Instructions for Authors

Research articles

  1. Your full manuscript should be submitted before the end of September unless another deadline has been specified. It must be in English and include a list of references. The document should be submitted via the platform in .docx format. Please send the text unformatted. Illustrations must be sent as separate files in appropriate formats (see below).
  2. The manuscript will be read by the editors first. If suitable, it will then be sent to at least two peer reviewers. Adoranten works with a single-blind peer review system, where the reviewers are anonymous. If the reviewers recommend the manuscript for publication, it will be returned with comments to the author for revision.
  3. After completion of the requested changes, the new version should be uploaded. The text and references must comply fully with the Adoranten style guide. The checked manuscript will be sent back to the author for approval. After the author has accepted the revisions, the text is considered ready for layout, and no further substantial changes or additions to the text will be considered.
  4. After layout the author will receive a proof, where only minor and typographical corrections are allowed.

Research data

Data associated with your manuscript (e.g. 3D models and photos) can also be deposited with the Swedish Rock Art Research Archives (Svenskt Hällristningsforskningsarkiv, SHFA) or another data repository to allow for persistent URLs. Please contact the editors before submitting your article.

Book reviews

Adoranten publishes reviews of books on rock art-related topics or emanating from rock art research which may be of interest for a wider international readership. Please contact the editors if you would like to suggest a book for review. Unsolicited review copies will not be returned.

Copyright and costs

Adoranten is an open access journal published under the terms of the Creative Commons 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Authors retain the copyright of their work, with first publication rights granted to the SHFA.

There are no costs for authors. The editorial work is carried out on a voluntary basis.

Authorship policy

All authors must meet the following criteria:

  1. Have made a significant contribution to the design of the research, relevant data collection, analysis, and/or interpretation of the results;
  2. Have contributed substantially to the writing and/or critical review of the publication;
  3. Have approved the final version of the publication;
  4. Have accepted responsibility for the content of the publication, unless otherwise stated in the publication.

Those who do not meet these criteria but have still contributed to the final manuscript should be included in the Acknowledgements. It is the responsibility of the author(s) to obtain written consent from those mentioned in this section.

These authorship criteria are based on the Vancouver Recommendations (or ICMJE Recommendations) regarding authorship and contributorship. They align with the principles outlined in the ALLEA European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity and the guidelines described in the Swedish Research Council’s Good Research Practice (2024, p. 81).

Language

The language of Adoranten is English. Only manuscripts written in English will be considered for publication. Adoranten requires that papers receive professional language revision. The editors can recommend suitable editing services.

Please use British English. When in doubt, consult the Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors or the online Oxford English Dictionary.

Length

Each volume of Adoranten usually contains articles and reviews of recent publications or exhibitions. Articles can be in the form of:

  • Research papers
  • Methodological papers
  • Theoretical papers
  • Dataset descriptions
  • Fieldwork reports

However, other formats may be accepted, please contact the editors.

Articles (excluding dataset descriptions and fieldwork reports) must be a minimum of 3000 words including references. Dataset descriptions and fieldwork reports must be a minimum of 1500 words including references. Reviews must not exceed 2000 words.

There is no limit on figures, but the number of figures should be balanced against the amount of text. A suggested placement for the figures should be marked clearly in the text. Figure captions should be listed at the end of the manuscript.

Article and author details

Include the following at the top of the first page, listed as follows:

  • Title (a single level heading is preferred, but two levels are accepted)
  • Name (or names) of the author(s)
  • Abstract (no longer than 200 words)
  • Keywords (no more than ten)
  • Contact details for the author(s) including affiliation, postal address, and email
  • ORCiD

Subheadings

Two levels of sub-headings are allowed.

Acknowledgements and funder information (where available) should be included as a separate subheading at the end of the article, before references.

Disclaimers for conflicts of interest need to be added. If there are no conflicts of interest the following statement can be used “The authors state no conflict of interest.” Should the article be a translation of work published elsewhere in a different language, this also needs to be declared under conflicts of interest.

A data availability statement should also be added if relevant.

Footnotes

Please use footnotes not endnotes, and use them sparingly. Footnotes should be indicated in the text by superscript numbers after punctuation, i.e. after a comma or full stop.

Abbreviations

  • Titles: a full stop is not used if the abbreviation ends with the last letter of the actual word, so Dr not Dr., Mr not Mr., but Prof. for Professor.
  • Dates: BP, BC, BCE, etc. are acceptable, and they should be used consistently throughout the article with a space between the preceding number and the date unit.

Numbers and Measurements

  • Numbers: under 10 should be written out in full (e.g. nine), numbers 10 and over should be listed in digits.
  • Measurements: should be metric wherever possible.
  • Units: should not be preceded by a space, e.g. 500km.

Dates

  • Commas: no commas in thousands of years old, but there are commas in tens of thousands of years old, e.g. 1500 BC and 15,000 BP.
  • Uncalibrated dates: are denoted bc or bp (e.g. 4000 bc), while calibrated dates are capitalised: 3500 BC. Radiocarbon dates should include laboratory number and plus/minus values.
  • Decades: 1960s, i.e. without an apostrophe.
  • Centuries or millennia: must be spelled out, e.g. fourth century AD or third millennium BC, but 400 BC and 600 AD.

Punctuation

  • Titles of books, journals and films should be in italic.
  • Serial commas (Oxford commas) should be used where necessary, e.g. apples, pears, and peaches.

Quotations

  • Single quotation marks are used throughout for direct quotes and to indicate concepts, e.g. ‘complex’ societies. The exception is when a quote or ‘concept’ appears within a quote, then double quotation marks are used.
  • If a quote starts with a capital letter in the original version, it should also do so in the quotation.
  • Indented quotes: quotes longer than one line (e.g., multiple sentences) should be inset. Where the author has been named in the sentence preceding the quote, the full reference should be in the sentence following the author(s).

Figures and tables

There are no restrictions on the number of figures, but the number of figures should be suitable for the length of the text.

The maximum figure size is 160mm (width) x  240mm (length). All figures and tables should be numbered consecutively. They should be submitted as digital originals in high resolution (minimum 300 dpi in the final print size). The files must be in one of the following formats: JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, EPS (to maximise quality, the original source file is preferred). Plans and maps are preferred in EPS or AI format.

A suggested placement for the figures and tables should be marked in the text. The figures should be sent as separate files, do not include them within the text. All figures and tables must have short, descriptive captions including their attribution where relevant. Authors must ensure they have permissions to use any material generated by other parties.

Captions should be listed at the end of the manuscript. The figures should be referred to in the text as (Figure 1) and tables as (Table 1). Use this format for the captions:

Figure 1. Caption.

Table 1. Caption.

References

Adoranten has adapted a Harvard style of referencing. It is preferred that authors use citation software. Adoranten’s technical support can provide the citation style file for citation software, if needed.  More info can be found at SHFA’s Github: https://github.com/Swedish-Rock-Art-Research-Archives/adoranten

In-text citations

  • Single author with no page number should use a space between the author surname and publication year, e.g. (Montelius 1885)
  • Citation with page number(s) should include a colon and the page number(s) after the publication year, e.g. (Montelius 1885:15) or (Montelius 1885:15-17, 21)
  • Multiple citations should be ordered alphabetically and separated by semicolon, e.g. (Chapman 1997; Montelius 1885)
  • Two or three authors should be cited with ‘and’, e.g. (Hodder and Orton 1978:59, 62–63)
  • Four or more authors should be cited with ‘et al.’, e.g. (Westin et al. 2025)
  • Multiple works by the same author should be listed with the author’s name in chronological order separated by a comma, e.g. (Horn et al. 2022, 2024) or (Horn et al. 2022, 2024; Skoglund et al. 2017)
  • Multiple works by the same author in the same year should be identified using a and b, e.g. (Horn et al. 2022a, 2022b)
  • If the author is named in the sentence the year should be cited directly after the author’s name, e.g. Montelius (1885)

Reference list

The name and city of the publisher should be included for all monographs and page numbers for all articles in edited volumes and journals. Titles of monographs and journals should be in italics.

A DOI must be included for all works where available.

Any works with more than five authors should use the following author format instead:  Surname, Initial. et al.

The references list should be formatted as follows:

Journal Articles

Skoglund, P., Horn, C., and Potter, R. 2025. Decorated Standing Stones – The Hagbards Galge Monument in Southwest Sweden. Open Archaeology, 11(1), p. 20250045. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1515/opar-2025-0045.

Chapter in Book

Horn, C., Peternell, M., Ling, J., Green, A., and Potter, R. 2024. Rock Art in Three Dimensions: Comments on the Use and Possibilities of 3D Rock Art Documentation. In: M. Hostettler et al. (eds) The 3 Dimensions of Digitalised Archaeology: State-of-the-Art, Data Management and Current Challenges in Archaeological 3D-Documentation. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 87–108. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53032-6_6.

Authored Books

Fahlander, F. 2024. Ecologies of Bronze Age Rock Art: Organisation, Design and Articulation of Petroglyphs in Eastern-Central Sweden. 1st ed. Havertown: Oxbow Books, Limited (Swedish Rock Art Research Series, v. 9).

Edited Books

Volodina, E. et al. (eds) 2024. Proceedings of the Huminfra Conference (HiC 2024), 10-11 January, 2024, Gothenburg, Sweden. Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press (Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings 205). Available at: https://ecp.ep.liu.se/index.php/hic/issue/view/84.

Thesis

Potter, R. 2024. Accessibility in Digital Archaeology: Developing interoperable approaches to digital recording. Doctoral Thesis. Bournemouth University.

Report

Swedish Research Council 2024. Good Research Practice 2024. VR2405. Stockholm, Sweden: Vetenskapsrådet. Available at: https://www.vr.se/english/analysis/reports/our-reports/2025-07-03-good-research-practice-2024.html.

Paper in conference proceedings

Green, A. et al. 2024. Accessing Centuries of Documentation - Resources to Improve Access to Swedish Rock Art Documentation and Metadata. In: Volodina, E. et al. (eds). Proceedings of the Huminfra Conference (HiC 2024), 10-11 January, 2024, Gothenburg, Sweden, pp. 154–160. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3384/ecp205021.

Software

Westin, J., Bridge, T., Karimi, A., Green, A., and Humlesjö, S. 2025. SHFA Frontend + Backend. Version 1.4 [Vue, Python]. Gothenburg Research Infrastructure in Digital Humanities (GRIDH). Available at: https://github.com/gu-gridh/shfa-frontend [Accessed: 9 October 2025].

Images in an online collection

Andersson, T. and Toreld, A. 2014. Tracing (Plastic) of L1967:3569 - SHFA [Image]. SHFA. Available at: https://shfa.dh.gu.se/image/130367 [Accessed: 18 November 2025].

Webpages

Riksantikvarieämbetet n.d. Fornsök. Fornsök. Available at: https://app.raa.se/open/fornsok/lamning-query [Accessed: 7 November 2025].

If no author information is available, use the organisation or page title instead.

Contact

Please follow the above guidance when submitting a manuscript, but if you have any issues contact the editorial board for questions concerning content and format or Adoranten’s technical support for questions concerning files or the submission platform:

SHFA editorial board: shfa@gu.se

Ashely Green (Technical Support): ashely.green@gu.se

Note: Please include Adoranten in your email subject line