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This section discusses important aspects of getting published in Poise. If anything is unclear, or you want to explore options, please email david.gibbens@mouritz.org.
Suitability: what Poise will publish
Poise looks forward to publishing
- essays
- reviews
- poetry
- art-work, including cartoons
- memoir
- interviews
- miscellaneous shorter pieces of interest (e.g. ‘Notes & Queries’)
- responses to previously published material
- summaries of published research, suitable for a lay audience
- summaries of academic theses, suitable for non-academic readers
- excerpts from books yet to be published and that work as standalone pieces
- obituaries and tributes.
In some circumstances Poise will republish material previously available elsewhere, including, for example, material that is
- hard-to-obtain and ‘out-of-print’ from its original publisher;
- in translation, not previously available in English;
- adapted from a blog-post or essay previously published by an author on their own website;
- a conference paper made available to attendees only.
Poise may publish pieces that are highly relevant to the Technique but are not written from an Alexander Technique perspective; but we won't normally publish:
- news reports
- matters pertaining only to an individual teaching society
- political debates of a temporary nature
- research papers and theses in their original form.
Copyright and licensing
Many of the sections that follow apply only to longer pieces such as essays. But everyone contributing to Poise needs to understand the copyright and licensing arrangements involved. Please contact us if you have any questions about them.
Licensing agreement
It is a condition of agreeing to publication by Mouritz in Poise that you give Mouritz non-exclusive and continuing rights without limit
- to publish your material in the Poise section of the Mouritz website; and
- (unless otherwise agreed with you in advance) to republish the material by any means and in any format but without material alteration.
-o0o-
This gives Mouritz a licence to publish your material: but you retain the copyright. As the licence you grant us is non-exclusive, you can publish your material elsewhere in other forms and formats. Having agreed that the rights you grant us are continuing without limit, you can't subsequently withdraw them on a whim.
Note that Mouritz asserts its copyright over the material as edited by us, in the specific form in which it is published in Poise (=“the typographical arrangement”).
As an example, a copyright statement for an article previously published elsewhere in 2009 might appear as follows:
Copyright © 2009, 2023 Pat Doe; © 2023 Mouritz
All rights reserved.
Mouritz will also welcome publishing your material, at your request, under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License.
This is a more generous licence, increasingly used by open access publishers, that allows others to reproduce and distribute your material from the outset. But, under the terms of the licence, if they do so:
- it must be attributed to you
- it cannot be used for commercial purposes
- it cannot be redistributed if it has been adapted, remixed, transformed or otherwise built upon
For a summary of this licence see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. For the full licence ('legal code') see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode.
A copyright statement based on this licence, using the above example, would appear as follows:
Copyright © 2009, 2023 Pat Doe; © 2023 Mouritz
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Permissions
Please note that you are responsible for obtaining any permissions necessary to include any copyright material (as may be the case with illustrations, statistical tables, lyrics, etc.) If we think that such permissions are necessary, we'll ask you to supply these in writing as early as possible in the process.
Note that you will need to be clear about the copyright and licensing arrangements for your piece (as discussed in the previous section) when seeking permissions.
Within reason, we can help you deal with any copyright holder.
How to submit - first draft
Please send your contribution by e-mail to david.gibbens@mouritz.org as attachments (not in the body of the e-mail), and using a format readable by Microsoft Word, e.g. .rtf (Rich Text Format), .doc, .docx, .odt.
If you can't do this (for example if you have a .pdf file and have lost the original Word document, or your material only exists online), please contact us first and we'll work out the best solution.
We do not require any particular format to be adopted for an initial draft, nor all the sections that might be required in the final draft, such as ‘Abstract’, ‘Acknowledgments’, etc.
Before offering your contribution, please carefully note the following:
- You should let us know the details if your piece has been published previously.
- You should let us know if your piece is being considered for publication elsewhere.
- We can accept online material currently available as a blog post (or similar) if you are going to materially revise it for publication in Poise or if it ceases to be published online: please clarify your intentions.
- If you use Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools to help with your piece, please provide full details. (Explore our Sources and references page for further details.)
- We'll need to know the full name, email address, contact telephone number of all the authors (i.e. if there is more than one of them).
Review and acceptance - longer pieces
The editor(s) — or volunteer editorial reviewers if available — will review your contribution. All reviewers will be qualified teachers of the Alexander Technique.
The review process is not blind in any direction: you'll know who the lead reviewer is and the reviewer will know who you are. We'll let you know in advance who the main reviewer is going to be, in case there are reasons why you might want to request someone else.
Reviews will not be made public. For further help and information about the review process, see our downloadable PDF document Guidelines for Pre-publication Review (opens in a new page).
The decision on publication will normally fall into the following categories:
- accepted for publication as is (excluding house-style changes);
- accepted with editorial corrections or suggestions (grammatical changes and other small changes);
- suitable for publication if revised, but not yet accepted; or
- not accepted, with reasons given.
The decision will be made by the editors collectively but conveyed to you (and discussed with you) by the Senior Editor.
From draft to publication
For categories (1) to (3) above, you'll work with a commissioning editor to bring the piece to publication. The aim is to support you, without treading on your toes.
The commissioning editor may return your draft with minor tracked changes of grammar and wording; other desirable minor changes may be referred back for you to make.
For drafts that are suitable in principle (i.e. would be acceptable, subject to revisions being made) we'll give clear feedback explaining what revisions are considered desirable and why.
When a suitable draft has been agreed, the commissioning editor will work with the author to produce a final draft that is as close as possible to the house style and includes all the various sections needed for the final version (see next section).
PDF proofs of this final version will be e-mailed to you. Any further corrections at this point should be minimal and you should return them within ten business days.
The final PDF proof will then be formally agreed between Poise and you via an exchange of emails confirming matters such as the copyright and licensing arrangements.
Poise offers continuous publication, meaning pieces will be published online within 10 days (normally less) of the final PDF proof being agreed.
What's in a final draft
We will notify you of any sections still required for your final draft. Depending on the nature of the contribution, the following sections might be required.
- Abstract for longer pieces
- Main Article
- Copyright statement
- How to cite
- Author details: short biographical notes on author(s) (max. 100 words per author) plus contact information and (if desired) website address
- Acknowledgments: note that any use of GenAI tools such as ChatGPT or DALL-E must be acknowledged
- Mouritz contact details
- Link to article on Mouritz website (Journal page)
- Appendices for supplementary or background information that is crucial to the understanding of the article but would otherwise disturb the continuity of the text, e.g. if incorporated into a footnote
- Bibliography (optional): this is not a standard requirement as sources should be fully cited in the footnotes.
Review and acceptance: shorter pieces
We welcome shorter pieces such as 'Letters to the Editor' and responses to previously published material. In most cases this will involve a briefer, faster process than that indicated above, whilst still retaining the element of quality control and ensuring that the copyright and licensing arrangements are understood.
Notes on tables and figures
'Figures' includes any type of illustration (chart, graph,photograph, drawing, map, etc) other than a table. Tables and figures should be
- relevant to the article
- supported by permissions from copyright or intellectual property holders where appropriate
- numbered in order of appearance (with separate series for tables and figures)
- supported by clear descriptive or identifying captions including, for any reproduced material, a copyright statement and footnote reference to the footnote that identifies the source.
Embed tables and figures in your draft where they are intended to appear in the text. But please also submit them individually as computer graphics files: JPEG is preferred, but we can accept TIFF (Tagged Image File Format), and EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) format. Electronic images of line drawings should have a resolution of 300 dots per inch (dpi) and all other types of artwork must have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi. TIFF files can be saved with LZW compression to reduce file size (Photoshop). ZIP compressions for Macintosh are also accepted. Please place files in a folder before compression.
The maximum size possible for a figure is 160 x 240 mm. All figures should be large enough to withstand 50% reduction and still be easily readable. Tables and illustrations can be in colour but note that many people will only be able to print them in black and white: this may be relevant to how infographics are presented, for example using hatching and shading rather than colour.
Abstracts
Abstracts (i.e. summaries) are required for longer pieces. They will appear on the journal’s website to inform readers of the contents of each article. Write abstracts in complete sentences, not exceeding 150 words, in a form comprehensible to the average reader with a knowledge of the Alexander Technique and suitable for publication separately from the complete article. As far as possible, avoid abbreviations.
Abstracts are not necessary for reviews, letters, poetry, and other miscellaneous material. Poise may provide a brief introductory note where an abstract is not appropriate.
Your warranties
When it comes to formal acceptance for publication, you will need to warrant the following:
- that you are able to assert the moral rights to be identified as the creator of the Article according to the UK Copyright Designs & Patents Act 1988;
- that you have secured any necessary written permission from the copyright owner or authorities for the reproduction by Poise of any text, illustration, or other material incorporated in your material;
- that, apart from any such third party copyright material, the submission is your original work, and cannot be construed as plagiarising other published work;
- that the material contains nothing that is abusive, defamatory, libellous, obscene, fraudulent, nor in any way infringes the rights of others, nor is in any other way unlawful or in violation of applicable laws;
- that you have described any use made of Generative Artifical Intelligence tools in the preparation of your piece;
- if the piece was prepared jointly with others, that you have been authorised by all co-creators to submit it on their behalf, and have agreed on their behalf the order of names to be cited as creators.
If any of this looks problematic, best to contact us sooner rather than later.
