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Author Guidelines for the Journal of Media Literacy Education


GENERAL SUBMISSION RULES

Anyone may submit an original article to be considered for publication at the Submit Article page provided he or she owns the copyright to the work being submitted or is authorized by the copyright owner or owners to submit the article.
Submitted articles cannot have been previously published, nor be forthcoming in an archival journal or book (print or electronic). Remove all identifying information from your manuscript before submission to facilitate the blind peer review process.
Publication in a working-paper series does not constitute prior publication. Papers previously published as conference proceedings must be reworked in order to be considered for publication in the Journal. Once properly prepared, they will undergo the same peer review process as other articles. In addition, the material should not currently be under review at another journal (electronic or print). You must agree not to submit the material to another journal (electronic or print) until the completion of the editorial decision process.
If you have concerns about the submission terms, please contact the Editors.
PLEASE NOTE THAT THE MAXIMUM LENGTH OF MANUSCRIPTS INDICATED BELOW IS RELEVANT NOT ONLY FOR INITIAL SUBMISSIONS BUT ALSO FOR REVISED VERSIONS.

TYPES OF ARTICLES

Submissions can take the following forms:
Research Papers. These are academic publications from pertinent disciplines, generally framed with a review of literature, statement of the problem, research questions, methodology, findings, and discussion.
Voices from the Field. These are professional publications addressing a matter of practice relevant to the readers of the Journal. These publications may be descriptive in nature and use the first-person voice.
Essays. Published occasionally, these are commentaries or other expressive forms of writing that offer insight to the readers of the Journal of Media Literacy Education.
Book/Media Reviews. Reviews describe key features of books, films, videos, websites, games or other resources relevant to the readers of the Journal of Media Literacy Education.

SUBMISSION PREPARATION CHECKLIST

1. Make sure that your manuscript complies with the formatting requirements (link).
2. All submissions must be in English.
3. Full text length, including references, appendices, tables, abstract, must be 6,000 – 8,000 words for a research article; 2,000 – 3,000 words for essays and voices from the field; 750 – 2,500 words for book/media reviews.
4. Include abstract (maximum 150 words) and three to five meaningful keywords. Keywords should summarize the main ideas of the study, be specific and appealing.
5. For references, use the current citation style of the American Psychological Association (APA) (please see Scribbr APA and LibGuides).
6. Manuscripts must be submitted ready for blind peer review process.
Please remove all identifying information from your manuscript before submission.

FORMATTING REQUIREMENTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Submit your manuscript, including tables, figures, appendices, etc. as a single file (Word or RTF). For references, tables and figures use the current style of the American Psychological Association (APA), 7th edition. Do not include page numbers, headers, or footers. These will be added by the Editors. Please check grammar, style and typos before submitting your manuscript. Also verify that the reference list only contains the references that are cited in the text, and that everything cited in the text appears in the references.

LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR

All submissions must be in English (both British and American are acceptable). Except for common foreign words and phrases, the use of foreign words and phrases should be avoided. Authors should use proper standard English grammar. Whenever possible, foreign terms should be set in italics.

STYLE

Page size should be 8.5 x 11 inches. All margins (left, right, top and bottom) should be 1.5 inches (3.8 cm), including your tables and figures. Single-space your text. Use a single column layout, right justified Font: Main Body - 12 pt. Times New Roman or the closest comparable font available; Footnotes - 10 pt. Times New Roman or the closest comparable font available.
Use abbreviations such as “e.g.,” “i.e.,” and “&” within parentheses, and the full text outside parentheses. Use italics to indicate text you wish to emphasize rather than underlining it. Whenever possible, titles of books, movies, etc. should be set in italics rather than underlined.

INDENTING, LINE SPACING, AND JUSTIFICATION

Indent all paragraphs except those following a section heading. An indent should be at least 5 em-spaces. Do not insert extra space between paragraphs of text with the exception of long quotations, theorems, propositions, special remarks, etc. These should be set off from the surrounding text by additional space above and below.

HEADINGS

Headings (e.g., start of sections) use the following hierarchy: (1) centered and bolded; (2) left justified, bolded; (3) in-line paragraph, italicized.

FOOTNOTES

Only use footnotes for special content that is not appropriate for the body of the text. Footnotes should be in 12 pt. Times New Roman or closest comparable font available, they should be single-spaced, and there should be a footnote separator rule (line). Footnote numbers or symbols in the text must follow, rather than precede, punctuation.
Excessively long footnotes should appear in an appendix. All footnotes should be left and right-justified (i.e., flush with the right margin), unless this creates awkward spacing.

TABLES AND FIGURES

Tables and figures must be consistent with current APA style. They have to be numbered and completed with caption. All tables or figures must be cited in the text. To the extent possible, tables and figures should appear in the document near where they are referenced in the text. Large tables or figures should be put on separate pages within the same manuscript (without any surrounding text). In no case should tables or figures be in a separate document or file. Avoid the use of overly small type in tables. All tables and figures must fit within 1.5" margins on all sides (top, bottom, left and right) in both portrait and landscape view.

MATHEMATICS

Roman letters used in mathematical expressions as variables should be italicized. Roman letters used as part of multi-letter function names should not be italicized. Whenever possible, subscripts and superscripts should be a smaller font size than the main text. Short mathematical expressions should be typed inline.

COLORED TEXTS

Set the font color to black for the majority of the text. We encourage authors to take advantage of the ability to use color in the production of figures, maps, etc., however, you need to appreciate that this will cause some of your readers problems when they print the document on a black-and-white printer. For this reason, you are advised to avoid the use of colors in situations where their translation to black and white would render the material illegible or incomprehensible.
Please ensure that there are no colored mark-ups or comments in the final version, unless they are meant to be part of the final text. (You may need to click "accept all changes" in track changes or set your document to "normal" in final markup.)

REFERENCES

Be sure that all citations in the manuscript are included in the reference list and that no additional titles (not appearing in the text) are included in the reference list. All references cited in the text must be consistent with APA in-text citation style. When including multiple citations in parentheses, please place them in alphabetical order.
It is the author's obligation to provide complete references with all the necessary information. References should appear right after the end of the main text but before appendices. You are requested to use the current citation style of the American Psychological Association (APA) for the bibliography in the end of your manuscript.