Submissions

Author Guidelines

NOTE: Authors must register and login to an account on OJS in order to start a submission.

Authors are invited to make a submission to this journal. All submissions will be assessed by an editor to determine whether they meet the aims and scope of this journal. Those considered to be a good fit will be sent for peer review before determining whether they will be accepted or rejected.

For the first edition of Martyria: Student Journal of the St Andrews School of Divinity (formerly The Heretic), we are seeking for student papers that engage with one or more of the following areas within Divinity:

•    Biblical Studies and Languages
•    Systematic Theology and Philosophical Theology
•    Historical Theology and Church History
•    Religion and its intersections with Politics or Science

Before making a submission, authors must ensure that their papers conform to the following guidelines:

(1)    Authored by undergraduate students; mature students completing their first taught Divinity degree (e.g., BD or MDiv) who have not previously earned a Divinity qualification; or recent graduates who have not yet completed a year of a second Divinity degree. We welcome contributors from other disciplines so long their papers engage with the areas listed above.

(2)    Submissions may originate as university coursework but need not do so. If graded by your institution, accepted submissions will generally have received a first-class grade (letter grade A), though this is not a strict requirement.

(3)    Between 2,000 and 5,000 words long, excluding bibliography and abstract.

(4)    Include an abstract of no longer than 300 words.

(5)    Anonymized for double-blind peer-review.

(6)    Submitted as a single Microsoft Word document (.docx) containing a title page, abstract, main text, and bibliography. 

(7)    Formatted, styled, and referenced according to The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed. (University of Chicago Press, 2017). However, British spelling conventions following the Oxford English Dictionary should be followed.

(8)    As the Chicago Manual forms the basis of referencing in Biblical Studies, submissions in this area should also consult The SBL Handbook of Style, 2nd ed. (SBL Press, 2014) for discipline-specific referencing (but not formatting or style).

Please submit your work using the OJS submission portal found here or the grey button above by 16th January 2026, 11:45 PM. 

We invite and strongly encourage submissions from undergraduates, recent graduates, and early postgraduates. Please note that, often, the publication of accepted submissions will be contingent on them undergoing certain revisions. Any questions can be sent to martyriajournal@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Key dates:
•    Fri, 16 Jan: Submission deadline
•    Mon, 2 Mar: 1st round—Acceptance/Rejections
•    Sun, 22 Mar: 2nd (final) round—Resubmission deadline
•    Mon, 6 Apr: 2nd round—Acceptance/Rejections
•    Sun, 27 Apr: Final resubmission, author's bio sent
•    Mon, 25 May: Final publication

Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to publish any material included with the submission, such as photos, documents and datasets. All authors identified on the submission must consent to be identified as an author. Where appropriate, research should be approved by an appropriate ethics committee in accordance with the legal requirements of the study's country.

An editor may desk reject a submission if it does not meet minimum standards of quality. Before submitting, please ensure that the study design and research argument are structured and articulated properly. The title should be concise and the abstract should be able to stand on its own. This will increase the likelihood of reviewers agreeing to review the paper. When you're satisfied that your submission meets this standard, please follow the checklist below to prepare your submission.