard transliteration (e.g., for Chinese, pinyin; for Cyrillic, modified Library of Congress system). It is preferable for citations in other than West European languages that you provide both transliterated titles and, in parentheses, translated titles. We generally prefer not to include Chinese or other non-Latin characters (which may present problems in printing and formatting), but you may include them if you consider them to be essential for clarity. Your current editor is not an East or South Asia specialist; so his ability to verify or correct citations in the languages of those regions is limited.

• Include at the end of your article brief biographical information about yourself. Some readers might wish to contact you if you include in it an e-mail address.
• Submit illustrations as separate files, not embedded/formatted in your text. It is important where possible and appropriate to include a map; photographs or drawings may greatly enhance the interest of your text. While we may be able to provide illustrations for your article, our resources are limited. Time constraints may prevent us from drawing maps. Illustrations including maps should be sized no larger than 7.5 inches maximum horizontal dimension, but you should size with the printed image in mind. We can reduce images; but enlarging them may result in pixellation. Tiffs or jpegs are both acceptable. 300 dpi is minimum resolution; 600 dpi is better. If lettering a map or labeling a drawing, be sure the type face is sufficiently large to be legible when printed and that there is sufficient contrast to distinguish letters from background. If you send hard-copy photographs, we will scan and return them.
• While illustrations for the printed version of the newsletter are in black and white, the online version can substitute color illustrations if you have them and can provide them in addition to the black and white versions. Color illustrations for the online version should be scanned at 72 dpi and be sized at a maximum dimension of 550 pixels. Note that 72 dpi is not adequate resolution for hard-copy printing.
• While image files can be sent as e-mail attachments, if they are very large they may not be delivered by the mail system. Generally it is best to send large image files on a CD through the mail.
• Append a list of captions for the illustrations to your text file and indicate in parentheses in your text where illustrations best be placed — e.g. (Fig. 1). Your list should indicate the sources of the images. If they are copyrighted, it is your responsibility to obtain copyright permission for their use in our non-profit educational publication.
• Be sure to provide contact information, including e-mail address, mailing address, phone, and, if available, fax. The editor often has questions for contributors and, in cases where a substantial amount of editing is necessary, prefers that the author approve the finished copy before printing. In most circumstances though, we do not send proofs unless specifically requested to do so.