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Notes for intending authors
Submissions may be up to about 7500 words including abstract, tables and references, but not including appendices. An Abstract of 100-200 words and a brief biography not exceeding 50 words per author should be included in the submission.
Publication in IIER is free, that is, IIER does require any payment of page or publication charges.
Your article should be submitted as a Microsoft Word file in .doc format or .docx format, attached to an email addressed to IIER's Editorial team:
editor@iier.org.au
Please use the subject line IIER new submission: (first author's family name). Email for editor@iier.org.au is forwarded automatically to the Editorial team. Your submission should be a single file with the first author's family name included in the filename. Any covering letter information you wish to provide should be placed in the body text of the submission email. New submissions must be sent to editor@iier.org.au and not to any individual in the team (incorrectly addressed new submissions may be returned to authors for resending).
You will receive an acknowledgment from IIER's current duty editor for processing initial submissions within about 4 days. You are asked to read this carefully, to check that we have details recorded correctly, and sometimes we may have asked a follow-up question. Please ensure that email from IIER's editorial staff is not subjected to a spam blocker or junk email filter, because if the duty editor's acknowledgment is not delivered without restriction to the submitting author, IIER may discard the submission, as a time saving measure. After submission, continue to use the address editor@iier.org.au for further correspondence, unless otherwise instructed.
IIER's review times may vary from 2-3 weeks to about 3 months, depending upon an initial assessment by IIER editorial staff:
Initial assessment: May lead to advice from IIER Editorial staff about reasons for not accepting, and suggestions about how to improve for another journal (given within about 2-3 weeks), or may lead to an external review (outcome advised within about 3 months).
External review: This process (up to 3 months) may lead to acceptance, or to rejection for reasons given by the external reviewers.
Include author names and contact details at the beginning of your article. The editorial team will remove authors' names and other identification from the article prior to despatch to reviewers. However, self-citations will be left intact, as reviewers may require access to these in order to conduct a proper review. The advice to reviewers includes a copy of the IIER Review Form. Authors may find it useful to consider the criteria listed in it [see Review Form] whilst preparing their submission.
Submissions to the journal are expected to be significant and original contributions to educational research. IIER is a generalist journal publishing research topics which are drawn from all sectors of education and may be based upon a wide range of contexts and research methodologies. To enable the best possible scope for this diversity, IIER may be particularly interested in topics, country contexts and research methods or perspectives that are under-represented in the international literature. It is also important to project your article as representing a significant issue in educational research, and as relevant for an international readership, in contrast to an article that relates only to a local or limited regional context, or to a highly specialised field of educational research.
Submissions should not have been published elsewhere, nor currently under consideration by another journal. Authors are not required to assign copyright in their articles to IIER, but should be aware that articles published in IIER appear under the Creative Commons licence "BY ND" [see About IIER: Copyright]. It is the responsibility of authors to comply with ethics approvals and any other pre-project or pre-submission procedures as specified by their institution, organisation or government. IIER editorial staff and reviewers cannot undertake checking for compliance. Inclusion of an ethics compliance statement in a submission is optional, but if given, place in the section on methods.
As a general guide to writing and referencing, please follow the APA Style (2009). In particular, note the APA advice about titles of articles, "The recommended length for a title is 10 to 12 words". Another important guide used for editorial purposes is the Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Publishers. For spelling, please use The Macquarie Dictionary. Please use Google and Google Scholar "Advanced" searches to check that you have correctness of spelling and other details in your reference list. Include URLs or DOIs for journal and proceedings references, wherever you can. Do not attempt to anonymise or 'blind' any self citations that may be included; IIER requires that all references be available for potential inspection by reviewers.
Please use previously published IIER articles as a general guide to the style required for headings, paragraphing and other details in presentation. In order to have the best possible portability across different platforms and different versions of MS Word, please use Normal style only. Use single spacing, because almost all editorial and review work is conducted by screen reading without recourse to printing on paper. Do not use footnotes or other layout features which are difficult to convert to HTML for the web version. If using endnotes please do not use your word processor's specific system for doing this, simply indicate their locations in the text and then type in normal text at the end of the paper.
All figures and tables should be included in your Word file in their correct positions, and not in separate graphics or drawing packages. When preparing these, please note that the PDF versions of articles accepted for publication will have a B5 format with a printing area of 201 x 136 mm. Do not use landscape format for wide tables and figures; redesign to fit into portrait orientation (width 136 mm).
Queries about submissions may be directed to the IIER editorial team [editor@iier.org.au]
Special advice for authors of accepted articles
In your revision of an accepted article or in proof reading of an accepted and edited article, please give particular attention to the following requests which are concerned with production matters such as conformance with IIER's "house style"; good legibility and readability for diagrams, figures and tables; minimising the incidence of errors in citation and referencing; optimising for screen reading; improving search engine "reading" of the article; minimising the amount of time required for copy editing, etc.
Diagrams and figures should be openable for editing. When copying in from another file, please do not use "Paste as picture", use "Paste as MS Excel Chart object", or "Paste as MS Word Document object". In the case of Excel-drawn diagrams, submitting your source file together with your MS Word file is usually the safest option. Do not use text orientations other than horizontal, and do not enter a title for a diagram (use the legend, which is outside the diagram, to contain the necessary information). Number consecutively as Figure 1, Figure 2, ...
Note that the printing width for IIER's PDF version is 136 mm. Please design tables, figures and diagrams to suit this width. Do not use landscape format for wide tables and figures; redesign to fit into portrait orientation with width 136 mm. Note that often it may be appropriate to use colour within diagrams and figures. Please avoid 'copy and paste' from PowerPoint slides, as resolution may be degraded seriously; convert to MS Word drawing objects.
Tables may be quite demanding with copy editing time. Please scan a number of articles from previous issues of IIER to note the kinds of table formatting used in the HTML and PDF versions, and conform as best you can, to make matters easier for editors and readers. Number consecutively as Table 1, Table 2, ...
Wherever possible and wherever known, please insert URLs or DOIs for references to journals and conference proceedings. Checking with the publisher's website to obtain a URL or DOI will help you to proof read the reference, it being important to avoid errors in spelling, page numbers, etc., that could be perpetuated by search engines (and thereby associated with you as author of the error!). Whilst including URLs or DOIs may help to ensure that Google Scholar records the reference properly in its citation count data, the main purpose is to give readers "one click" access to the abstract or full text for a reference (if they are lucky with their library's selection of subscriptions!).
Ensure that you have a bio up to 50 words length for each author, appended at the end of your article. Please include each author's current institutional affiliation, preferred email address, and professional website address (if one is available). For examples, see bios at the end of recently published IIER articles.
We implore authors to take great care in revising and proof reading an accepted article. After submitting, there will be only very limited opportunities for further revisions or "polishing". IIER does send authors a pre-publication proof reading copy, but owing to editorial staff time constraints and targets for publication date, we usually make only the most important corrections. We do not exempt individual articles from IIER's "house style" with respect to punctuation, italicising, spelling, use of acronyms, and related matters.
APA Style (2009). American Psychological Association. http://www.apastyle.org/
APA (2009). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition American Psychological Association.
COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) (n.d.). https://publicationethics.org
Creative Commons. http://creativecommons.org
ERIC (Education Resources Information Center). https://eric.ed.gov/
Google. http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en
Google Scholar. https://scholar.google.com/schhp?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5
International DOI Foundation. The Digital Object Identifier System. http://www.doi.org/
The Macquarie Dictionary (2005). 4th ed. Sydney: The Macquarie Library. http://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/
NLA (National Library of Australia). Pandora Archive. http://pandora.nla.gov.au/
Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Publishers (2002). 6th ed. Wiley Australia. (Previous editions were known with great respect and affection as the AGPS Manual). https://www.wiley.com/en-au/Style+Manual%3A+For+Authors%2C+Editors+and+Printers%2C+6th+Edition-p-9780701636487
Wager, E. & Kleinert, S. (2011). Responsible research publication: International standards for authors. A position statement developed at the 2nd World Conference on Research Integrity, Singapore, July 22-24, 2010. In T. Mayer & N. Steneck (Eds), Promoting research integrity in a global environment. Imperial College Press / World Scientific Publishing, Singapore (ch 50, pp 309-16). http://publicationethics.org/files/International%20standards_authors_for%20website_11_Nov_2011.pdf
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Last revised: 8 October 2018. URL: http://www.iier.org.au/iier-submissions.html
HTML: Roger Atkinson [rjatkinson@bigpond.com] and Clare McBeath [c.mcbeath@bigpond.com]