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Submission guidelines - Curriculum Matters

Scope

The editor of Curriculum Matters invites interested people to submit articles (essays, literature reviews, research reports, scholarship and critical comments) in the field of curriculum. The main audience groups for these articles are teachers, teacher educators, graduate students of education and curriculum theorists.

Manuscript submission

Articles should be sent for consideration electronically to the editor, Dr Jennifer Tatebe, Senior Lecturer, The University of Auckland:

j.tatebe@auckland.ac.nz

There is one volume of Curriculum Matters per year.  The  deadline for submissions is 31 March.

Manuscript format

Each article should be no more than 6,000 words in length (including references), with a brief title. A short abstract of about 100 words must be provided. A references list is included at the end of the manuscript.

Authors should consult articles in this journal on general matters of style, such as conventions with headings, subheadings, paragraph breaks and use of diagrams. Manuscripts need to be submitted as Word documents (.doc or .docx files). Text should be 1.5 or 2.0 spaced.

Footnotes should be avoided, but if included should be used sparingly and take the form of endnotes. Endnotes should be numbered consecutively through the manuscript, using superscript, and appear at the end of the article.

Diagrams, tables or photographs should be supplied as separate .tiff, .eps or .jpg files and clearly labelled, e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2. Notes need to be inserted in the main text to specify the location of each figure, e.g. [insert Figure 1].

Referencing should be consistent and follow APA 7.

Submitted articles must be anonymous and ready to be sent to blind review. to ensure anonymity, authors need to ensure that:

  • in-text references to work by the author(s) are disguised, e.g. written as “Author(s), 2006”
  • items by the paper authors in the references list are removed and replaced with the words “Author(s), 2006 [removed for blind review]”
  • electronic identifiers are removed from electronic file settings
  • “track changes” is turned off.

Author information should be provided in a separate title page. Authors’ names should be given as first name and family name, without titles, and including affiliations. Where there are multiple authors, the corresponding author should be identified. Where a corresponding author is not provided, correspondence will be sent to the first-named author. Short biographical notes about authors should also be provided, including email addresses.

Authorial responsibility and copyright

Authors must accept sole responsibility for the originality and factual accuracy of their articles and for obtaining and supplying written permission to quote lengthy excerpts from copyrighted sources. Permissions are required where an article may draw on work that was prepared for an institution and where copyright and intellectual property rights lie with the institution. It is the authors’ responsibility to obtain these permissions and they must be supplied when the manuscript is submitted. Where there may be questions relating to intellectual property or copyright, these need to be communicated to the editor at time of submission.

Editorial policy

The  editor  makes  an  initial  decision  about  whether  a  submitted  article is appropriate for Curriculum Matters. Articles are then sent to peer review and are reviewed by two peer reviewers. From these reviews the editor decides whether to publish the article. Copies of the anonymous reviewers’ reports will be sent to the authors. If articles are accepted, specific revisions may be requested. The editor reserves the right to make minor alterations or deletions to articles without consulting the authors, as long as these changes do not materially affect the substance of the article.

Author checklist

  • The manuscript has a short title that provides a clear indication of the focus of the article.
  • The manuscript is no more than 6000 words, including references.
  • An abstract is included (approximately 100 words) at the beginning of the article.
  • The manuscript is presented as a Word file, with 1.5 or 2.0 spacing.
  • Referencing follows APA conventions.
  • Headings, subheadings and other style features are consistent with articles published in previous editions of Curriculum Matters.
  • Figures are included as separate files, with their position in the text clearly indicated.
  • The manuscript is anonymous.
  • Author names, affiliations, contact details and biographical information are provided in a separate file.
  • Matters relating to copyright have been attended to and, where appropriate, permissions have been obtained.