Our Submission Guidelines
Durham University’s Ostraka Journal is open to undergraduates and master's students from all disciplines, all over the world. Submitting your work for publication is a fantastic opportunity to explore topics of personal interest beyond your degree, and to get published as a student! Our guidelines, outlined here, have been written with flexibility in mind, but all our authors need to comply with them to ensure The Ostraka Journal runs smoothly.
Answers to frequently asked questions can be found here:
Please send any further queries to our Editor-in-Chief:
Pieces can be submitted to The Ostraka Journal via our Linktree:
On This Page:
Submission Criteria
We accept submissions that meet all of the following criteria:
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The author is currently pursuing an undergraduate degree, or is a master's student. This does not include recent graduates or postgraduates. However, mature undergraduate students may submit work.
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The submission is either an academic paper, a piece of creative writing, a translation, or an illustration.
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The submission is the author’s own work, with appropriate references to primary and/or secondary literature. Submissions caught for plagiarism and/or the use of generative artificial intelligence will be rejected.
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The submission falls within Classics and Ancient History, as defined below.
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The submission is written in English, in a style appropriate for the relevant category.
Written work must be submitted in .doc or .docx format.
Illustrations must be submitted in .png, .jpeg/.jpg, or .pdf format.
You may submit work originally written for your degree, but it must present an argument or creative process independent of your class. If you are submitting an excerpt of an academic paper you have already written, it is advised that you also submit an abstract providing further context.
Submission Categories
I: Academic Papers
You may submit up to two academic papers per publication cycle. They must meet the following criteria:
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They should be between 2,000 and 4,000 words in length (excluding footnotes and bibliography). If your paper falls outside the word limit, please contact our Editor-in-Chief with an abstract before you submit your work. Word counts must be clearly displayed.
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They must make use of secondary scholarship— that is, existing academic work that is not an ancient source or artefact.
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They must employ the Chicago referencing style, with footnotes (not endnotes) and a bibliography. The footnotes and bibliography are, to reiterate, not included in the final word count.
II: Creative Writing
You may submit up to three pieces of creative writing per publication cycle. They must meet the following criteria:
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They must be between 20 and 3,000 words in length. If your piece falls outside the word limit, please contact our Editor-in-Chief with your idea before you submit your work.
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They are ideally accompanied by an additional commentary of between 400 and 2,000 words explaining the creative process behind the submission. This is not mandatory.
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They aim to engage with primary rather than secondary sources.
III: Translations
You may submit up to three translations per publication cycle. They must meet the following criteria:
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They must be between 20 and1,000 words in length. If your translation falls outside the word limit, please contact our Editor-in-Chief with your idea before you submit your work. (The word count applies to the translation, not to the source passage.)
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They must be accompanied by an additional commentary of between 400 and 2,000 words explaining the creative process behind the submission.
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They engage with an existing passage in any ancient language, and are translated into an English dialect.
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They must be submitted alongside the original passage. The source passage must be appropriately cited. If your source passage is written in neither the Greek nor the Latin script, e.g. in cuneiform or Linear B, please provide an additional transliteration into English.
IV: Illustrations
You may submit up to two illustrations per publication cycle. They can be made using any artistic medium and have any orientation, and they must meet the following criteria:
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They must be accompanied by an additional commentary of between 400 and 2,000 words explaining the creative process behind the submission.
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They aim to engage with primary rather than secondary sources.
Defining "Classics"
Classics (and Ancient History) is a broad subject area, but, historically, it has been narrowly defined. Submissions to The Ostraka Journal do not have to stick to the rigid idea of Classical Greece and Rome. We define the domain of Classics and Ancient History as follows:
TIME: the Chalcolithic (c. 2500 BCE) to the Fall of the Roman Empire (476 CE)
PLACE: Southern Europe, Northern Africa, the Black Sea, and the Near East
However, this is a flexible guideline. Discussions of topics such as Mayan Hieroglyphs, the Silk Road, and classical figures in Dante’s Divine Comedy would all be considered for publication because they fall under the categories of ancient philology, ancient history, and reception studies respectively.
If you are unsure whether your idea fits our definition, please contact the Editor-in-Chief at ostraka.journal@durham.ac.uk with your topic or an abstract before publication.
Our Policy on AI
Currently, we accept submissions informed by artificial intelligence. However, at The Ostraka Journal, we deeply value independent arguments and intellectual curiosity, so your piece must ultimately be your own work. We will reject submissions created using generative artificial intelligence. That is, you must not use artificial intelligence to write your submission for you. However, here are some examples of how you may use artificial intelligence in your submission:
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To investigate how artificial intelligence interprets ancient languages/sources.
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To inform a submission illustrating the different approaches taken by humans and computers within the study of Classics and Ancient History.
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To inform a submission discussing ancient and/or modern robotics.
If you have used artificial intelligence to inform your piece, we’d like you to state how you have done so on the submission form. We will reject submissions that are not the author’s own work, i.e. that plagiarise and/or employ generative artificial intelligence.
Please note that you may have complied with our policy on artificial intelligence, but that your paper might not get published for other reasons.