Submissions

Author Guidelines

Preparing Your Paper

We handle all manuscript submissions and reviews through our web-based OJS system. Authors may use this system to submit manuscripts and track progress through all stages of the review process.

Authors should not submit manuscripts under consideration by another publication. The corresponding author must affirm the non-duplication of submission in the cover letter.

Unless noted differently below, follow the most recent edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association for reference style and general guidelines. We follow the 7^th Edition of the APA Manual. For those authors accustomed to the APA 6^th Edition manual, we recommend learning about changes between the manuals here.

An initial cover letter should be submitted with your paper that briefly summarizes the paper and discusses why you believe your paper would be a good fit within the journal's aims and scope.  Additionally, the cover letter should include the word count of your submission as well as a statement affirming your manuscript has not been submitted elsewhere.

Other Formatting Considerations

Manuscripts must be clear, concise, and engaging with a well-organized development of ideas. All submissions should have an 8.5x11" layout with 1-inch margins, be double-spaced (including references), use 12-point Times New Roman font, and with page numbers in the top right corner. Please make sure to indent paragraphs. Block quotations of 40 words or more should be double-spaced.

Lengthy quotations (a total of 300 or more words from one source) require written permission from the copyright holder for reproduction. The adaptation of tables and figures also requires such approval. The author is responsible for securing such authorization. A copy of the publisher's written permission must be provided to the JTSE editor immediately upon acceptance of the article for publication.

Masking Your Manuscript

Manuscripts sent out for review using a double blinded review process, where authors and reviewers do not know one another. To facilitate this process, we ask authors to mask their manuscripts appropriately, meaning the submission does not contain clues to the identity of the author(s) or institutional affiliation(s). The manuscript title should not be one that connects the author to their previous work; a Google search will help you identify potential links between your proposed title and past works. Authors should also mask references and citations in the manuscript that allude to their work. The following are examples of citations that should be masked:

• Self-citation that are “in press” or “under review”
  • Example: June (in press)
  • Should be: Author (in press)
• Self-referential citations that reveal author identity
  • Example: In my own work, I have found that authors appropriately mask their submissions more often than not (Thrill, 2019).
  • Should be rephrased so the self-referential component is removed: Author (2019) found that authors appropriately mask their submissions more often than not. 
• Institution Name (most often the case in the methods section)
  • Example: We conducted the study at the University of the West.
  • Study sites could be described using institutional characteristics without an institutional pseudonym: We conducted the study at a large, Midwestern university.
  • Study sites could also be given an institutional pseudonym: We conducted the study at State University, a large university located in the Midwestern United States.
• References to institution-specific documents
  • Please mask these as Institutional Document Masked for Review.

When adding masked citations to your reference list, please make sure to placed masked citations in alphabetical order per their masked version. For instance, a masked citation in-text of Author (2019) or Author (in press) should appear with the other A’s in the reference list, not in the place where it should be when unmasked. If your manuscript is selected for publication, these components will get corrected at the copyright and acceptance phase.  

Note that authors should use their best judgment in this process while knowing the editorial team will complete an initial standards check for these issues.

Finally, please make sure to not include any institutional proxy links in your reference list. Often, these links are not necessary for APA citational purposes and reveal one or more authors’ institutional affiliation. Authors should ensure that none of their links reveal any of the authors’ institutional locations.

Manuscript Types

JTSE accepts four types of manuscripts.  Please carefully review the categories listed below.  Note JTSE publishes issues on an annual basis in the fall, with special issues slated for publication in the spring or summer.