Submissions

Author Guidelines

Journal of Agricultural Education

A Publication of the American Association for Agricultural Education

ISSN 1042-0541

Manuscript Preparation and Submission Guidelines (Revised February 10, 2020)

Authors should follow these guidelines before submitting manuscripts for review. Manuscripts that deviate from these guidelines will not be reviewed.

Membership in the American Association for Agricultural Education (AAAE)

In order for your manuscript to be reviewed, at least one member of the author team must be a current active member of AAAE. The membership directory is consulted by the editorial staff for every manuscript received. Please make certain that at least one member of the author team is a current active, student, or retired member. Alternatively, authors may pay a fee of $500 (per manuscript) to waive the membership requirement. Checks should be made out to the American Association for Agricultural Education and sent to Marilyn Trefz at 1050 Little Bear Place, Lewis Center, OH 43035.

Preparing your manuscript for submission using the APA 7th Edition (APA7)

Authors are expected to prepare manuscripts using the guidelines set forth in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Seventh Edition (APA7). In particular, authors should chapter two of the publication manual, and prepare their manuscript based upon the elements described therein. The following are general formatting guidelines to follow:

1. Manuscripts must be prepared using the Times New Roman typeface, in 12-point font size.

2. Set margins to one inch.

3. Special characters such as Greek letters and mathematical symbols are to be applied using the special character function of your word- processing software.

4. Double-space between all lines of text, and after titles, headings quotations, references, and figure captions.

5. You may single space within the body of tables, provided that this improves readability. Follow guidelines for table and figure preparation as set for in APA7.

6. Indent the first line of every paragraph ½ inch. Use the tab function to accomplish this.

7. Do not indent the abstract, block quotes, titles, headings, table titles and notes, or figure captions.

8. Manuscript submitted for publication must not exceed 28 pages in length. The title page, abstract, and references are excluded from this page limit.

9. Headings must conform to the guidelines in APA7.

10. Insert page numbers in the header of each page including the title page. Right justify the page number in the header. Begin with the number 1. Please see example papers in APA7 for guidance.

11. Use personal pronouns to avoid ambiguity. Avoid passive voice. Use “We” or “I” when referring to yourself and to your co-authors. Section 4.16 of APA7 explains this clearly.

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Consult the APA Manual. The APAPublication Manual provides valuable guidelines on how to construct a manuscript for publication.

JARS and MARS. The APAPublication Manual provides journal article reporting standards (JARS). You mayalso find useful the MetaAnalysis Reporting Standards (MARS) for those studies involving meta‐ analysis.

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Formatting Tables and Figures

Use the guidelines in section seven of APA7 to prepare tables and figures. Tables MUST be prepared using the “Table” function in Microsoft Word.

Assembling the Components of the Manuscript

Please follow the guidelines in section two of APA7. Specifically, assemble your manuscript as follows:

• Page 1 – The Title Page. Insert a title page for your manuscript that includes: The title of the manuscript. Try to limit this to 12 words or less if possible. The title should be centered at the top of the page. Capitalize the major words in the title.

1. A running head of no more than 50 characters in all caps. The running head should be left justified in the header. (The running head will be left justified, and the page number will be right justified on the same line in the header.)
2. The Abstract and Keywords List - The abstract should be a brief summary of the article, and must be no longer that 250 words. The abstract is not considered to be part of the 28 page limit on the manuscript.

• Section 3.3 of APA7 provides excellent advice on how to prepare the abstract. o Your keywords must be from the title or abstract. Do not include research methodology as a keyword. o Page two of your manuscript must include the abstract and keywords only.
• Page 2 - The Manuscript Text - The manuscript text starts on page 2.

1. Tables and figures are to be placed at the appropriate place with the text. • References (new formatting requirement)
2. Manuscript references start on a separate page.
3. Prepare references according to APA7 guidelines.
4. References are double-spaced throughout.
5. Include DOI numbers in the references where appropriate. • Appendices o Appendices must be placed at the end of the manuscript, after the references, with each appendix starting on a new page.

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The Title Page: The title page provides manuscript information about your manuscript, and descriptive information necessary for the JAE archive. It is removed by the editorial staff prior to the manuscript being distributed for peer review. It is not considered to be part of the manuscript page limit.

The Running Head: The running head is part of the header and appears on every page of the manuscript.

The Author Note: Examples include acknowledgement of grant funding or financial support, acknowledgement that the manuscript is based on data from a previously published report, or an explanation of any perceived conflicts of interest.

The Abstract and Keywords: The abstract and keywords work together to make your manuscript easy to locate during a database search, if the manuscript is published. The abstract is a concise description of the manuscript content. The keywords codify specific words from the title and abstract. In a search for your article in a database, Keywords help narrow the original search. This is the most frequently searched field in a database search.

Tables in the Text? APA7 recommends that tables be placed at the end of the manuscript. However, the JAE requires that they be placed at or near the location where they are discussed in the manuscript text. This is helpful for reviewers who prefer to read the manuscript on a computer.

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Submitting The Manuscript Manuscript should be submitted as a Word file (.doc, .docx, or .rtf).

Ethical Standards – Implications For Your Manuscript: The following are special considerations regarding ethical standards of research and publication.

• The manuscript should be prepared for blind review. Information that would identify the author(s) and/or university should be omitted and replaced with [brackets].
• Authors MUST report effect sizes when reporting statistical significance for quantitative data analyses.
• If the manuscript is accepted for publication, all of the authors will be asked to certify that it is original research not previously published. Authors will be asked to certify that they have written permission to use copyrighted materials, and that they have complied with the regulations on the use of human subjects in research at their home institution. Authors must also reveal whether or not portions of the manuscript have been published previously.

JAE Dual Publication Policy and Retraction Procedure: The Journal of Agricultural Education promotes the profession by facilitating and disseminating research, trends, developments, and innovations in agricultural education. In order to accomplish this, the Journal insists that researchers and authors:

● Present findings based upon actual research data.

● Take credit and responsibility for the research they perform.

● Publish original data and research findings.

The journal editor, in consultation with the JAE Editing-Managing Board, will consider retracting a publication for the following reasons:

● There is evidence of plagiarism.

● There is evidence of dual or redundant publication. The findings have previously been published without proper cross-referencing, permission, or justification.

● There is clear evidence that the research findings are unreliable because of misconduct or honest error.

The journal editor will consider publishing a letter of concern if inconclusive evidence of research or publication misconduct by the authors is received. The journal editor will consider publishing a letter of correction if a small portion of a publication proves to be misleading, or because of honest error, or because the author list is incorrect.

Retractions, letters of concern, and letters of correction will be published in the Journal of Agricultural Education as soon as possible by the journal editor. Retracted articles are removed from the online Journal. Letters of concern and correction are appended to online journal articles. Articles may be retracted by their author(s) or by the journal editor. Authors who wish to appeal a retraction, letter of concern, or letter of correction, may appeal directly to the Journal of Agricultural Education Editing Managing Board. This board will be the sole and final arbiter of the appeal. By submitting a manuscript for review for publication in the Journal of Agricultural Education, all of the manuscript’s authors agree to the provisions set forth in this document. The Journal does not consider papers presented at a research conference, and then published in the Journal to be redundant publication.

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References and Citations: Authors must ensure that the in- text citations and the reference list are complete and accurate. Clerical errors in the manuscript references have ethical implications. Inaccurate or missing citations and references open the door to charges of plagiarism and academic dishonesty. This can be easily avoided by double-checking references prior to submitting manuscripts. This problem occurs most frequently in papers that are derived from doctoral dissertations and masters theses, and from conference papers. Use APA7 guidelines to format citations and references. Make certain that DOI numbers are supplied for references where applicable.

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*Note. Portions of this document were derived from the 2009 retraction guidelines provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. In this case, the authors who contributed to this document were Elizabeth Wager, Virginia Barbour, Steven Yentis, Sabine Kleinert on behalf of COPE Council.