CURIO: Adelaide Journal of Curatorial and Heritage Practice

Before submitting a manuscript, please review the following information.

CURIO – accepts manuscripts on an ongoing basis from postgraduate students and alumni researching across a range of fields including Museum and Curatorial studies, Art History, and Heritage studies. All manuscripts should comply with the editorial and publishing policies to be considered for publication.

All manuscripts submitted will be considered for publication. The final decision to publish rests with the Editorial Board.  

The approval process for manuscripts submitted for publication may take six weeks from the time submissions have closed for a particular Issue. There may be external factors over which the Editorial Board has limited influence that may affect this timeframe.  

Authorship – listed authors should include all people who have made a substantive contribution to the submitted manuscript. Authorship order must reflect the degree of contribution, with whoever made the most substantive contribution being listed as the first author, and so on.

Acknowledgements – should be given to any contributors to a manuscript who do not meet the authorship criteria. This could include reviewers who have considered your manuscript and offered comments prior to submission. It is the responsibility of the prime author to ensure all contributors are acknowledged.

Declaration of conflict of interest – Editors of CURIO should declare any conflicts of interest that may influence decisions.  Editors and members of the Editorial Board shall maintain the utmost rigour in identifying, declaring, and avoiding conflicts of interest. They shall not derive any financial gain from their participation in the Journal.

Conflicts of interest could arise in either a professional and/or personal capacity. The following scenarios are examples only:

• Financial ties or relationships (e.g. employment, consultancy, shared ownership of property, paid expert testimony)
• Personal relationships (e.g. is a friend, family member, colleague, competitor) 
• Institutional affiliations (e.g. being employed by or associated with an institution that may benefit or suffer from the publication of the submitted manuscript, such as a company that manufactures or sells a product being described in the manuscript)

Authors must declare any similar conflicts of interest, including any funding they have received as part of writing, researching, or contributing to the manuscript.

Declaration of conflicts of interest may not result in manuscript rejection. However, failure to declare any conflict of interest may.

Publication ethics – CURIO is committed to academic integrity and upholds the International Standards for Editors and Authors of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Prospective authors should refer these standards. 

Plagiarism – any form of plagiarism, copyright infringement, and other forms of academic malpractice will result in the manuscript being rejected by the Editorial Board. By submitting a manuscript, the author attests that the manuscript is free from any plagiarised content including artificial intelligence generated content. Proper referencing must be included for all content.

CURIO reserves the right to apply duplication-checking software to all submitted manuscripts to screen for plagiarised content.  

Strong action will be taken against proven cases of plagiarism, and responses may include but are not limited to publishing corrections, retracting the article, pursuing the matter with relevant organisations, or taking legal action.

Use of Artificial Intelligence – manuscripts submitted for consideration must be consistent with the Adelaide University’s policy on artificial intelligence (AI) and its inappropriate use.  

Images created using AI should be clearly identified and include details of how the image was generated, the digital tool used to generate the image, by whom, and when.  

Permissions – it is the responsibility of the author to obtain any necessary permissions from copyright holders when reproducing previously published works. This includes text, images, tables, etc.

Prior publication – any manuscript that has been published prior in another publication or is currently under consideration for publication by another journal will not be accepted for publication in CURIO.  

Contributor’s publishing agreement – prior to publication authors must sign a publishing agreement granting CURIO permission to publish.  The author retains copyright ownership of the manuscript.  

Word limit – for academic articles is 4000 words. Word limit for reviews is up to 2000 words. Word limits exclude referencing, bibliographies/reference lists, graphs, tables, figures etc.

Content – if your manuscript has been submitted as part of an assessment for a course in postgraduate study, ensure the manuscript is revised so it is in ‘Journal’ style. This may include removing sections (such as Abstract or similar), and information about the course for which the manuscript was originally submitted. CURIO is widely distributed within the industry, which includes but is not limited to the academic sector.

NOTE: An exception is CURIO’s policy to publish abstracts of Masters theses submitted for the Museum and Curatorial Studies program.

Formatting your manuscript – formatting articles and reviews will be done by CURIO.  All manuscripts should be submitted as a digital document, in either Word or Pages, with referencing included (i.e. not a .pdf file).

Images or graphics – should not be embedded within the document, they must be supplied separately as high-resolution (minimum 300dpi) images or graphic file (minimum 800 dpi). The images and graphics must be supplied as separate files and not be supplied via a third-party link (e.g. Google Docs). The manuscript must reference a placeholder (eg Insert Figure 1 – caption) where the image, graph etc is to be placed.  

Artwork, figures, images and other graphics – authors must hold or obtain copyright permissions for all artwork, figures, and images in their manuscript if not publicly available.

• File type: JPEG files are preferred for images without texts or graphs. EPS or PNG files are preferred for images with graphs or line art.
• Submission: Figures, charts, or tables created in Microsoft Word should be placed in their relevant position in the body of the text, rather than at the end of the manuscript. Figures, charts, tables, or images not created in Microsoft Word should be submitted separately, with placeholders in the manuscript (e.g., [insert Table 1. here]).
• Resolution: Line drawings and graphs should have a minimum resolution of 800 dpi. Photos or images should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi. 
• Captions: All figures, charts, tables, and images must be appropriately titled, numbered and captioned, and the font and sizing shall not vary too much from the body text of the manuscript. 
  • Caption should include Figure/table number; title of image; source of image (e.g. photographer, Wikipedia), creative commons license identified where appropriate, or the approval of copyright holder to publish (e.g. Image by permission of Josephine Bloggs). If the image is the author’s, please record ‘Image by Jim Doe). 

Spelling, dates and numbers – please use Australian spelling style consistently throughout your manuscript, with Australian English spelling, e.g. -ise, not -ize; artefact not artifact; travelling not traveling.  

Spell out in full, in lower case, the names of centuries, e.g. ‘eighteenth century’. Dates should be presented as follows: 6 November 1970. In discursive text, spell out numbers up to and including nine, and use digits for numbers greater than nine; but always spell out a number that begins a sentence.  

Quotations - use single quotation marks, except for quotes within quotes, which should be in double quotation marks.  Punctuation is to follow quotation marks unless part of the quote itself. Quotations of up to thirty words should be contained in the text and enclosed in quotation marks. Longer unbroken quotations should not be enclosed in quotation marks but should be set out separately with one line space from preceding and following texts.  

Referencing Style – Harvard UofA with in-text referencing is required. This is an author-date style that requires both in-text referencing AND a full reference list at the end of the manuscript.  

Page numbers – should be listed on the bottom right, from the first page (number 1). 

Footnotes – use of footnotes should be as sparing as possible. There should be no endnotes. Appropriate usage of footnotes should provide concise contextual information that would otherwise disrupt the text or explain something that would be known to few readers but is key to understanding the text.  

Acronyms – any terms that use acronyms shall be stated in full at their first use, followed by the acronym in brackets. The acronym is then used for subsequent uses of the term.  

Submitting your manuscript –

• Submissions can be emailed anytime to curio@adelaide.edu.au  
• Manuscripts should be submitted as electronic copies in Microsoft Word or Pages (i.e. not .pdf). They should clearly identify whether the manuscript is an academic article, or a review of a book, conference, event etc.  
• Any illustrations/images used in the manuscript must be provided separately and should be properly and fully titled and the source cited
• Authors should provide a cover sheet for their manuscript, which includes:
  • Full names and academic institutions of all authors
  • Name of study program – or graduate of study program (include year of graduation)
  • A title
  • Six keywords for search engines
  • Any statements if applicable, such as to declare funding or in-kind support, or a conflict of interest

Acceptance and publication

Once accepted by the Editorial Board, a final round of copy editing will be undertaken. The Editor will send the final copy to the author for proof reading. The author/s must provide final approval for their submission to be published.  

The author/s should complete any required edits by the dates specified by the Editor.

If there are any changes to the authorship of the manuscript at this final stage, all authors must provide written approval for publication. 

Once the manuscript is published, the author/s will be notified and provided with the weblink to the issue featuring their work.   

Special Issues

The Editorial Board may consider publishing special issues on particular topics, conferences or other events. Special issue manuscripts should follow the guidelines for regular issues, align with the aims and scope of the Journal. 

The same submission procedures apply. As for manuscripts for regular CURIO issues, they should similarly reflect our values of community building, intellectual integrity, and our passion for fostering space for shared learning.