Submissions

Author Guidelines

Guidelines for Authors

Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice welcomes a range of submissions that relate to evidence-based academic practice within the one or more of the following thematic areas:

• Learning, teaching and assessment
• Curriculum innovation and development
• Academic staff development
• Supporting scholarship of learning and teaching
• Institutional policy and strategy relating to academic practice
• Responding to the changing tertiary education landscape

The journal aims to provide a supportive publishing outlet to allow established and particularly new authors to contribute to the scholarly discourse of academic practice (both generally and in their discipline area) through the publication of papers that are theory-based and supported by evidence. The main types of article we publish include the following formats.

All papers published, that include student or staff data, whether derived from research projects or informal surveys or teaching evaluations, etc. MUST have ethical approval.

• Original research: Formal research projects with appropriate analysis of data, with a qualitative, quantitative or mixed-method approach. This could include action research studies.  
• Reflective analysis: Reflective evaluations of academic practice, featuring practitioner based enquiry or reflections that challenge current practice, encourage experimentation, or offer new perspectives derived from prior work.
• Case studies: Case study papers examining academic practice within a particular learning and teaching, curriculum, institutional or wider educational context.

Articles of the above kind should be submitted in our 'long paper' format (5,000 - 7,000 words), and must clearly draw out 'lessons learned' or 'food for thought' that will be of wider relevance beyond the specific context (discipline or other) to which the paper relates.

Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice also welcomes other submission types including:

• Review papers: Literature reviews and meta-analyses that synthesise existing work within a specific area and which draw conclusions relating to practice and/or further research (also in 'long paper' format of 5,000 to 7,000 words).
• 'On the horizon' papers: Short work-in-progress reports (1,500 to 2,000 words) on projects and initiatives that relate to one or more themes of the journal, and which are at an early stage of implementation or reporting on initial findings. The purpose of the 'On the horizon' papers is to disseminate interesting current work, and for which follow-up 'long papers' would be encouraged and supported by the journal.
• Opinion pieces: Personal perspectives on current issues and developments within the tertiary education sector that relate to or have implications for academic practice in national or international contexts (now up to 1500 words).
• Book reviews: Reviews of new and recently published books (including new editions) that relate to one or more themes of the journal (approximately 400 to 750 words).

Interactive papers

We are keen to publish long papers and 'On the horizon' papers in interactive formats which make use of audio, video, and other multimedia-based material, and which may also offer access to open educational resources or other Creative Commons licensed material that can be repurposed by readers within their own academic practice related work and research.

If you wish to present your article in a format other than a traditional written paper, please contact the editorial team to discuss the proposed format.

Special issues

Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice will occasionally publish Special Issues dedicated to particular areas of interest, with Editors for Special Issues drawn from the academic community. The editorial team for the journal are also interested in discussing ideas for Special Issues with prospective Editors or Co-Editors, and invite you to contact them to discuss your own ideas for potential Special Issues that we could work with you on.

Format for submissions

Papers may be submitted from single or multiple authors. All papers accepted through the peer review process will be published via the journal's site. Authors should register with the Journal in order to submit for review through the online system.

The general format for all submissions for Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice is outlined in our Word template. The template must be used for your article submission and must use the styles set up within the Word file (see JPAAP Guides to download the template).

• Only 3 levels of header are to be used.
• Author(s) name, surname and institutional affiliation should appear under title of paper.
• The article must contain an abstract (up to 300 words) and up to five key words or phrases.
• All figures, diagrams, screenshots and tables should be included at the appropriate point in the text. Figures, diagrams and screenshots should be in colour jpg, tiff or eps format and of good quality.
• If you would like to include audio or video material in your paper, audio clips can be submitted online in MP3 format and video clips in MP4 format. Please indicate within the text where relevant audio and video links should be placed (and provide the full filename of the clip that is to be linked to).
• Italics should be used for emphasis where required. Footnotes should be avoided.
• A short bio (of 50 words) for each author should be included at the end before the reference list. Inclusion of general contact information for authors including links to social media accounts and relevant project blogs or websites is encouraged.
• In-text references and reference list should be in APA format (see Referencing below).
• Ensure a full proofread and spellcheck is undertaken before submission.

Some document formatting issues to consider before submission:

• Ensure headings are in the correct style using the styles palette in Word.
• Ensure the main text is all in Body Text style.
• Capitalise the first letter of each word in the main title; for all other headings only capitalise the first letter of the heading, the rest of the heading should be in lower case.
• Run a search and replace for double spaces changing to single.
• Do not use a comma after e.g. and i.e.
• Use zero before decimal points; this is particularly helpful to the reader if the decimals are part of the main text, so as not to confuse the decimal point with a full stop.
• Do not make the punctuation at the end of a sentence bold/italic/underlined even if the preceding word is bold/italic/underlined. Only match the punctuation if the full sentence is in bold/italic/underlined.
• No apostrophe after noun to indicate plural. E.g. papers, CDs. Use apostrophe before -s to indicate the possessive, e.g. the lecturer’s book. Use apostrophe after -s to indicate possessive and plural, e.g. the lecturers’ books, or if a name ends in -s to indicate the possessive, e.g. Dr James’ book.
• Use double quotes for quotations and single quotes for ‘nicknames’ and for quotes within quotes. Avoid using too many ‘nicknames’; use italics instead for emphasis.
• Use italics instead of bold or underline for emphasis and to denote names of publications, lectures, or programmes.
• Write out acronyms in full the first time you use them with the contraction in brackets; use the acronym subsequently.
• If there are typos in quotes and the typos are not relevant to your subject (e.g. you might wish to keep the typos if you are discussing student performance in the English language) you might wish to correct them; otherwise, or if there are major errors which would substantially alter the quote if you corrected them, use [sic] after the error.

As part of the submission process authors must check their submission's compliance with the above. Submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

The submission should not have been previously published, nor be before another journal or peer-reviewed conference for consideration. Submissions can relate to projects or initiatives from which work has previously been published, providing the submission for Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice addresses previously unpublished aspects of the work or further developments of it. Authors should reference any related previous publications. Authors must ensure permissions are cleared for any copies of images, tables, video, audio etc submitted from other sources and detail the copyright permission.

Referencing Guide

All publications submitted to Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice (JPAAP) should follow the American Psychological Association (APA) style of referencing and citation (7^th Edition). Authors are required to list references in alphabetical order (by surname of the first author). Authors must ensure that all references are cited in the text, and each citation must appear in the References section, accompanied with a DOI which can be retrieved via https://doi.crossref.org/simpleTextQuery, where available.

Below are examples of some of the basic reference formats:

Book

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511815355 

Chapter in an Edited Book

Braun, V., Clarke, V., Hayfield, N., & Terry, G. (2019). Thematic Analysis. In P. Liamputtong (Ed.), Handbook of research methods in health social sciences (pp. 843-860). Springer Singapore. https://doi.org/https://10.1007/978-981-10-5251-4_103 

Journal Article

Odlin, D., Benson-Rea, M., & Sullivan-Taylor, B. (2022). Student internships and work placements: approaches to risk management in higher education. Higher Education, 83(6), 1409-1429. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-021-00749-w 

Websites

AdvanceHE (2019). UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF). https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/uk-professional-standards-framework-ukpsf

Electronic Media

Koller, D. (2012, November 7). How online courses can form a basis for on-campus teaching. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/coursera/2012/11/07/how-online-courses-can-form-a-basis-for-on-campus-teaching/#6bc5ac2f2887 

Referencing tips

• Please supply a list of references used and cited in your article – the journal style does not support bibliographies.
• List of references should be at the end of your article. The journal style does not support footnotes.
• Ensure all citations in your text also appear in the list of references.
• Ensure all dates/years in citations match the dates/years in their corresponding references.
• Ensure all references have a corresponding citation.
• Ensure the format of citations and references is in APA 7^th style.
• Do not split citations from their years – keep them together.
• Use ‘&’ for multiple authors in the list of references (however in the text use ‘and’ if part of the text and ‘&’ if in brackets, as per the APA style).
• Et al.:
  In references – Never use ‘et al.’ in the list of references. For up to 20 authors, list all names; for more than 20 authors, list the first 19 and then the last.
  In citations – Always use ‘et al.’ in citations for three or more authors, regardless of whether it is the first time the work is cited or not.
• Spell out acronyms in the first citation and put the acronym in square brackets. Use the acronym in subsequent citations. E.g. first citation: (Nursing and Midwifery council [NMC], 2010); subsequent citations: (NMC, 2010). Spell out acronyms in full in the reference list.
• Put a full stop at the end of a reference, but do not put a full stop if the reference ends in a link.
• Ensure all references are in alphabetical order.

The above are some issues commonly encountered in articles and are by no means a full referencing guide. For comprehensive APA guidance see: http://www.usq.edu.au/library/referencing/apa-referencing-guide.

Another guide we would recommend is https://aut.ac.nz.libguides.com/APA7th. 

NB: It is the author’s responsibility to ensure that reference titles and dates are accurate, so please double-check these before you submit your article for review. Your article will be returned to you and slow up the editorial process if the above guidelines are not adhered to.

To submit please register with the journal website and submit through the online system. Read our JPAAP Guides (the Word template can be found within the JPAAP Guides) for help on the journal process.