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Author Guidelines

Article types | Structure | Language & text | Data & Symbols | References

Please ensure that you consider the following guidelines when preparing your manuscript. Failure to do so may delay processing your submission.

Article types

Research articles must describe the outcomes and application of unpublished original research in the field of young adult literature. These should make a substantial contribution to knowledge and understanding in this area and should be supported by a relevant methodological framework and an understanding of existing scholarship in this field. Research articles should usually be between 7,000-12,000 words in length.
Interviews should offer a substantial contribution to YA studies, and can be conducted with an author, editor, publisher or other professional connected to young adult literature. Interviews should be no longer than 9,000 words in length. Ideas for interviews should be proposed to the Editorial Team in the first instance.
Review articles should respond to one or more recently published monographs or an important individual work, or group of works, of fiction. Review articles should be no longer than 3,500 words in length. Ideas for review articles should be proposed to the Editorial Team in the first instance.
Book reviews should be between 1,000-1,500 words in length and should evaluate a recently published monograph or edited collection. Book reviews should be proposed to the Editorial Team in the first instance. If the review is commissioned, the Editorial Team will source the relevant book for the reviewer.

All word limits include referencing and citation.

Structure

Title Page

The title page must include all of the below information, in the same order. No further information should be included:

Title
Full author name(s)
Affiliation(s)
Corresponding author’s email address (other author email addresses are optional)

Author names should usually include a forename and a surname. Forenames should preferably not include only initials.

The affiliation should ideally include Department, Institution, City and Country; however only the Institution (or independent scholar) and Country are mandatory.

NB: As this journal operates a double-blind review process (neither author nor reviewer are known to one another), the title page should be submitted separately from the main text.

Abstract & Key Words

Research articles must have the main text prefaced by an abstract of no more than 250 words summarising the main arguments and conclusions of the article. This must have the heading ‘Abstract’ and be easily identified from the start of the main text.

A list of up to six key words must be placed below the abstract.

Main text

The body of the submission should be structured in a logical and easy to follow manner. A clear introduction section should be given that allows non-specialists in the subject an understanding of the publication and a background of the issue(s) involved. Discussion and conclusion sections may then follow to clearly detail the information, argument, and research being presented.

Language & Text

Capitalisation

For the submission title:

Capitalise all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and subordinate conjunctions (i.e. as, because, although). Use lowercase for all articles; coordinate conjunctions and prepositions.

Headings within the main text:

Headings in the text should follow the same rule as the main title.

Spelling

Submissions can be made using any variation of English spelling, but spelling must be consistent throughout. When referring to proper nouns and normal institutional titles, the official, original spelling must be used. Original spelling should also be maintained for all quotations.

Grammar

Please use English grammar rules, including the Oxford comma.

Font

Please use Times New Roman, font size 12, double spaced. This may be changed during the typesetting process.

Underlined text should be avoided whenever possible.

Bold or italicised text must not be used to emphasise a point.

Lists

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 maximise their impact.

Quotation marks

Use double quotation marks. Other punctuation must be placed outside of the quotations marks, unless it is of importance to the text being quoted. For speech within quotations or the introduction of specialist terminology, use single quotation marks.

Quotations that are longer than three lines in length must be in an indented paragraph separate from the main text.

The standard, non-italicised font must be used for all quotes. If a quotation has italicised text, maintain this italisation in the submission.

Ellipses added for the purpose of the submission must be contained in square brackets. Original ellipses must be written as they are shown in the quotation.

It must be clear from the text and/or citation where the quote is sourced. If quoting from material that is under copyright, permission will need to be obtained from the copyright holder.

Scare quotes should be used sparingly. If used, scare quotes should be written with single quotation marks.

Acronyms & Abbreviations

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. Please spell out all acronyms on first use, indicating the acronym in parentheses immediately thereafter. Use the acronym for all subsequent references. Where an acronym is easily recognisable to the journal’s readership (we include YA in this category) it may be used without explanation, but if in doubt, spell it out.

Abbreviations should usually be in capital letters without full stops e.g. USA, not U.S.A. Common examples from Latin origin do not follow this rule and should be lower case and can include full stops (e.g., i.e., etc).

Use of footnotes/endnotes

Use footnotes rather than endnotes.

Data & Symbols

Symbols

Symbols are permitted as long as they are commonly in use or have an explanatory definition on their first usage.

Hyphenation

Hyphens are to be used to join words or parts of words.

If required, en dashes are to be used for parenthetical information (in place of the standard em dashes for typesetting reasons).

Numbers

For numbers zero to nine please spell the whole words. Please use figures for numbers 10 or higher.

We are happy for authors to use either words or figures to represent large whole figures (i.e. one million or 1,000,000) as long as the usage is consistent throughout the text.

If the sentence includes a series of numbers, figures must be used in each instance.

If the number appears as part of a dataset, in conjunction with a symbol or as part of a table then the figure must be used.

If a sentence starts with a number it must be spelt, or the sentence should be re-written so that it no longer starts with the number.

References

MLA 8^th Edition should be used for all references.

Titles

Book and series titles must be italicised. Titles of shorter works must be written in quotation marks (in line with MLA).

In-text citations
Every use of information from other sources must be cited in the text so that it is clear that external material has been used.

Relevant source information should be provided in parentheses whenever a sentence uses a quotation or paraphrases others’ work.

If the author’s name has been mentioned in the sentence (full name for first use, surname thereafter) then only the page number is needed in parentheses:

e.g. Rudine Sims Bishop claims that literature “transforms human experience and reflects it back to us” (xi).

If the author’s name has not been mentioned in the sentence:

e.g. Literature “transforms human experience and reflects it back to us” (Sims Bishop xi).

If three or more authors are cited then ‘et al.’ should follow the first author’s name, then the page number.

e.g. (Jones et al. 245)

If two or more authors have the same last name, a first initial should be used to differentiate between them.

e.g. (M. Clarke 323) and (A. Clarke 45)

If an author’s name has changed from the name recorded in the source, an indication should be given in a footnote to direct a reader to the appropriate entry in the references.

e.g. See R. Oliver in references.

If there are multiple publications from the same author, use a shortened title for the particular work you are citing to distinguish it from the others.

e.g. (Kim Reynolds, Modern Children’s Literature 14) or (Reynolds, “Anti-War Discourses” 126).

If the cited source does not have page numbers, use ‘n.p.’ in place of the page number.

e.g. (Thomas n.p.)

If the work being cited is contained within another source, please use ‘qtd. in’ to indicate the appropriate reference.

e.g. Deaver recalls agents “didn’t see a market” for their book (qtd. in Stoeve).

If the work being cited is an interview, please use the interviewee as the author.

Works Cited List

All citations must be listed at the end of the text file, in alphabetical order of authors’ surnames.

If you have cited more than one work by a particular author, order the entries alphabetically by title, and use three hyphens in place of the author’s name for every entry after the first.

A generic citation for a book:

Last Name, First Name. Title of Book. City of Publication, Publisher, Publication Date.

A generic citation for a chapter in an edited collection:

Last name, First name. "Title of Essay." Title of Collection, edited by Editor's Name(s), Publisher, Year, page range.

A generic citation for an article published in a scholarly journal:

Last name, First name. “Title of Article.” Title of Journal, Volume, Issue, Year, page range.

A generic citation for an interview:

Last name, First name. “Title of Interview”. Interview conducted by Name of Interviewer. Title of Source, Date.

For further information including how to cite online or digital sources see MLA 8^th Edition.

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 the Editorial Team has been provided with an explanation). Work previously published in a language other than English should be declared and discussed with the Editorial Team.
Any third party-owned materials used have been identified with appropriate credit lines, and permission obtained from the copyright holder for all formats of the journal.
All authors qualify as authors, as per the authorship guidelines, and have given permission to be listed on the submitted paper.
The submission file is in OpenOffice or Microsoft Word document file format.
If any tables or figures are used in the article, these are all cited in the text. Tables are included within the text document, whilst figure files are uploaded as supplementary files.
Figures/images have a resolution of at least 150dpi (300dpi or above preferred). Each file is no more than 20MB per file. The files are in one of the following formats: JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, EPS (to maximise quality, the original source file is preferred).
The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines. Every effort has been made to ensure that author names are removed from the manuscript (following the instructions to ensure blind peer review).

Copyright Notice

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses required by the journal will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

Publication Fees

There are no fees for publishing an article within The International Journal of Young Adult Literature.

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