Curator: The Museum Journal is a refereed, interdisciplinary quarterly journal. It provides a forum for exploration and debate of the latest issues, practices, and policies in museum administration, research, exhibition development, visitor studies, conservation, education, collections management, and other subjects of current concern to the community.

Submitted manuscripts will undergo a blind peer review. Anonymous critiques of manuscripts are forwarded to the author with recommendations for revision or resubmission, or with a notice of rejection. Forum contributions consist of position papers or commentary. Forums, technical notes, and reviews of books, exhibitions, and media are subject to approval and editing by the editorial staff before being accepted for publication.

In writing for Curator, keep in mind that readers are museum professionals, but not necessarily in your discipline. Please define technical terms, avoid technical jargon, and focus on communicating your perspective and/or research.

Manuscripts submitted to Curator should not be under consideration by any other publishers, nor may the manuscript have been previously published elsewhere. If a manuscript is based on a lecture, reading, or talk, specific details should accompany the submission. The lecture, reading, or talk should be acknowledged in the submission.

We ask that manuscripts be submitted to submit@curatorjournal.org. Do not use page breaks, fancy headline script, or anything other than basic formatting. Please provide mailing addresses (including telephone, fax, and e-mail) as well as title and institutional affiliation for each author.

An abstract of no more than 150 words must accompany the manuscript.

Manuscript preparation, styles, and format:

1. Preferred length of feature articles is 5,000 – 6,000 words.
2. Headers and footers in the manuscript file should be limited to sequential page numbers (from 1 through the last page).
3. Left justify only.
4. Use Times New Roman font throughout the text. An alternative font may be used in figures.
5. Do not use the automatic numbering or bullet list utilities in your word processing program. Put the numbers or bullets in by hand.
6. Any images, tables, figures, or other graphics that accompany the manuscript should be saved separately, one graphic per file. Save each as an individual file and sent it as an attachment to your submission or via email to submit@curatorjournal.org.
7. Short captions should be included for each figure or table, along with appropriate credits. It is the authors’ responsibility to obtain necessary permission for use of copyrighted material.
8. Digital images should be saved as EPS files or TIFF files at 300 dpi with a final image size of approximately 4 by 5 inches.
9. Please do not embed graphic elements, images, or figures in the main body of the text. Simply indicate their approximate placement in the text (e.g. “place Figure 1 about here”).
10. Photographic images that are purely illustrative (not essential to understanding the text) are welcome and encouraged, but please hold these until notice of the manuscript’s acceptance is sent.
11. Please indicate the sections of your manuscript. Curator uses three levels of headlines: A, B, and C. You may write your own heads, or you may indicate placement and the editors will write heads, subject to your approval. Please refer to the journal for styles of headlines and for examples of how they are used to hierarchically organize the manuscript.
12. Please do not use the Word function that creates embedded footnotes or automatically formatted footnotes. Instead, create numbered endnotes at the end of the article, in ordinary body text, without autoformatting. Endnotes appear after text but before References and any appendices.

In all references and citations, please follow the Author-Date style in the Chicago Manual of Style and review Curator issues for our house-style variations.

Some examples of References:

Allen, S. 1997. Using scientific inquiry activities in exhibit explanations. (Informal Science Education Special Issue.) Science Education. 81 (6): 715-734.

Doering, Z. D., and A. J. Pekarik. 2000. Questioning the entrance narrative. In Transforming Practice: Selections from the Journal of Museum Education, 1992-1999, J. S. Hirsch and L. H. Silverman, eds., 261-267. Washington, DC: Museum Education Roundtable.

August, P. V. 1979. Distress calls in Artibeus jamaicensis: Ecology and evolutionary implications. In Vertebrate Ecology in the Northern Neotropics, J. F. Eisenberg, ed., 113-175. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Examples of text citations:

“. . . repositories of culture” (Graburn 1984, 180).”

“… were supported by the later studies of Rosenfeld (1980).”
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Please direct questions and correspondence to:

Kay Larson, Managing Editor
managingeditor@curatorjournal.org