Prospective authors may submit papers to IJBS at any time by emailing ijbs@protonmail.com with the email subject line “Submission – Your Name – dd/mm/yy”. Within the email, please ask any questions you may have and attach your draft.

သုတေသနစာတမ်းနှင့် ဆောင်းပါးစာမူများ ပေးပို့လိုသူများအနေဖြင့် ijbs@protonmail.com အီးမေးလ်လိပ်စာသို့ ပေးပို့နိုင်ပါသည်။ အီးမေးလ်ခေါင်းစဥ်တွင် “စာမူပေးပို့ခြင်း – စာရေးသူအမည် – ပေးပို့သောရက်စွဲ” တို့ကို ဖော်ပြစေလိုပါသည်။ ဂျာနယ်တွင် စာမူဖော်ပြခြင်းနှင့် ပတ်သက်၍ မေးမြန်းလိုသည်များကိုလည်း အီးမေးလ်တွင် တစ်ပါတည်း မေးမြန်းနိုင်ပါသည်။ မြန်မာဘာသာဖြင့် ရေးသားထားသော သုတေသနစာတမ်းနှင့် ဆောင်းပါးများကိုလည်း ကြိုဆိုပါသည်။

Guidelines for English Language Submissions

Our aim at the Independent Journal of Burmese Scholarship is to enable those with and without academic experience to bring their knowledge and thought to a wider audience. The editors will work with you to make sure that your contribution is of a quality to contribute to the long-term knowledge of Burma. If you would like to submit a piece to the journal, please do so in accordance with the following guidelines. If you cannot follow them all, please just contact the editors at ijbs@protonmail.com.

1. The journal is edited in LibreOffice, but any of the OpenOffice-family applications may be used. LibreOffice is free and open-source. It may be downloaded from libreoffice.org. The page size is 6″ x 9″. Use the “IJBS” styles provided in the template. It is much easier to use the styles from the beginning, rather than to apply them after writing.
   
2. English and Myanmar text is justified; however, Myanmar text must be spaced appropriately between clauses. Indent quotes of four lines or more; if they are direct quotes from personal communications, they can be italicized.
   
3. Use the fonts Gentium Book Basic for English and Pyidaungsu for Myanmar Text. All Myanmar text must be typed in Unicode. Authors may use any keyboard, as long as the font is true Unicode. If you do not know what a true Unicode font is, please contact the editor. More information on Unicode with reference to the Myanmar language can be found here.
   
4. When typing in မြန်မာ please use the correct inputs. For example, type ဈ instead of စ+ ျ and use ။ instead of ၊ + ၊. Please use the zero-width space where line breaks are possible (I.e., on the AvaUni keyboard, the zero-width space is on the ‘,’ key. It may be abbreviated ZWS or 0WS, Unicode codepoint U+200B, depending on your keyboard).
   
5. Use Myanmar’s 1986 spelling-reform spelling as found in the 2019 မြန်မာစာလုံးပေါင်းသတ်ပုံကျမ်း (Second Edition) by the Myanmar Language Commission.
   
6. Authors may use any romanization systems they prefer, as long as it is consistent. There is no need to systematically romanize well-established words and names I.e. Yangon. For a suggested romanization system, click here. When there is a lack of clarity, it is better to include a term in Myanmar script rather than to use romanization which may not be easily or widely understood. Treat romanized words as English words for capitalization and punctuation and please do not italicize romanizations.
   
7. Use the United States’ English spelling system, not the United Kingdom or other systems.
   
8. We value individual, personalized writing styles, but please try to keep your prose straightforward and clear. Keep in mind that the IJBS is aimed at a wider public, not only academics.
   
9. Use numerals for 10 and above but spell the words one to nine. There is no need to spell numbers below 10 that are a part of proper nouns, like “No. 1 Basic Education High School, Dagon”.
   
10. Use your own judgment when deploying ethnonyms and community identifiers, e.g., whether to use Pwakanyaw, Kayin, Karen, or another term; or Myanmar, Myanma, Burman, Bamar, Bama, or another term. But please be consistent and pay attention to how these identifiers are deployed in your texts, as they can be political choices if not suitably qualified.
    
11. Include low-resolution images in your article to show editors where images should be. Submit the images as separate, high-quality files of 400-600 dpi.
    
12. Authors may use reference manager software such as Mendeley or Zotero, which are available for free, to manage their references.
    
13. Use footnotes rather than in-text citations and use the APA 7th edition referencing system for citations in the footnotes (using the in-text or full reference). When citing Burmese authors without surnames, use their full name in place of any initials. Burmese and non-Burmese honorifics such as U, Daw, Ashin, Sayadaw, Molavi, Rev., Fr., Sr., etc. may be maintained except in the reference list where authors are catalogued by their given names only, with Burmese authors presented with no differentiation between “first names” and “surnames”. Click here for clear IJBS examples of APA 7th edition references. If you are still in doubt, review the previous issue of the journal.
    
14. When presenting both English language and Burmese language author/citations in the reference list, first list the English references A-Z according to APA 7th edition, then list the Burmese references according to alphabet order.