Submissions

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 single-spaced; 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.

Author Guidelines

Manuscripts should be formatted as anonymised word documents, double spaced in 12pt type with numbered pages to aid reviewers in making comments. Images, figures and tables, where used, should be in the body of the text and appropriately numbered. Footnotes rather than endnotes should be used. We do not enforce a particular citation style, recognising that our diverse authors prefer to make use of a standard referencing format, such as Harvard or APA that is in common usage in their professional or academic context. Please make sure that it is used consistently in your paper.

Frequently Asked Questions

“Is there a strict word or character limit for submissions?”

IJPLE as an online journal does not have strict minimum/ maximum character counts for submitted work. However, we are an academic peer –reviewed journal and our readers will have certain expectations about the length of different types of article and for this reason we offer guideline lengths as follows:

Reviewed Articles – 6,000- 8,000 words
Practice Reports – 5,000- 6,000 words
From the Field – 2,000- 4,000 words
Reviews (Books and other media) – 2,000- 3,000 words.

An advantage of the online journal is that we have the capacity to include more figures, diagrams and pictures (of course with necessary permissions) than print-only titles.

If your work does not fit into these categories, please contact the editor in the first instance to discuss it.

“When should I submit my paper and when will it be published?”

The journal appears once or twice per year (Autumn and/or Spring). All content is subject to some form of review. Everything is initially reviewed by the section or managing editor to ensure suitability for the journal and preliminary feedback may be given at that stage. After the initial editorial check, reviewed articles and practice reports are assigned to (usually) two reviewers for blind peer review. The peer-review process is dependent upon the generous contribution of our reviewers and while we aim for the first round of reviews to be completed within 4-6 weeks, this is not always possible. There then follows a process of proof-reading and copy-editing for publication. Many papers are accepted subject to minor revisions. More substantial revisions are occasionally requested and this may, of course take considerably longer. Once a paper is ‘in press’ it is likely to appear in the next edition, with the caveat that the editors may choose to hold papers over so as to place them alongside others in order to create debate or enhance the discussion. This process takes place in transparent communication with the authors.

Reviewed Articles

These articles will be blind peer-reviewed by two reviewers. Feedback from these reviews will be given to the author by an editor. Authors wishing to submit papers as Reviewed Articles will need to remove all identifying details from the paper before submission.

Practice Reports

These reports will be internally reviewed by the Editorial Board. Authors submitting papers as Practice Reports do not have to anonymise their work, though they can do so.

From the Field

News of practice and innovation from a particular geographical or jurisdictional context.

Reviews

Reviews of book, articles, events and multimedia resources of between 200-800 words.

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 entered in this journal site 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.