Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy

Author Guidelines

Writing for the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy

The Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy (JAAL) seeks manuscripts for Volume 56 (September 2012–May 2013). JAAL features articles that highlight research-based practice aimed at improving engagement and achievement among literacy learners aged 12 and older. Readers of this peer-reviewed publication include middle and secondary school teachers and administrators, preservice teachers, postsecondary teachers, librarians, media specialists, literacy coaches, curriculum specialists, researchers, scholars, and policymakers. JAAL seeks both qualitative and quantitative research studies. Submissions should focus on practical applications and include graphics (e.g., tables, charts, figures, photographs) that aid in summarizing the text and engaging readers. We seek research-based manuscripts that connect literacy contexts and stakeholders with 21st-century literacies. Topics may include but are not limited to motivation, engagement, and assessment of diverse populations of literacy learners in local and global contexts; adolescents’ and adults’ consumption and production of visual, digital, and print-based texts on and offline; content area literacies instruction; and integration of pop culture and digital literacies into independent and collaborative teaching and learning experiences.

JAAL is published online and in print eight times a year: monthly from September to May, with a combined December/January issue. It is received by more than 15,000 subscribers worldwide.

Appropriate Submissions

JAAL welcomes high-quality, blinded manuscripts (4,000 to 6,000 words in length) that include related citations and reference list according to APA 5th edition and that make a significant contribution to advancing and integrating theory and practice in adolescent and adult literacy. No book reviews, literary analyses, class projects, term papers, dissertations, endorsements of commercial products/services, previously published works, or works under consideration elsewhere will be considered. Manuscripts will be evaluated on their originality, significance, scholarship, clearly articulated relationship between theory and practice, audience appeal, organization, and writing style appropriateness for JAAL audience. The acceptance rate is 16–20%.

Before submitting your manuscript, familiarize yourself with articles published in JAAL to gain insight on the voice, tone, and format appropriate for the journal’s audience.

Required Sidebars

Effective January 2012, all article submissions must include a Take Action! and a More to Explore sidebar.
•At the end of the article and before the references, include a Take Action! sidebar. Take Action! identifies the steps teachers need to follow to apply your ideas to the classrooms. Please include a numbered list of steps (no longer than 270 words) that succinctly explain how teachers can implement your strategy, assessment, or idea right away. Be clear and concise, and include content area examples if possible. You can assume that teachers will have already read your article and will have understood the concepts presented. Take Action! will tell them how to get started.
•At the end of the References, include a More to Explore list of no more than five or six additional, multimodal resources for readers interested in supplemental information on your topic. These should not include resources already cited and referred to in your text. Examples to offer include lesson plans from ReadWriteThink.org, books and journal articles, podcasts, and websites.

Preparing Your Manuscript

All submissions for peer review should conform to the style outlined in the fifth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Authors of accepted manuscripts must also provide written permission releases for use of material from another source (including student’s writing samples, text or figures excerpted from another published work, etc.). Releases must also be provided for use of any person’s words or likeness. Refer to IRA’s copyright information for details.

All manuscripts must be submitted electronically. Prepare the following files for uploading to our online manuscript tracking system. Text should be presented double-spaced in 12 point font, preferably in Microsoft Word.

•Cover letter, including your name and affiliation (as you would have them published) and your mailing and e-mail addresses. Any coauthors should be listed in preferred order, with name, affiliation, and contact information.
•Abstract of 150 words, written in the third person and without citations.
•One blinded copy of the manuscript. To prepare this version, remove author names and affiliations from bylines, replace references to your own and to coauthors’ published work simply with “Author (year)” in text and in reference list (that is, delete publication titles), and mask any city, state, institutional affiliation, or links to personal websites. Note that all in-text citations and corresponding references must be in standard APA format. Footnotes and appendixes should not appear. Instead, incorporate such material into the article text. See “Required Sidebars” section above.
•Figures and Tables: Tables should be embedded at the end of the manuscript. Figures should be submitted as separate, original image files (e.g., jpg, pdf, tif, eps) with a resolution of at least 300 dpi. All figures and tables must be referenced in the manuscript. More detailed information on the submission of electronic artwork can be found at http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/illustration.asp

Online-Only Supporting Information

Authors are welcome to submit online-only supporting information with their paper. Supporting information must be important, ancillary information that is relevant to the parent article but that does not or cannot appear in the printed edition of the journal (e.g., audio or video files). See Supporting Information Guidelines for details.

Submitting Your Manuscript

All articles and Literacy Lenses essays must be submitted online through IRA’s Manuscript Central tracking system.

•Go to the Manuscript Central site
•Create an account (if you haven’t done so already)
•Log in to your account with your username and password, and select the appropriate publication from the drop-down "journal" menu
•Click the Author Center link
•Click on the blue star and follow the instructions provided
•A confirmation e-mail will acknowledge our receipt of your manuscript

You can follow the progress of your manuscript by accessing your Author Center.

Review and Adjudication

The review process includes a preliminary evaluation to determine appropriateness, double-blind peer review, and finally adjudication by the editors. All manuscripts are reviewed by two Editorial Board members and a guest reviewer. Acceptance is determined by the reviewers’ recommendations, available space, and balance of topics in upcoming issues. A decision is typically rendered eight weeks from the date of submission. Publication date of accepted manuscripts is determined primarily by the amount of material already awaiting publication.

Publication

Authors of accepted manuscripts are required to assign their copyright to IRA so that the Association can register copyright to the journal as a whole and administer requests for reuse. (Authors are invited to read IRA's rights and permissions policies, which do not restrict authors' own reuse of their work.)

Accepted articles are edited to meet IRA style guidelines. Page proofs are sent to the author for final approval approximately six weeks prior to publication. All authors will receive a final PDF of their article for their records.

Copyright Transfer Agreement

We no longer require FAXs or other hardcopy of the Copyright Transfer Agreement. Instead we have introduced a convenient new process for signing your copyright transfer agreement electronically (eCTA) that will save you considerable time and effort. If your paper is accepted, the Author whom you flag as being the formal Corresponding Author for the paper will receive an e-mail with a link to an online eCTA form. This will enable the Corresponding Author to complete the copyright form electronically within ScholarOne Manuscripts on behalf of all authors on the manuscript. You may preview the copyright terms and conditions here.

Early View

Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy is covered by Wiley-Blackwell Publishing’s Early View service. Early View articles are complete full-text articles published online in advance of their publication in a printed issue. Articles are therefore available as soon as they are ready, rather than having to wait for the next scheduled print issue. Early View articles are complete and final. They have been fully reviewed, revised and edited for publication, and the authors’ final corrections have been incorporated. Because they are in final form, no changes can be made after online publication. The nature of Early View articles means that they do not yet have volume, issue or page numbers, so Early View articles cannot be cited in the traditional way. They are therefore given a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which allows the article to be cited and tracked before it is allocated to an issue. After print publication, the DOI remains valid and can continue to be used to cite and access the article.

Citation for an article published as Early View:
Smith, A., & Jones, B. (2012). Article on reading. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. Advance online publication. doi:10.1002/JAAL.00101

Online Open

OnlineOpen is available to authors of primary research articles who wish to make their article available to non-subscribers on publication, or whose funding agency requires grantees to archive the final version of their article. With OnlineOpen, the author, the author's funding agency, or the author's institution pays a fee to ensure that the article is made available to non-subscribers upon publication via Wiley Online Library, as well as deposited in the funding agency's preferred archive. For the full list of terms and conditions, see http://wileyonlinelibrary.com/onlineopen#OnlineOpen_Terms

Any authors wishing to send their paper OnlineOpen will be required to complete the payment form available from our website at: https://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/onlineopen_order.asp

Prior to acceptance there is no requirement to inform an Editorial Office that you intend to publish your paper OnlineOpen if you do not wish to. All OnlineOpen articles are treated in the same way as any other article. They go through the journal's standard peer-review process and will be accepted or rejected based on their own merit.

Call for JAAL Cover Images

How are literacies enacted in the lives of adolescents and adults and what do they look like? Show us! Beginning in September 2012, we'll feature adolescent- and adult-submitted photographs and artwork on the cover of Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. We invite you to share your representations of adolescent and adult literacies in action! All images must:

•Depict adolescent(s) and/or adult(s) engaged in literacy-related activities or share the product of a literacy-related activity.
•Be submitted with appropriate releases—that is, anyone whose likeness or work is shown (or, in the case of minors, their parents or guardians) must sign a release form authorizing IRA’s use of the likeness or work in the journal. (Contact us for a blank release form if needed.)
•Include no content copyrighted by a third party (e.g., clearly discernible book covers, clearly readable text passages from a copyrighted work, trademarked name brands and logos).
•Be submitted in digital format (minimum 300 dpi resolution), 8" x 10" in size or larger, and in color.

Photographs, paintings, illustrations, word clouds, and digital art are all welcome. Images and release forms should be submitted by e-mail to publications@reading.org. Include a maximum of two images as file attachments to your e-mail message, which should also include your name and contact information. If your image(s) are selected for consideration by our design and production team, we will contact you for further details.

Questions? Contact us at publications@reading.org. We look forward to hearing from you.