Submissions

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Submission Preparation Checklist

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.
  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
  • Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
  • The text is Arial font, either single-spaced or variable 1.12, uses a 12-point font, employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses), and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.
  • If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.
  • Ensure you adhere to AJPP accessibility guidelines outlined in Author Guidelines and have accessibility checked your documents before you submit them.

Author Guidelines

In order to submit, you must be registered on this journal site as an AUTHOR. When you REGISTER, please tick the AUTHOR box on the REGISTRATIONS page.
  • Submission to and publication in the AJPP is free. No submission fee or article processing charge will be applied at the present time. You will be required to pay for proofreading services via an approved proofreader.
  • Please submit in WORD. Arial Font: 12 point. Variable 1.12 spaced, except references which should be single-spaced. Use single quotation marks except 'where the quotation is "within" the quote'.
  • Articles should be a minimum of 2,000 words and not exceed 10,000 words, including notes. The author is responsible for the word count.
  • Articles should be submitted through this website. 
  • Each submission must include a title, an abstract of no more than 300 words and a list of between 3 and 6 key words.
  • There must be a 50 word [max] statement on 'What this paper adds' (e.g. what the method/ results/ academic content might add, and how this might be applicable to other disciplines).
  • The format of a research article should be: Introduction/ Background, Method, Results, Discussion, Conclusion / Summary. The format of a non-research based paper is more flexible, although headings are encouraged.
  • Ensure that all tables and figures are embedded within the main body of the article and labelled appropriately. Permission must be sought by the author(s) to reproduce images.
  • Since articles will undergo a blind review process, ensure that your name and institutional address do not appear anywhere in the article itself. This includes the hidden document information, e.g. when you attempt to SAVE the document and you click on 'file' at the top of the document, the page displays the 'info' related to the document. It is important that you REMOVE any NAMES from the 'PEOPLE' section. Right click on the NAME and click 'remove person'.
  • Ensure you meet AJPP accessibility expectations (see guidelines below).
  • Articles must be prepared according to these guidelines. Final submissions which do not follow AJPP's style will be returned for revision.
  • FOR POSTER ABSTRACTS: Please email the Editor directly and ask for the template to use for your poster abstract: c.l.parkin@kent.ac.uk/ ajpp@kent.ac.uk 
  • In-text citations/ referencing should appear by author-date in parentheses in AJPP house style (see below).
  • In summary you should upload:
  • Anonymised original manuscript
  • Supplementary files (if you have them)
  • A cover sheet containing:
  • Names of all authors
  • List of qualifications for all authors
  • ORCID numbers for all authors (if you have them)
  • Full addresses (affiliations) for all authors
  • List of key words
  • Full list of all abbreviations within the paper
  • 50 'What this paper adds' (this must fit the transdiciplinary nature of the AJPP).
  • Address for correspondence
  • Contact Email Address (the one you would like published)
  • Financial disclosure
  • Details of any competing interests

Referencing Style is Harvard Cite them Right:

BOOK:

Lastname, Initial. (Year) Title of Book. City of Publication: Publisher.

ARTICLE:

Author(s). (Year) 'Title of Article', Title of Journal, Volume, (Issue), pp. ??-??.

WEB RESOURCE: 

Hunt, Kim. (1995) 'Title of Resource'. Available at: http://www.............. [Accessed: Day Month Year e.g. 4 Novemver 2018].

MULTIPLE AUTHORS:

Surname, Initial., Surname, Initial., Surname, Initial. and Surname, Initial. (date) 'Title of Article', Title of Journal, Volume, (Issue), pp. ??-??.

Within the text cite 3 authors max. Four or more authors must be cited as et al.

For further referencing information see: 

Pears, S. and Shield, G. (2016) CITE THEM RIGHT. 10th edn. UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

For direct quotes use 'single inverted comma' and (Author, Year, p. ??) or Author (Year, p. ?).

 

Advanced Journal of Professional Practice (AJPP) accessibility guidelines for authors to adhere to:

Introduction 

This guide provides and overview of the key strategies that you can implement in documents to improve their accessibility.  

 When writing this guide, we have referenced Microsoft Word due to its large user base. However, the solutions mentioned here can be applied in various text editors, although the workflows may differ. Rather than focus on the specific buttons and menus of a particular piece of software, we have focused on the principles. Therefore, it is recommended to look online for further guidance on completing the processes in your preferred software.  

 Alternative text for images 

  • The purpose of alt text is to succinctly communicate the content of an image to people who can’t see it. 
  • If images are purely decorative and contain no informative content, they do not require a description. However, they may still require specific markup, so screen readers know to skip them.  
  • See our guide to making images accessible 

Headings 

  • Headings should form an outline of the page content and be numbered consistently from levels 1 (for the main heading) and levels 2 onwards for subheadings. 
  • Don’t simply edit the look of text to make it stand out as a heading (i.e., increase font size and underline), use Microsoft guidance to help you build heading features.  
  • The heading tools create these with markup which means screen reader software can identify different sections. 
  • This enables screen reader users to understand how the page is organised, and to quickly navigate to content of interest. 
  • To check what headings you have in your document go to ‘View’ in the menu bar and then choose ‘Navigation’ 

Lists 

  • Use Microsoft’s guidance on how to create bullet and numbered lists.  
  • Don't use spaces or dashes manually, as screen reader users won't know it's a list. 
  • Most text editors provide one or more controls for adding unordered lists (with bullets) and ordered lists (with numbers).  
  • For people using a screen reader, the list itself can convey some valuable information including where the list starts and finishes, how many items are in the list, what list item the user is on 

Hyperlinks 

Tables 

  • Use Microsoft’s guidance on creating tables in documents are useful for communicating relationships between data especially when best expressed in rows and columns. 
  • Try to keep the table simple.  
  • If the table is complex, consider whether you could divide it into multiple smaller tables with a heading above each. 
  • Use bulleted lists instead of tables where you can.  
  • Keep the structure simple: don't split cells, merge cells, or use nested tables. 
  • Create a header row (in Microsoft Word): 
  • Select the top row 
  • Right-click and choose Table Properties 
  • In the Row section choose Repeat as header row at the top of each page 

Plain English 

Checking for accessibility 

  • Microsoft Accessibility Checker is built into Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel and will continuously review and notify you of common accessibility issues in your work.  
  • Please ensure you have accessibility checked your document before you submit it. 

Design and layout 

  • Left-align text (do not justify and avoid centering).
  • Number the pages. 
  • Don't use colour alone to show meaning. It is much more effective to use text to show meaning. Saying ‘all the items in red are mandatory’ is not helpful to users without low vision or colour blindness. 
  • Please use black text on a white background for maximum contrast. 
  • Use Arial in a font size of 12pt. 
  • Please submit .docx (Microsoft Word version) 

 Useful links 

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