Preparing your manuscript

As you write, please follow the guidelines below to create a well-structured, discoverable, and engaging publication.

Structure 

A clear structure enhances readability in both print and digital formats. In digital publications, the text structure affects how well it displays. The key is consistency in the organizational logic, at every level, from overarching sections through to granular headings. 

Parts and/or sections  

• When grouping chapters into parts or sections, be consistent. Do not create any ‘orphans’ which sit outside of a part or section. If you envision any free-standing chapters, such as an introduction, please discuss the idea with your OUP editorial contact.
• Use descriptive titles, rather than generic names, to identify all parts or sections (e.g. a book on Miguel de Cervantes would include ‘Part 1: Don Quixote and ‘Part 2: Novelas ejemplares’, rather than ‘Part 1’ or ‘Part 2’).  
• Do not use blank part-opener pages, which appear as blank screens on digital devices and are confusing to readers. Adding a useful element, such as a brief table of contents, can avoid the problem.

Chapters 

• Organize chapters logically and consistently throughout your work. 
  • If you split any chapters into ‘sub-chapters’, please do it for all chapters. If some chapters are broken into parts, then all the chapters in a multi-chapter book must be.
  • Be consistent with features. If you open a chapter with a mini table of contents, use it in every chapter.  
  • Write chapters to similar lengths. 
• Use headings consistently within and across chapters. For example, if you open and close with ‘Overview’ and ‘Conclusion’, follow this structure in all chapters.  
• Chapter titles should be unambiguous and informative. ‘Chapter One: The archives of La Mancha’ is better than ‘Chapter One: Introduction’. 

Text 

• Avoid extensive passages of unbroken text, long headings, and large, complex tables. Your work will be read on hand-held devices. Lengthy formats, which can be difficult to read on smaller screens, will lose your reader’s attention. 

Appendices 

• Number appendices separately.  Name them with descriptive headings that inform and engage readers.

Headings 

Headings are an essential element for making your work readable and accessible. Note the following when composing headings: 

• Use headings consistently across your work. If ‘Overview’ is a level 1 heading in chapter 1, it should be a level 1 heading in all chapters.
• Headings should divide text into digestible chunks. 
• Open every chapter with a heading, so that no text is left sitting outside the heading structure. 
• ‘Nest’ one heading inside another logically. A level 1 heading is always followed by level 2 (don’t jump to a level 3 heading). 
• Keep headings concise, so they can work in print and digital format (in the latter, long headings are cumbersome). 
• Avoid the inclusion of references, footnotes, or ‘call-outs’ to figures, tables, or boxes in headings. 

Cross references 

The impact of cross-referencing within your work will have a greater value for your readers if you: 

• Point to a specific target in the text, such as a heading, figure, table, box, or paragraph number (for practitioner law authors). In digital formats, cross-referencing links precisely to the target point in the text.  
• Avoid using ‘see above’, ‘see below’, or using a page number to identify text that has a cross reference. Pagination may vary in responsive design formats (for hand-held devices) and some digital products.
• Always include a call-out, such as ‘see Figure 1.1’ when cross-referencing non-textual material. In digital formats, use linking to direct readers to the referenced material. 
• Do not use specific references to any one format. Any references to material elsewhere in your work should make sense to readers, whatever device or format they are using to access the information. 

References 

References to the works of other authors are important to acknowledge their contributions to the development of your work and advance scholarly discourse. To give proper credit, make sure that all references are complete and follow a consistent reference style. Avoid print specific terms and conventions (e.g. ‘op. cit.’) that don’t work for reference linking in digital versions. 

House style  

Authors should follow OUP’s ‘House style’ for spelling, punctuation, text formatting, abbreviations, acceptable language, numbers, dates, and units of measure. Please compare your manuscript carefully against the style guide before you submit it.  This will save time and effort during the production process. 

Your OUP editorial contact will provide you with any additional subject- or series-specific guidelines that you need to follow. 

Non-textual material 

Non-textual material refers to artwork (e.g. line drawings, illustrations, halftones, or photographs), tables, boxes, or equations. Distinguishing between them is important in digital formatting. The following groups non-textual material feature-types with similar requirements:  

• Figures: line drawings, photographs, diagrams, graphs
• Boxes: extracts, case studies, lists, vignettes, material without columns
• Tables: material with columns

There are other factors to consider when including non-textual material:

• Copyright: Any third-party material that you wish to reproduce must be cleared for copyright permissions. See more on this in ‘Copyright of third-party material’.  
• Call-outs: Each item of non-textual material must be labeled (e.g. ‘See Figure 1.1’) to serve as anchor text for hyperlinks.  
• Placement indicators: These are needed (in addition to call-outs) for figures and complex tables that are supplied in separate documents. The placement indicator is an instruction (placed in angle brackets) for the typesetter that indicates where to set the feature (e.g. <Insert Figure 3.2 near here>). It should always appear after the call-out. Please note that the figure may not appear exactly where you request. 
• Numbers and captions: Include a figure number and caption beneath the placement indicator (or list all captions) for each chapter in a separate document. Use a naming scheme identifying the chapter and its sequence of figures (e.g. ‘Figure 1.4 is the fourth figure in Chapter 1’), followed by the caption (e.g. ‘Figure 1.1 A Chihuahua (left) and a Great Dane (right). Dogs have the widest range of body sizes among mammals’).  
• Boxes: Don’t add design formatting to the boxes features in your manuscript. Please supply as text only, clearly labelled to indicate placement (e.g. <start of box>, <end of box>). 
• Resolution: Please do not embed images within the text in your manuscript document as it causes a degradation of resolution. Artwork should be submitted separately in either JPG, TIFF, or EPS files (use the figure numbers as their file names). Be mindful of resolution of the images you submit—you can check resolution in the free-to-download tool, Irfan View. The ideal resolution for printed images is:
  • for photographs, 300 dpi at 4 × 6 inches / 10mm × 15mm 
  • for line art, 600–1200 dpi at 4 × 6 inches / 10mm × 15mm.

Copyright of third-party material 

Your publishing agreement will state whether you or OUP are responsible for obtaining permission to reuse copyright material in your work (including epigraphs). Regardless of who is responsible, it is a good idea to follow these best practices: 

• Start early: Failure to obtain permission to use copyrighted material may significantly affect your title’s content and publication schedule. 
• Licences: When you submit your manuscript, please include any licences already obtained, to assist your OUP editorial contact in determining which permissions are needed or granted. 
• Open Access: If your final product will be Open Access, highlight this when requesting permissions—it may impact a copyright holder’s decision.  
• What to request: Because the publication plan for your title may include multiple print and digital output formats, always obtain permission for the following re-use cases: 
  • Formats: Print and electronic  
  • Distribution: Worldwide 
  • Languages: Check with your OUP editorial contact. The options are: 
    • English 
    • up to five languages 
    • all language rights worldwide 
  • Duration: Life of the edition 
• Final note: Formal permission is needed to reproduce any material that is under copyright. Your OUP editorial contact cannot begin the production process until all copyright permissions are in place and documented. 

Find out more with our Permissions Guidelines.

Abstracts and keywords 

Abstracts and keywords are used to describe your work and ensure that it is fully searchable and discoverable online. For these reasons, it is very important for you to include abstracts and keywords when you submit your manuscript.  

Abstracts 

Abstracts provide potential readers with a quick description of the work so they can decide whether a book or chapter is relevant to their needs – they are the online equivalent of the blurb on the back of a book.  

• The first sentence is the most important. Somebody looking for information quickly may not read beyond the first sentence, so it must clearly and concisely represent the key topics of the book or chapter it is describing.
• The abstract should start with the title of the work in question (whether a chapter or whole book). The remaining text should give an overview of the content in more detail.
• Use short, clear sentences and specific terminology. 
• The information and words in the abstract are used by search engines to optimize discovery.
• If a term is known by an abbreviation or acronym, include both the long- and short-form names. For example, ‘cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)’, or ‘deep vein thrombosis (DVT)’. 
• Abstracts are needed for the whole book, as well as one for each chapter. 
• Abstracts should be between 100 and 250 words.  

Keywords 

Keywords should reflect the content of the work in individual words or short, recognizable phrases (fewer than three words). These will be used alongside the abstract to facilitate searching and indexing.  

• Keywords are needed for the whole book, as well as for each chapter. 
  • book – five to ten keywords
  • chapter – five to ten keywords
• The basic form of the keyword should be used (e.g. singular nouns, infinitive verbs).
• If an abbreviation is more familiar to the readership, it is acceptable to not include the long-form name in the keywords (e.g. ‘DNA’, rather than ‘deoxyribonucleic acid’). However, in most cases it is advisable to use both short- and long-form terms as separate keywords.
• Use of keywords needs to be consistent between chapters, including the use of synonyms, commercial or generic drug names, Latin, medical, or common terms. For edited works (i.e. those with multiple contributors), enforcing consistency is the responsibility of the volume editor. 
• Keywords should also appear in the respective abstracts. 

Ready for the next step? 

To put your manuscript in final form, you must adhere to OUP’s preparation guidelines. To avoid unnecessary steps, please review it carefully before submitting a manuscript to your OUP editorial contact. OUP considers the submitted manuscript to be final; you will not be able to make changes during the production process other than fixing typos and factual and grammatical errors.

Your OUP editorial contact will review your manuscript to make sure it is in final form before moving it along the pipeline. Find out what’s involved in the production workflow in the section on ‘Submitting your manuscript.’