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Reference rules

In the case of articles in Polish, the editors recommend using the following reference rules (the regulations relating to texts in English are given in a separate instruction):

  1. Articles in journals: the author’s first name initial, surname, title in italics, “the journal title” or its abbreviation (if listed below, without quotation marks) volume, year, number of the issue in arabic numerals, page number(s) following the abbreviation s., for example: J. Michalski, Publicystyka i parapublicystyka doby sejmu 1776 roku, KH 105, 1998, 1, s. 21–64.
  2. Publishing series: the author’s first name initial, surname, title in italics, place and year of publication, in parentheses, the name of the series and the volume number neither italicised nor in quotation marks (but in the main text, the series titles should be written in italics), pages at the end. In the case of parts of the books, the title of the cited text is followed by a comma and in: (without square brackets), the title of the collective work in italics, and the first name and surname of the editor, e.g. J. Tyszkiewicz, Średniowieczne granice wytyczone wzdłuż rzek w Europie Środkowej, in: Z dziejów średniowiecznej Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej, ed. idem, Warszawa 2007 (Fasciculi Historici Novi, t. 6), pp. 145–152. 
  3. Texts published in serial publications of the nature of collective works should be regarded as articles in journals, e.g. J. Staszewski, Elekcja 1697 roku, “Acta Universitatis Nicolai Copernici”, Nauki Humanistyczno-Społeczne, no. 259, Historia, 28, 1993, pp. 73–92. If the book was published as one volume (issue) of a serial publication, we use the following format: the author’s first name initial, surname, title in italics, place and year of publication, the name of the series in parentheses, the number of the volume and issue, etc. 
  4. Biographical entries published in Polski słownik biograficzny (PSB) shoudl be written like articles in a serial publication, e.g. M. Zgórniak, Haller Cezary, PSB, t. 9, Wrocław 1960–1961, p. 250.
  5. We use the standard abbreviations: ed., prep. (not ‘ed. by’ or ‘prep. by’). 
  6. When referring to a translation, the original language and date of publication from which the translation was made should be given.
  7. Bibliographic references introduced in the main text or in narrative in footnotes should be enclosed in parentheses.
  8. The incipits of works cited several times should not be followed by an ellipsis.
  9. Bibliographic descriptions of works published in Slavonic Cyrillic alphabets should be written in the Cyrillic alphabet or in transliteration.
  10. References to archival materials and manuscripts should be modernised according to the guidelines and rules for publishing historical sources (Instrukcja wydawnicza dla średniowiecznych źródeł historycznych, Kraków 1925, and Instrukcja wydawniczej dla źródeł historycznych od XVI do połowy XIX wieku, Wrocław 1953).
  11. Bibliographic references to manuscripts in footnotes should consist of the following elements, following the order:

Title of the manuscript (original, assigned, conventional, etc., see V1a above), names of repositories and archives should be given in full in the

first instance, and an abbreviated form in subsequent ones (with the Polish name of the town of storage in parantheses), name of the archival collection, reference number, folio.

In the case of letters – instead of a title:

Who to whom, place (if this information is relevant to the text), date (written according to KH guidelines), name of the archives, library or museum (with the Polish name of their city in parentheses), name of the archival collection, reference number, folio.

When the archives, library, or museum have their usual abbreviation (not included in the KH list of abbreviations), their name should be given in full in the first instance and in an abbreviated form in the subsequent ones. The same applies to the names of archival collections.

Examples of archival references:

Instrukcja królewska na sejmiki przedsejmowe, 1606, AGAD, Zbiór Branickich z Suchej, sygn. 148/172, fols 479−491

  • Stackelberg do N. Panina, (Klaipėda) 24 VIII / 5 IX 1772, Arhiv Vnešnej Politiki Rossijskoj Imperii (Moskwa) (hereinafter: AVPRI), f. 79: Snošeniâ Rossii s Pol’šej, op. 6, nr 1015, fols 82–83.
  • Bibliographical references of old prints are not modernised; we modernise the orthography of nineteenth- and twentieth-century texts only.
  • In English titles the initial letters of the first word and of all nouns,

pronouns (except the relative ‘that’), adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and

subordinating conjunctions are capitalised, but those of articles,

possessive determiners (‘my’, etc.), prepositions, and the co-ordinating

conjunctions ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘or’, and ‘nor’ are not, e.g: Put Out More Flags; How Far Can You Go?; The Man Who Was Thursday; All’s Well that Ends Well; Pride and Prejudice; A Voyage towards the South Pole (book titles); A Social History of the Welsh Language (series title); The Faerie Queene; The Passionate Shepherd to his Love (titles of poems). A capital letter is used in the first word of the subtitle after the full stop (e.g. Strange Music. The Metre of the English Heroic Line). However, when using or after a semicolon to present an alternative title, a lower case letter is used, e.g: All for Love; or, The World Well Lost.

  1. Website addresses should be given in footnotes, the date of access should be provided in parentheses following the web address.

© Copyright by Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences