Submissions

Author Guidelines

Submission Policy

Once the submission materials have been prepared in accordance with the Author Guidelines, manuscripts should be submitted online at https://omegalpha.zizioulas.org.

For any help with registration and submissions, please contact journal@zizioulas.org.

Only articles that have not previously appeared or been submitted concurrently elsewhere will be considered for publication. Nor does the journal accept submissions that contain material the author has published or is publishing elsewhere. Manuscripts posted as preprints may be submitted, and authors may post a preprint after submission; posting a preprint is not considered prior publication. Authors should inform the editors of any preprint, on submission or when it is posted, since it may reveal their identity to reviewers. Presentation at a conference or other scholarly event is not considered prior publication, nor is the publication of an abstract, a program, or a recording of the presentation. The editors welcome commentaries, including responses to articles published in the journal. The journal does not publish responses to book reviews or two-part articles. Authors are reminded that the entire corpus of Metropolitan John D. Zizioulas constitutes an indispensable point of reference for any serious theological study submitted to this journal. For a comprehensive bibliography, see https://zizioulas.org/library/bibliography.

OmegAlpha offers Free Format Submission: the layout of the manuscript is free (the manuscript template sets out only its parts), and accepted articles are formatted according to the journal’s style before publication. References, however, follow the Reference Style from the start.

Before You Submit

You will need:

• Your manuscript: an editable file including text, figures, and tables, or separate files, whichever you prefer. All required parts should be contained in your manuscript, including the abstract, the keywords, the word count, the main text with notes, and the references. Reviews, texts in the Theological Heritage section, and documents need no abstract, keywords, or word count. Figures and tables should have legends. Figures should be uploaded in the highest possible resolution. References follow the Reference Style below. Appendices and other supplementary material should be submitted in separate files. Your manuscript may also be sent back to you for revision if the quality of the English is poor.
• An ORCID iD, freely available at https://orcid.org.
• The title page of the manuscript, including:
  1. Your co-author details, including affiliation and email address.
  2. Statements relating to our ethics and integrity policies, in the standard wordings given under Title Page: a conflict of interest statement and a funding statement are always required (if there is none, state so), and the following are included where they apply:
     • statement on access to unpublished sources or data,
     • ethics approval statement,
     • statement on the use of AI tools,
     • details of any preprint of the manuscript,
     • details of any presentation of the paper at a conference or other scholarly event,
     • permission to reproduce material from other sources.

Important: The journal operates a double-blind peer-review policy. It is essential for the peer-review process that you anonymize your manuscript by supplying a separate title page file.

Online Submission

To submit, log in at https://omegalpha.zizioulas.org and create a new submission; authors who do not yet have an account request one as described under Accounts.

The online form opens with a start page, on which the authors enter the title, choose the section, confirm the submission checklist, and consent to the journal’s Data Protection statement. Five steps follow; a submission can be saved at any step and completed later, and all information can be reviewed and corrected before it is submitted.

• Details: the title, five to seven keywords, the abstract (150 to 200 words), and the reference list of the manuscript; reviews, texts in the Theological Heritage section, and documents need no abstract or keywords.
• Upload Files: the anonymized manuscript and, as a separate file of the type Title Page, the title page, together with any figures, tables, and supplementary material. Templates for both files are available on the Author Guidelines page of the journal’s website.
• Contributors: all authors, each with affiliation, email address, and ORCID iD. In the submission form, select each institution from the Research Organization Registry (ROR) list when it appears there; otherwise give the institution’s full name, city, and country. Contributors receive an email confirmation of the submission and a copy of all editorial decisions. If a contributor cannot be contacted by email, do not enter a fake email address; give the details in the comments for the editors.
• For the Editors: comments for the editors and, optionally, the subjects, disciplines, and type of the submission. Comments for the editors may give any information that the editors should know when evaluating the submission. Subjects are sent to indexing services together with the keywords. Disciplines name the field of the submission, for example Systematic Theology. The type of the submission is usually "Text".
• Review: the authors check all the information, agree to the copyright notice, which is the Publication License set out under After Acceptance, and submit the manuscript. Once the submission is complete, it is assigned to an editor.

Submission Checklist

All submissions must meet the following requirements.

• This submission meets the requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.
• This submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration.
• All references have been checked for accuracy and completeness.
• All tables and figures have been numbered and labeled.
• Permission has been obtained to publish all photos, datasets, and other material provided with this submission.
• Any use of AI tools beyond standard spelling and grammar checkers is disclosed on the title page, in line with the journal’s policy on the use of artificial intelligence.
• If the submission is an original paper, its sole or first author holds a doctoral degree.
• All authors have approved the submitted version and agree to its submission to OmegAlpha.
• The title page includes a conflict of interest statement and a funding statement (if there is none, the statement says so).
• The manuscript contains no defamatory or otherwise unlawful statements, and the authors have read the journal’s policies on publication ethics and on corrections and retractions.
• The manuscript and the title page have been prepared with the journal’s templates, Anonymized Manuscript and Title Page and Statements, available on the Author Guidelines page of the journal’s website.

Data Protection

If you submit a manuscript to or review for this publication, your name, email address, affiliation, and other contact details the publication might require will be used for the regular operations of the publication. Personal data are processed by the journal’s publishers for the editorial process, peer review, and publication, and for communication about them; the legal basis is the performance of these tasks at the request of the person concerned and the journal’s legitimate interest in keeping its editorial records. The data are not sold or used for any other purpose. Personal data are held in the journal’s submission system, which is accessed over an encrypted connection; each user sees only the data that their role in the editorial process requires. They are shared only as publication requires: the names, affiliations, and ORCID iDs of the authors of published articles appear in the article metadata sent to DOI registration, indexing, and archiving services, while the identities of reviewers are not disclosed. Submitted manuscripts are checked for similarity with Crossref Similarity Check, a service provided by Turnitin (iThenticate). The journal’s website keeps usage statistics (article views and downloads, with the visitor’s country) without third-party analytics services; IP addresses are stored only in hashed form. Personal data are kept for as long as needed for the journal’s editorial records. You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal data, or object to their processing, by writing to omegalpha@zizioulas.org. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the data protection authority in your country of residence.

Funding

You should list all funding sources in the funding statement on the title page and in the acknowledgments. You are responsible for the accuracy of the funder designations. If in doubt, please check the Open Funder Registry for the correct nomenclature.

Authorship

All listed authors should have contributed substantially to the manuscript and have agreed to the final submitted version. Others who contributed to the work should be named in the acknowledgments. Any change to the list of authors after submission requires the written agreement of all authors and the approval of the editors. Authorship disputes are handled in accordance with COPE guidance. The sole or first author of an original paper must hold a doctoral degree; authors without a doctorate may contribute as co-authors. This requirement does not apply to other contributions, such as review essays, book reviews, or commentaries.

Reproduction of Copyright Material

If excerpts from copyrighted works owned by third parties are included, the source must be credited in the contribution. The corresponding author is responsible for obtaining written permission to reproduce such material "in print and other media" from the copyright owner, usually the publisher of the original source, and for supplying the journal with that permission upon submission.

Title Page

The title page should contain:

• a brief, informative title that contains the major keywords and no abbreviations,
• a short running title of fewer than forty characters,
• the full names of the authors,
• the authors’ email addresses, with the corresponding author marked,
• the authors’ institutional affiliations (institution, city, and country) where the work was conducted, with a footnote for an author’s present address if different from where the work was conducted,
• acknowledgments,
• the authors’ ORCID iDs (freely available at https://orcid.org).

In the submission form, select each institution from the Research Organization Registry (ROR) list when it appears there; otherwise give the institution’s full name, city, and country.

Title Page Statements

The statements on the title page are given in the following standard wordings; the title page template offers them, and the authors keep the wording that applies and complete the part in parentheses. With several authors, the wordings are used in the plural ("The authors declare …").

• Conflict of interest (required): "The author declares no conflict of interest." or "The author declares the following conflict of interest: (description)."
• Funding (required): "This research received no external funding." or "This research was funded by (funder), grant (number)."
• Use of AI tools: "No AI tools were used beyond standard spelling and grammar checkers." or "(Tool) was used for (purpose); the author verified the result."
• Preprint: "This manuscript has not been posted as a preprint." or "A preprint of this manuscript is available at (DOI or address)."
• Presentation: "This paper has not been presented at a scholarly event." or "An earlier version of this paper was presented at (event), (place), (date)."
• Unpublished sources or data: "The manuscript does not rely on unpublished sources or data." or "The unpublished sources cited are held at (archive or institution) and may be consulted (conditions)."
• Ethics approval: "No ethics approval was required for this research." or "This research was approved by (body), approval (number), (date)."
• Permissions: "No material from other sources that requires permission is reproduced." or "Permission to reproduce (material) was obtained from (rights holder)."

Main Text File

Manuscripts can be submitted either as a single document (containing the main text, tables, and figures) or with figures and tables provided as separate files. Should your manuscript reach the revision stage, figures and tables must be provided as separate files. The main manuscript file can be submitted in Microsoft Word format (.doc or .docx).

All submissions must also contain a short abstract of the article (150 to 200 words), five to seven keywords, and a word count; reviews, such as review essays, conference reviews, and book reviews, texts in the Theological Heritage section, and documents need not have them.

To facilitate the double-blind review of submissions, the author’s name should not appear on the manuscript itself, but rather on a separate title page. Authors should also refer to their own works in the third person, as to the works of others, and remove their names from the file properties. Templates for the title page and for the anonymized manuscript are available on the Author Guidelines page of the journal’s website.

Reference Style

References follow the notes and bibliography system of The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition (2024). Sources are cited in notes, which may be footnotes or endnotes in the manuscript and appear as footnotes in the published article, and every work cited is listed in alphabetical order at the end of the article, under the heading References. Examples for the common types of sources are given in the Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide: https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide. Where Chicago allows more than one form, any of them may be used, consistently throughout the contribution.

The first note on a work gives the full citation; later notes give the shortened form (the author’s surname, a short title, and the page). Chicago prefers the shortened form to ibid.; ibid. may still be used to refer to the note immediately before, when that note cites a single work. When a URL is given, one based on the DOI is preferred (https://doi.org/…). In the reference list, the author’s name is repeated for each work rather than replaced by a dash.

In the reference list, works in non-Latin scripts, such as Greek or Cyrillic, are cited in Roman script, transliterated according to the ALA-LC Romanization Tables; an English translation of the title may be added in square brackets. In the notes, such works may also be cited in their original script. Authors whose names have an established form in Roman script are cited in that form.

Scripture is cited by book, chapter, and verse, never by page; in notes and parenthetical references the name of the book is usually abbreviated, with either the traditional abbreviations, which take periods (Gen., Matt., 1 Cor.), or the shorter ones, which do not (Gn, Mt, 1 Cor). A colon separates chapter and verse, an en dash joins inclusive verses or chapters, commas separate verses, and semicolons separate chapters (Mt 4:24–25; 12:9–14; Jn 3–4; 1 Cor 15:1–11, 29–34). It is advisable to name the version of the Bible quoted (e.g., NRSV).

Classical, patristic, and medieval works are cited by their standard divisions, in arabic numerals separated by periods (Aquinas, Summa Theologica 1.65.4); texts in the Patrologia Graeca and the Patrologia Latina may be cited by volume and column (PG, PL).

Manuscripts that do not follow the Reference Style may be returned to the authors for correction before peer review.

Numbers

In notes and in the reference list, page numbers are usually given without p. or pp. Inclusive numbers take an en dash, not a hyphen. They may be given in full (110–111; 315–317) or abbreviated; Chicago prefers abbreviating as follows: 15–18; 101–8; 110–11; 145–49; 315–17, and also allows giving only the changed digits (315–7). Chicago discourages f.; the following page is given instead (31–32 rather than 31f.); ff. may be used, without a space (67ff.).

In the text, numbers follow either Chicago’s general rule, by which whole numbers from zero through one hundred, and these numbers followed by hundred, thousand, or hundred thousand, are spelled out ("fifty-three pages," "one hundred," "five thousand," "one hundred thousand") and other numbers are given in numerals ("103 years later," "150,000"), or its alternative rule, by which only zero through nine are spelled out ("seven pages," "53 pages," "15,000"). Ordinal numbers follow the same rule ("the third chapter"; "the twenty-first century" or "the 21st century"). Percentages are given in numerals ("5 percent"), and a number that begins a sentence is spelled out.

Centuries are written in lowercase: spelled out under the general rule (the thirteenth century) and in numerals under the alternative rule (the 13th century); where centuries of one and two digits are mentioned often, numerals may be used for all of them (the 7th and 17th centuries). Used as a modifier, the expression is hyphenated (thirteenth-century manuscripts). The ending of an ordinal number stands on the line (13th, not 13ᵗʰ). Decades are given in numerals or in words (the 1990s or the nineties). Whichever forms are chosen are used consistently throughout the contribution.

Peer Review

This journal operates under a double-blind peer-review model: the identities of authors and reviewers are concealed from each other throughout the process. If a preprint of the manuscript has been posted, the author’s anonymity cannot be fully ensured. Papers will be sent for review only if the Editor-in-Chief determines that they meet the appropriate quality and relevance requirements. In this initial assessment, the editors also check the authors’ identities and affiliations, for example through their ORCID records, institutional pages, and publications. Each contribution sent for peer review is reviewed by at least two independent reviewers with expertise in its subject who are not affiliated with the author’s institution. At least one of them is an external reviewer who does not belong to the journal’s editorial team; another reviewer may be a member of the Editorial Board or the Advisory Board, invited in a personal capacity for their expertise in the subject, who has not handled or assessed the manuscript. The Editor-in-Chief does not act as a reviewer. Reviewers are selected by the Editor-in-Chief.

Editors ensure that there is no conflict of interest between authors and reviewers. Reviewers must decline an invitation if they were involved in the preparation of the manuscript, have co-authored a publication with the author in the past five years, share a current research project or grant with the author, have a close personal or professional relationship with the author, have supervised the author’s doctoral work, or are otherwise unable to assess the manuscript impartially.

Reviewers recommend acceptance, revision, or rejection. When their recommendations differ significantly, the editors may invite an additional reviewer. The final decision is made by the Editor-in-Chief on the basis of the reviewers’ reports. Reviews are not published, and the identities of reviewers are not disclosed. The editors aim to reach a first decision within twelve weeks of submission. Contributions that have undergone external peer review state the dates on which they were received, revised (where applicable), and accepted, together with the date of publication; other contributions state only the date of publication. Reviewers complete their reviews in three weeks on average, and original papers are published on average twenty weeks after submission.

In-house submissions, i.e., papers authored by the editors or by members of the Editorial Board or the Advisory Board, are handled by an editor unaffiliated with the author or institution, are reviewed only by external reviewers, and are monitored carefully to ensure there is no peer-review bias. When the author is the Editor-in-Chief, a member of the Editorial Board handles the paper and takes all editorial decisions on it, including the selection of reviewers and the final decision.

Original papers undergo external peer review. Other contributions are reviewed by the editors, who may, at their discretion, also send any of them for external peer review, except editorials, texts in the Theological Heritage section, and documents. The list of sections in the Editorial Policies states how the contributions of each section are reviewed.

Articles in special issues and papers presented at scholarly events are reviewed in the same way; papers presented at an event are not reviewed by other presenters at that event.

Publication Ethics

Authors are expected to observe the standards of academic integrity, including accurate citation and acknowledgment of sources. Where applicable, the title page must state the ethics approval (see Title Page Statements), and the manuscript must describe the ethical treatment of human and animal research participants and the gathering of informed consent. All conflicts of interest, or none, must be declared on submission. Manuscripts must not contain defamatory or otherwise unlawful statements. Reviewers assess manuscripts objectively and confidentially and declare any conflict of interest. Editors decide on the basis of scholarly merit alone, keep all submissions confidential, and do not handle manuscripts in which they have a conflict of interest. The publishers support the editors in maintaining the integrity of the scholarly record and do not interfere in editorial decisions. Suspected misconduct, such as plagiarism, fabrication or falsification, citation manipulation, duplicate publication, or undisclosed conflicts of interest, is handled in accordance with COPE guidance and may lead to rejection, correction, or retraction. The journal follows the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing of COPE, DOAJ, OASPA, and WAME (https://doaj.org/apply/transparency/).

Sources and Data

Authors should cite primary and archival sources in a way that allows readers to locate them. Where an article relies on unpublished documents, interviews, or data, the author should state where and under what conditions these materials can be consulted.

Use of Artificial Intelligence

AI tools cannot be credited as authors, since they cannot take responsibility for the work, and they cannot be cited as sources. Generative AI may not be used to produce or rewrite the content of a manuscript, including its arguments, analyses, and images. AI-assisted translations of sources are permitted only if they are disclosed on the title page and verified by the author. AI-assisted tools may also be used for language correction (spelling, grammar, and style), provided they do not change the content or meaning of the text; any such use beyond standard spelling and grammar checkers must be disclosed on the title page, stating the tool and its purpose. Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy and originality of the entire manuscript, including all quotations, translations, and references. Reviewers and editors may not upload manuscripts, or any part of them, to AI tools, or use such tools to write reviews or editorial decisions. The journal does not use AI tools to assess manuscripts or to make editorial decisions. Any automated tool used in the editorial process, such as a similarity check, is named in the journal’s editorial policies, and its results are always verified by an editor.

After Acceptance

First Look

After your paper is accepted, your files will be assessed by the editorial office to ensure they are ready for production. You may be contacted if any updates or final files are required. Otherwise, your paper will be sent to the production team.

Publication License

By submitting, the authors agree to the following publication license, which takes effect if the article is accepted; the submitting author agrees on behalf of all co-authors. Authors retain copyright and grant the publishers a non-exclusive right to publish and distribute the article. The article will be published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), unless another Creative Commons license has been agreed with the editors. The agreement is recorded with the submission; no separate license needs to be signed. For full terms, including self-archiving, see Copyright & Licensing.

Proofs

After copyediting, authors receive the final version of their article (the proofs) as a PDF attached to an email and must approve it before publication. Authors should check the proofs carefully and make sure that any renumbered tables, figures, or references match the text citations and that figure legends correspond with the text citations and the actual figures. Proofs must be returned by email within seventy-two hours of receipt.