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Submissions should be made electronically through this website. Once submitted, the author can track the submission and communicate with editors through the online journal management system. Please ensure that you consider the following guidelines when preparing your manuscript. Failure to do so may delay processing your submission.
At minimum a submission must include:
IJURCA accepts a wide range of creative and scholarly genres in a variety of mediums for peer-review and publication. Written work should refrain from extending further than 3,000 words, not inclusive of references, figures, and other documentation. Click on a relevant genre for the preferred format template.
File Type
All guidelines provided assume Microsoft Word as the default word processing tool for written submissions, which is available as a free download here. (For all other submission types, contact an editor directly.) If you are using
You cannot merely email or submit a link to your file. Instead:
You cannot merely email or submit a link to your file. Instead:
Save the file with a relevant name, select a destination to save the file, and “Export.”
Remove all reference to the names of all authors, affiliations, contact details, or any corresponding details from the manuscript document. This information should be given as part of the online submission process but not in the document in order to preserve the integrity of the double-blind, peer-review process.
Author names should include a forename (first name) and a surname (last name). Forenames cannot include only initials. For example, J. Bloggs is not preferred. The full name, Joe Bloggs, is required and will enhance the “find-ability” of your publication. The affiliation should ideally include Department, Institution, City, and Country, however only the Institution and Country are mandatory.
The title page should include only the manuscript title, abstract, and keywords. The body of the submission should start at the top of the next page. In MS Word, use Insert > Break > Page Break, rather than tabbing to the next page. All content should be single-spaced using twelve-point, Garamond font.
Title. Academic titles are comprised of two parts: a “short title” comes before the colon ( : ), while the “long title” is the text that comes afterward. An effective title typically employs a brief quotation from the text under consideration (or a pithy riff on it) in the short title, usually emblematic of the argument to come. The long title includes both specific keywords or tags that identify what you are exploring, and the “location” where those keywords are being explored—usually the title of the text, the archive, etc. (If a creative work, please submit only a short-title.) There should be no verbs in an academic title. For example:
Abstract. Research articles must have the main text prefaced by an abstract of no more than 250 words summarizing the work’s main arguments. This must have the heading “Abstract” and be easily identified from the start of the main text. Please add the Abstract to the metadata during the initial online submission.
Keywords. A list of up to six key words should be placed immediately after the abstract under the heading “Keywords.” Please add the Keywords to the metadata during the initial online submission.
We strongly encourage the use of section headings regardless of disciplinary origin. Up to three levels of headings may be present and must be clearly identifiable using different font sizes, bold or italics. We suggest using Headings 1, 2, and 3 in MS Word’s “Style” feature.
Please include page numbers in your document, starting page 1 on your title-page. Page numbers should be placed in the bottom right-hand corner of the document footer. In MS Word, click View > Header & Footer.
Any supplementary files are option. If used, they should link to the main publication must be listed, with a corresponding number, title, and optional description. Ideally the supplementary files are also cited in the main text., i.e., “Supplementary file 1: Appendix. Scientific data related to the experiments.”
Nota bene: additional files will not be typeset so they must be provided in their final form. They will be assigned a DOI and linked to the publication.
Nota bene: additional files will not be typeset so they must be provided in their final form. They will be assigned a DOI and linked to from the publication.
If data, structured methods, or code used in the research project have been made openly available, a statement should be added to inform the reader of how and where to access these files. This should include the repository location and the DOI linking to it. Read our reproducibility guide
for more information on best practice and maximizing the impact of your open data.
Nota bene: if data used in the research project has not been made available, a statement confirming this should be added, along with a rationale. This journal’s data policy is available on the Editorial Policies page.
Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Where applicable, studies must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee such as IRB and the authors should include a statement within the article text detailing this approval, including the name of the ethics committee and reference number of the approval.
The identity of the research subject(s) should be anonymized whenever possible. For research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study must be obtained from participants (or their legal guardian) and added to this statement. If a study involving human subjects/tissue/data was exempt from requiring ethical approval, a confirmation statement from the relevant body should be included within the submission. Experiments using animals must follow national standards of care. For further information, click here. If applicable.
While optional, any acknowledgements must be included in the body of submission and placed as a separate paragraph after the main text but before the reference list.
Should the research have received a funding grant, then the grant provider and grant number should be detailed in the Acknowledgements.
If any of the authors have any competing interests then these must be declared. A short paragraph should be placed before the references. Guidelines for competing interests can be found here. If there are no competing interests to declare then the following statement should be present: The author(s) has/have no competing interests to declare.
If a multi-author work, please include a sentence or a short paragraph detailing the roles that each author held to contribute to the authorship of the submission. Individuals listed must fit within the definition of an author, as per our authorship guidelines.
All references cited within the submission must be listed at the end of the main text file using the convention appropriate to the discipline. For example, include a “Bibliography” if using Chicago Manual of Style, “Works Cited” is MLA, and so forth.
The author is responsible for obtaining all permissions required prior to submission of the manuscript. Permission and owner details should be mentioned for all third-party content included in the submission or used in the research.
If a method or tool is introduced in the study, including software, questionnaires, and scales, the license this is available under and any requirement for permission for use should be stated. If an existing method or tool is used in the research, it is the author's responsibility to check the license and obtain the necessary permissions. Statements confirming that permission was granted should be included in the “Materials and Methods” section of the manuscript and/or in an endnote.
The font used should be Garamond, set at a single-spaced, twelve-point weight for the body text. For the purposes of publication, justified text is preferred. Underlined text should be avoided whenever possible. Bold or italicized text to emphasize a point are permitted, although should be restricted to minimal occurrences to maximize their efficiency. Consider copying-and-pasting the content of your manuscript into the templates provided.
For the submission title. Capitalize all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs and subordinate conjunctions (i.e., as, because, although). Use lowercase for all articles, coordinate conjunctions and prepositions. For example, “Slip-Sliding on a Yellow Brick Road: Stabilization Efforts in Afghanistan.”
Headings within the main text. First-level headings in the text should follow the same rule as the main title. For lower-level subheadings, only capitalize first letter and proper nouns. Headings should be under seventy-five characters.
Submissions must be made in English, with a preference for American spellings. For example, “color” (US) not “colour” (UK). When referring to proper nouns and normal institutional titles, the official, original spelling must be used. For example, “World Health Organization” not “World Health Organization.”
American grammar rules preferred, including a desirability for the serial comma, For example, “red, white, and blue,” not “red, white and blue.”
Use bullet points to denote a list without hierarchy or order of value. If the list indicates a specific sequence, then a numbered list must be used. Lists should be used sparingly to maximize their impact.
Normally, a singular antecedent requires a singular pronoun. But because he is no longer universally accepted as a generic pronoun referring to a person of unspecified gender, people commonly substitute the third-person-plural pronouns they, them, their, and themselves (or the nonstandard singular themselves). When referring specifically to a person who does not identify with a gender-specific pronoun, they and its forms are preferred by the major style guides (including CMOS and MLA). It should not, however, be used widely or by default in formal writing. Like singular you, singular they takes a plural verb. A number of other gender-neutral singular pronouns are in use (e.g., judy), invented for that purpose; forms of these are usually singular and take singular verbs. In general, a person’s stated preference for a specific pronoun should be respected. Not sure? Then simply use their stated name.
If you are trying to write about possession and have two subjects, you have to decide if the two people possess something together or separately. In the phrase “Puck and Aardvark’s religious beliefs,” for example, the convention is if the two people share something, you use one apostrophe-s. So, if Puck and Aardvark have the same religious beliefs, it is correct to say “Puck and Aardvark’s beliefs.” On the other hand, if Puck and Aardvark have different beliefs, then you would say “Puck’s and Aardvark’s religious beliefs.”
With abbreviations, the crucial goal is to ensure that the reader—particularly one who may not be fully familiar with the topic or context being addressed—is able to follow along. Spell out all acronyms on first use, indicating the acronym in parentheses immediately thereafter. Use the acronym for all subsequent references. For example, “Research completed by the World Health Organization (WHO) shows.”
Abbreviations should usually be in capital letters without full stops. For example, “USA” not U.S.A., and “PhD” not “Ph.D.” Common examples from Latin origin do not follow this rule and should be lower case and can include full stops, such as “i.e.,” “etc.,” and “c.f.” among others.
Symbols are permitted within the main text and datasets as long as they are commonly in use or have an explanatory definition on their first usage.
Use double quotation marks. Single quotation marks are only used for quotes within another speech. Quotations that are longer than three lines in length must be indented as a block quotation one-half inch from the margin. These should replicate line breaks exactly as they were originally printed. The standard, non-italicized font must be used for all quotes. It must be clear from the text and citation from where the quote is sourced.
Poems. When incorporating a poem quotation into a sentence, use a forward slash with a space on each side ( / ) to indicate to your reader where the line breaks fall. If a stanza break occurs in the quotation, mark it with two forward slashes ( // ).
The Tao te ching, in Davin Hinton’s translation, argues that the ancient masters were “so deep beyond knowing / we can only describe their appearance: // perfectly cautious, as if crossing winter stream” (44).
Verse quotations of more than three lines should be set off from your text as a block quotation. If the layout of the lines in the original text is unusual, reproduce it as accurately as possible. A verse quotation typically requires citing line and other divisions.
Plays and screenplays. If you quote dialogue more than a brief phrase, set the quotation off from your text. Begin each part with the appropriate character’s name, indented half an inch from the left margin and written in all capital letters. Follow the name with a period and then start the quotation. Indent all subsequent lines. When the dialogue shifts to a new character, start a new line indented half an inch. For example,
A short time later, Lear loses the final symbol of his former power, the soldiers of his train:
GONERIL. Hear me, my lord.
What need you five-and-twenty, ten or five,
To follow in a house where twice so many
Have a command to tend you?
REGAN. What need one?
LEAR. O, reason not the need! (2.4.254–58)
Verse drama (e.g., Shakespeare) should be cited according to act and scene divisions rather than page numbers. In the parenthetical in-text citation, include (all in Arabic, not Roman, numerals) the act number followed by a period, the scene number followed by a period, and the line number or range. There should be no space between any of these units.
Whenever you omit a word, phrase, sentence, or more from a quoted passage, you should be guided by two principles: fairness to the author quoted, and the grammatical integrity of your writing. A quotation should never be presented in a way that could cause a reader to misunderstand the sentence structure of the original source. Mark the omissions with ellipsis points (. . .), or three spaced periods. When you quote only a word or phrase, no ellipsis points are needed before or after the quotation because it is obvious that you left out some of the original sentence. For example, “In surveying various responses to plagues in the Middle Ages, Barbara W. Tuchman writes, ‘Medical thinking . . . stressed air as the communicator of disease, ignoring sanitation or visible carriers’ (101–102).”
It’s with an apostrophe-s always means “it is” or “it has.” For example, you could write, “It’s lunch time,” with it-apostrophe-s, or, “It is lunch time,” without the contraction. Inversely, its is the possessive form of it. You would use its without the apostrophe to show ownership. For example: “It’s [it is] a shame the chocolate tree is out of season”; “The tree needs its branches trimmed.”
In all cases, no space should surround a dash. Please refer to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary (US) rather than the Oxford English Dictionary (UK) to check whether a word requires a hyphen or not. Em dashes (—) should be used sparingly, and only to denote emphasis of information fully contained within a clause. For example, “The president’s niece—daughter of his younger brother—caused a media scandal.” En dashes (–) are used to indicate a number range such as in years (i.e., 120–250 years) or pages (i.e., pp. 10–65).
The general rule is to spell out whole zero through one hundred and certain round multiples of those numbers. (The property is held on a ninety-nine-year lease.) To form the plural of a spelled-out number, treat the word like an ordinary noun (sixes, sevens). If your project calls for frequent use of numbers, use numerals for all numbers that precede technical units of measure (30 inches). Use numerals with abbreviations or symbols (6 lbs.); in street addresses (4401 13th Avenue); and in decimal fractions (8.3).
In a range of numbers, give the second number in full for the numbers up to ninety-nine (21–48). For larger numbers, give only the last two digits of the second number, unless more are necessary for clarity (1,003–05). Note that commas are usually placed between the third and fourth digits from the right, the sixth and seventh, and so on (7,654,321). When a number falls at the start of a sentence, spell out the number or revise the sentence to place the number later.
In the body of your writing, do not abbreviate dates, and be consistent in your use of either the day-month-year UK style (12 January 2014) or the month-day-year US style (January 12, 2014). In the latter, the comma before the year has to be balanced by one after if there is no other punctuation after the year. For example, “October 23, 1466, is Erasmus’s likely date of birth (Gleason 76).”
When specific dates are expressed, cardinal numbers are used, although these may be pronounced as ordinals. When a day is mentioned without the month or year, the number is usually spelled out in ordinal form. For example, “On November 5, McManus declared victory. But by the twenty-fifth, most of his supporters had deserted him.”
Particular centuries referred to as such are spelled out and lowercased: “the twenty-first century” or “from the ninth to the eleventh century,” but “the 1800s (the nineteenth century).” Era designations are usually expressed as either CE (“of the Common Era”) and BCE (“before the Common Era”), or AD (anno Domini, “in the year of the Lord”) and BC (“before Christ”). Note that the Latin abbreviation AD precedes the year number, whereas the others follow it. Choice of the era designation depends on tradition and academic discipline.
Decades are either expressed in numerals or spelled out (as long as the century is clear) and lowercased. No apostrophes should appear between the year and the s: “the 1940s and 1950s” (or, less formally, “the 1940s and ’50s”) or “the forties and fifties.”
Symbols following a figure to denote a unit of measurement must be taken from the latest SI brochure here.
Formulae must be proofread carefully by the author. Editors will not edit formulae. If special software has been used, the way it is laid out is the way they will appear in the publication.
Figures, including graphs and diagrams, must be professionally and clearly presented. If a figure is not easy to understand or does not appear to be of a suitable quality, the editor may ask to re-render or omit it. Figure titles and legends should be placed within the text document, either after the paragraph of their first citation, or as a list after the references. Do not place figures so that they break up a single paragraph.
All figures must be cited within the main text, in consecutive order using Arabic numerals, such as “Figure 1,” “Figure 2,” and so forth. Each figure must have an accompanying descriptive main title. This should clearly and concisely summarize the content or use of the figure image. A short additional figure legend is optional to offer a further description. For example, “Figure 1: 1685 map of London. Note the addition of St Paul’s Cathedral, absent from earlier maps.”
The source of the image should be included, along with any relevant copyright information and a statement of authorization if it is under copyright or held by museum or other archive. For example, “Figure 1: Firemen try to free workers buried under piles of concrete and metal girders. Photo: Claude-Michel Masson. Reproduced with permission of the photographer.”
Nota bene: all figures must be uploaded separately as supplementary files during the submission process and, if possible, in color and at a resolution of at least 300dpi. Each file should not be more than 20MB. Standard formats accepted are JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, and EPS. For line drawings, please provide the original vector file (ie., .ai or .eps).
Tables must be created using a word processor’s table function, not tabbed text. Tables should be included in the manuscript between paragraphs or at the end in a reference list. The final layout will place the tables as close to their first citation as possible.
All tables must be cited within the main text, numbered with Arabic numerals in consecutive order, such as “Table 1,” “Table 2,” and so forth. Each table must have an accompanying descriptive title. This should clearly and concisely summarise the content or use of the table. A short additional table legend is optional to offer a further description of the table. The table title and legend should be placed underneath the table.
Tables should not include:
Nota bene: if there are more columns than can fit on a single page, then the table will be placed horizontally on the page. If it still cannot fit horizontally on a page, the table will be broken into two.
Every use of information from other sources must be cited in the text so that it is clear that external material has been used in every instance. If the author is mentioned in the signal phrase, then just or the page number (CMOS, MLA) or year (APA, CSE) should follow within parentheses. Otherwise, the author’s surname and year or page number should be included at the end of the sentence set in parentheses.
For publications authored and published by organizations, use the short form of the organization’s name or its acronym in lieu of the full name. Please do not include URLs in parenthetical citations, but rather cite the author or page title and include all details, including the URL, in the reference list.
Use endnotes rather than footnotes, which we will refer to these as “Notes” in the online publication. These will appear at the end of the main text, before the “References,” “Works Cited,” or “Bibliography,” depending on your discipline. Please insert the endnote marker after the end punctuation. If multiple sources are included in one sentence, group them into one endnote.
All citations must be listed at the end of the text file, in alphabetical order of authors’ surnames. If multiple works by the same author are being listed, please re-type the author’s name out for each entry, rather than using a long dash. This journal uses a variety of citation styles depending on the manuscript’s discipline:
A quick reference guide is provided for each below as well as in the individual genre templates. For a more comprehensive guide to questions of mechanics and citation, please refer to the most recent edition of the official printed guide for each. When a guide to a question is not provided, preference is given to CMOS recommendation.
Nota bene: DOIs should be included for all entries where possible.
APA quick guide. The following should appear under the heading “References” and alphabetized by author’s last name. For more, visit the Pacific University libguide here.
○ [Last name], [First initial(s)]. ([Year]). [Title of entry]. In [Editor First initial(s) Last name, Editor First initial(s) Last name, & Editor First initial(s) Last name] (Eds.), [Book title] ([page range]). [Location]: [Publisher]. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/[xx.xxxxxxxx]
○ Jacobs, G. M., & Hall, S. (2002). Implementing cooperative learning. In J. C. Richards & W. A. Renandya (Eds.), Methodology in language teaching: An anthology of current practice (pp. 52–58). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511667190.009
○ [Last name], [First initial(s)]. ([Year]). [Article title]. [Journal Title], [volume number]([issue number]), [page range]. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/[xx.xxxxxxxx]
○ Radford, M. (2001). Aesthetic and religious awareness among pupils: Similarities and differences. British Journal of Music Education, 18(2), 151–59. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0265051701000249
○ [Last name], [First initial(s)]. ([Year], [Date]). [Article title]. [Newspaper title]. Retrieved from http://[URL]
○ McMahon, S. (2010, July 19). Fund new Victorian era. Herald Sun. Retrieved from http://www.heraldsun.com.au/
○ [Last name], [First initial(s)]. ([Year], [Date]). [Article title]. [Newspaper title], [page range]
○ Parker, K. (2008, December 3). Plea for languages. Koori Mail, pp. 19–20
○ [Last name], [First initial(s)]. ([Year], [Date]). [Title]. Paper presented at [Conference Title], [Location], [Country].
○ Liu, C., Wu, D., Fan, J., & Nauta, M. M. (2008, November). Does job complexity predict job strains? Paper presented at the 8th Biannual Conference of the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology, Valencia, Spain.
○ [Organization]. ([Year]). [Title] (Series/publication number. Series name, if available). Retrieved from [Database name or URL].
○ World Bank. (2008). Textbooks and school library provision in secondary education in Sub-Saharan Africa (World Bank Working Paper No. 126. Africa Human Development Series). Retrieved from EBL database.
○ [Last name], [First initial(s)]. ([Year]). [Title] ([Type], [Institution], [Location]). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/[xx.xxxxxxxx]
○ Murray, B. P. (2008). Prior knowledge, two teaching approaches for metacognition: Main idea and summarization strategies in reading (Doctoral dissertation, Fordham University, New York)
○ [Last name], [First initial(s)]. ([Year]). [Title]. Retrieved from [URL] ([Month Day, Year])
○ Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2011). Australia’s health 2004. Retrieved from http://www.aihw.gov.au/publications/index.cfm/title/10014
CMOS quick guide. The following should appear under the heading “Bibliography” and alphabetized by author’s last name. For more, visit the Pacific University libguide here.
CSE quick guide. The following should appear under the heading “References” and alphabetized by author’s last name. For more, visit the Washington State University libguide here.
MLA quick guide. The following should appear under the heading “References” and alphabetized by author’s last name. For more, visit the Pacific University libguide here.
As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
As part of IJURCAs mission to seed the
academy with new scholars from a diverse range of socio-economic backgrounds, this
journal is funded by Pacific University and Central Washington University and
incurs no author fees whatsoever.