Author Guidelines

 

VERY IMPORTANT NOTICE:

Before you prepare and submit any manuscript to the IJLS, please be informed that you are obliged by our publication ethics and procedures to:

1. read this page carefully and attentively to understand and follow our author guidelines in your manuscript;
2. use inclusive language to ensure your manuscript is gender-neutral and free from bias, stigma, stereotypes, slang, reference to dominant culture, and/or cultural assumptions;
3. use this APA style guide (APA Editorial Style, Version 7) in writing your whole manuscript meticulously--especially your in-text co-citations, captions, and reference-list entries;
4. keep your manuscript length between 7000 and 8000 words;
5. be quite thrifty in using tables and figures; we prefer in-line data commentaries; tables and figures should ONLY be used VERY sparingly and only where and when they are absolutely unexpendable;
6. read and fully understand our Code of Conduct, IJLS Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), and IJLS manuscript Review Process;
7. remember that your manuscript should be within the scope of this journal and should avoid citing predatory journals and/or vanity publishers;
8. be sure to include the 'mandatory' Turnitin/iThenticate similarity report on your manuscript in your submission packet. Remember that we will also cross-check to validate your submitted report for sincerity;
9. only use your academic email address to submit your manuscript; acceptable email domain name extensions include .edu, .ac.country, .gov, and .country; avoid general email domain name extensions such as .com, .org, .net, and the like; and
10. use "Independent Researcher" as your current academic status if you are (1) an alumnus/alumna, (2) an adjunct/retired faculty member or a student, or (3) a faculty member at an institute that lacks verifiable ranking, is just an online platform, is for-profit in private sector, or uses a general website domain name extension such as .com, .net, .org, etc.

NOTE: We have our own legal concerns and reservations, so we cannot process submissions made through public email platforms such as Gmail, Yahoo, etc. unless their corresponding authors have dedicated professional-and-institutional profiles on the websites of their institutions; Alternatively, you may want to commission one of your co-authors who owns the mandatory .edu, .ac.country, .gov, or .country email account as the corresponding author of your submission.

The peer review process can take a minimum of 4 to 6 months of external review (in addition to 2-4 weeks of internal review).

NOTE: we do not force authors to cite the works published in the back issues of IJLS (or by our board members), but we strongly recommend that prospective authors see if any of the papers published in the back issues of IJLS has any important direct bearing on the topic covered by their submissions, and cite it ONLY IF it is directly relevant in an important way; here is the COMPLETE LIST.

Now, please continue reading this page and then follow our guidelines in a procedural, step-by-step fashion; this saves your time and ours, and also boosts your chances of publication in the IJLS.

 

Before you Begin

Manuscripts that are sent out for double-blind peer review are ones that, in addition to (1) living up to our submission standards and guidelines, (2) make novel theoretical and/or methodological contributions, often to applied linguistics or language education in general rather than just to one very limited subfield in some geographical setting or to already over-augmented local topics. The submissions that we consider for peer review and final publication are typically based on large, long-term research efforts like genuine-and-original ethically-informed multi-year research projects. Generally, manuscripts are considered only if they appear to represent an IMPORTANT ORIGINAL DEVELOPMENT in their field.

The editors of IJLS will assume that a manuscript submitted to IJLS has not previously been published, and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere--either in the submitted form or in a modified version. Articles should be original, must be written in standard American or British English, and should not include defamatory or libelous content.

IJLS operates a doubly-masked peer review process. To facilitate this process, authors are requested to ensure that all submissions, whether first or revised versions, are anonymized. Acknowledgments, authors' names, their institutional affiliations, their vitas, and their contact details (including academic email addresses, mailing addresses, cellphone/phone/fax numbers, etc.) should only be disclosed in a separate 'Title Page' file.

 

Manuscript Preparation

Please read and observe the following points in the preparation of your manuscript:

• Honestly follow academic code of ethics in publication (i.e., avoid plagiarism, fraud, double/parallel submission, self-plagiarism, etc.).
• If your article contains extracts from other works (especially figures, tables, poetry etc.), please contact the authors and publishers before submitting the final version to seek permission to use their work. IJLS takes this for granted, and will not accept any responsibility if legal issues arise due to authors' lack of care for copyright material.
• If primary data are to be included, research participants should have signed a consent form.
• Acceptable file formats include *.docx and *.pdf (and *.jpg with at least 300dpi resolution for graphs and figures). Use simple file names to save your files and avoid special characters and spacing in file names; when saving their files, Mac users should also type file extensions (i.e., .pdf, .jpg, etc.) in addition to file names.
• If your manuscript includes symbols (i.e., special characters, IPA transcriptions, etc.), also submit a PDF version of your manuscript.
• Only use Microsoft Word (Version 2016 or later) to prepare your 'manuscript', 'title page', 'cover letter', etc.
• If you decide to use our Manuscript Template to prepare your manuscript, please do NOT change the pre-set formatting of the template, its headers or footers. Just type your manuscript text in the body section of the file and send it to us along with other requested documents.
• Write your text in error-free standard English. You may use American or British English, but not a combination of the two. Avoid other varieties of World Englishes.
• Avoid footnotes, endnotes, TABs, page breaks, column breaks, etc. However, do feel free to use bold face, italics, subscripts, and superscripts where needed.
• Avoid first person usage if you cite any previously published works of your own. Make sure the text of your manuscript does not reveal your identity to the reviewers of your work.
• Your manuscript should include the vital sections of a journal article (i.e., Title, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Background, Method, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, and References).
• Use technical language appropriate for journal articles and academic writing. In each section of your manuscript, include appropriate rhetorical moves/steps and organization.
• Preferably, use a two-part title, kept apart with a colon (:) and only capitalize the first letter of each part (in addition to proper nouns/adjectives). Make the manuscript title as short and informative as it can get.
• Provide a single-paragraph abstract (150 words max.) and include all of the basic rhetorical moves, i.e., Introduction/purpose, Method, Results, Conclusion (i.e., IMRC).
• Provide a set of 4 to 5 keywords separated by semi-colons (and sorted in alphabetical order). Avoid general and plural terms and multiple concepts.
• Keep in mind that IJLS readership is quite professional, so use tables and figures in your manuscript only sparingly; it is preferable to avoid them altogether. Data commentary written in technical language is preferable to tables and figures, so use tables and figures ONLY IF they are absolutely vital to the understanding of your work. Do NOT directly copy and paste tables from SPSS, MINITAB, or other statistics packages. Use only the ABSOLUTELY VITAL columns and rows from software outputs to design your own tables in the Microsoft Word file of your manuscript, and purge the unnecessary columns and rows. Remember that large tables (and figures) do NOT fit in the 12.9cm*19.6cm text area of IJLS print pages, so it is vital that your tables and figures be as small and optimal as possible.
• Avoid graphs and figures where possible, or use them only sparingly. Your graphs and figures must be black-and-white or gray-scale and must have a minimum resolution of 300dpi; their sizes must not exceed 12.9cm*16.9cm (width by height).
• Throughout your manuscript, closely follow APA Editorial Style--also see this LINK.
• For co-citations (i.e., citing two or more sources/authors within the same pair of brackets), use alphabetical and then chronological ordering, and keep them apart with semicolons (e.g., Davis & Wilson, 1999; Richardson, Anders, Tidwell, & Lloyd, 1991; Woods, 1996).
• Make sure all of the cited works in your manuscript are referenced and vice versa; there has to be a one-to-one correspondence between your reference list and in-text citations.
• For secondary sources, only give the secondary source in the references list. In the text, name the original work, and use "as cited in" to give a parenthetical citation for the secondary source which you will then give in your reference list (cf., The OWL at Purdue).
• For the preparation of the list of references in your manuscript, see the next section or our APA Editorial Style guide (or The OWL at Purdue).
• Have your manuscript proofread by a native speaker of American or British English; correct all typos and grammar/usage issues before submitting your manuscript to IJLS.
• In your submission packet, in addition to the 'manuscript' file, also enclose a separate Microsoft Word 'Title Page' file in which you disclose the full names (indicate which is the given name and which the surname), affiliations (department and school included), full mailing addresses, academic email addresses, and (cell)phone and fax numbers of all of the contributing authors to the manuscript. Your 'title page' file should also contain a short vita for each author (i.e., for each contributor, provide a brief biodata of about 90 words listing main interests and research areas). For co-authored manuscripts, also include a short paragraph of Authors' Statement in which you tell us clearly which sections of the submitted manuscript have been written by which of you (e.g., The authors discussed and conceived the article together. In particular, the Dr X is responsible for §1, §2, §3, and §4.1, and Dr Y for §4.2, §4.2.1, §4.2.2, §4.2.3, and §5.). Moreover, if there is any acknowledgment, please include it in this file, NOT in the 'manuscript' file. Make sure you have named the right organizations as your and your co-authors' affiliations--please see our FAQ page.
• Also prepare and enclose a 'Cover Letter' in which you attest to ALL of the author duties described HERE.
• Enclose the 'Title Page', the 'Manuscript', the 'Cover Letter', and all the other important supplementary files in just ONE email message addressed to IJLS (and also CCed to the editor in chief).

 

Reference List Preparation

Closely follow APA Editorial Style throughout your list of references. There should be a one-to-one correspondence between the sources cited/quoted and the ones referenced. List the sources first alphabetically by author last names (from A to Z) and then chronologically (from past to present) for more sources by the same author. More than one reference from the same author(s) in the same year must be identified--based on the alphabetical sorting of the titles of the works--by the letters 'a', 'b', 'c', etc., placed after the year of publication. Follow these examples (Note the use of commas, italics, capitalization, type of publication, sorting, etc.): [For a comprehensive guide, please see The OWL at Purdue]

Note: If available, APA 7 requires a DOI for all works that have one — whether print or digital. If a print work does not have a DOI do not include it in the reference citation.

Journal Articles:	Brown, J. D. (2013). My twenty-five years of cloze testing research: So what? International Journal of Language Studies, 7(1), 1-32. http://ijls.net/sample/71-1.pdf (or DOI, if available, instead of URL)
Article in Magazine:	Peterzell, J. (1990, April). Better late than never. Time, 135(17), 20–21.
Chapters:	Salmani Nodoushan, M. A. (2016). Rituals of death as staged communicative acts and pragmemes. In A. Capone & J. L. Mey (Eds.), Interdisciplinary studies in pragmatics, culture and society (pp. 925-959). Springer.
Book Reviews:	Salmani Nodoushan, M. A. (2015). Book review [Review of the book Networked learning: An educational paradigm for the age of digital networks, by C. Jones]. British Journal of Educational Technology, 46(6), E31-E32.
	Baumeister, R. F. (1993). Exposing the self-knowledge myth [Review of the book The self-knower: A hero under control, by R. A. Wicklund & M. Eckert]. Contemporary Psychology, 38(5), 466-467.
Books:	Wilson, D., & Sperber, D. (2012). Meaning and relevance. Cambridge University Press.
Book Editions:	Helfer, M. E., Kempe, R. S., & Krugman, R. D. (1997). The battered child (5th ed.). University of Chicago Press.
Edited Books:	Duncan, G. J., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (Eds.). (1997). Consequences of growing up poor. Russell Sage Foundation.
3-20 Authors: (Name all and use & before last author's name)	Hudson, T., Detmer, E., & Brown, J. D. (1995). Developing prototypic measures of cross-cultural pragmatics. National Foreign Languages Resource Center.
21+ Authors: (Name the first 19 authors, . . . the last author); don't use &.	Pegion, K., Kirtman, B. P., Becker, E., Collins, D. C., LaJoie, E., Burgman, R., Bell, R., DelSole, R., Min, D., Zhu, Y., Li, W., Sinsky, E., Guan, H., Gottschalck, J., Metzger, E. J., Barton, N. P., Achuthavarier, D., Marshak, J., Koster, R., . . . Kim, H. (2019). The subseasonal experiment (SubX): A multimodel subseasonal prediction experiment. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 100(10), 2043-2061. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-18-0270.1
Theses:	Salmani Nodoushan, M. A. (1995). A sociopragmatic comparative study of ostensible invitations in English and Farsi [Unpublished Master's Thesis]. University of Isfahan.
Dissertations:	Salmani Nodoushan, M. A. (2002). Text-familiarity, reading tasks and ESP test performance: A study on Iranian LEP and Non-LEP university students [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Tehran.
Reports/Corpora:	United States Government Accountability Office. (2019). Performance and accountability report: Fiscal year 2019. https://www.gao.gov/assets/710/702715.pdf
Proceedings:	Huang, S., Pierce, R., & Stamey, J. (Eds.). (2006). Proceedings of the 24th annual ACM international conference on the design of communication. ACM Digital Library. https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1166324&picked=prox
Multiple Works, Same Author:	Brown, J. D. (1983a). A closer look at cloze: Validity and reliability. In J. W. Oller, Jr. (Ed.), Issues in language testing research (pp. 237-250). Newbury House.
	Brown, J. D. (1983b). An exploration of morpheme group interactions. In K. Bailey, M. H. Long & S. Peck (Eds.), Second language acquisition studies (pp. 25-40). Newbury House.
	Salmani Nodoushan, M. A., & Mohiyedin Ghomshei, G. R. (2014). Iconicity of cohesion in Persian causative constructions. Linguistik Online, 68, 29-42. DOI: https://doi.org/10.13092/lo.68.1637
	Salmani Nodoushan, M. A., & Montazeran, H. (2012). The book review genre: A structural move analysis. International Journal of Language Studies, 6(1), 1-30.

 

Word Limit

Manuscripts sent to IJLS should not exceed the following word limits, although the editor(s) will retain discretion to publish papers beyond in length in cases where the clear and concise expression of the scientific content requires greater length.

• 7,000 - 8,000 words for full-length research papers (excluding references, tables, figures & Appendices)
• 5,000 - 7,000 words for conceptual/state-of-the-art/transfer papers
• 3,000 - 4,000 words for forum papers (i.e., Responses to published articles)
• 1,500 - 2,000 words for book reviews

 

Forum and Book Reviews

Responses to published articles are welcome for the Forum section of the journal. Forum pieces are usually reviewed by the Editor in Chief (or commissioned to another board member) and are not sent for external review. Items for the Forum section are normally no longer than 3,000 to 4,000 words. The journal also publishes reviews of books relevant to the field of Applied Linguistics. Acceptable book reviews are normally no longer than 1,500 to 2,000 words. Unsolicited book reviews are not accepted for publication. If you would like to review a book for IJLS, or submit a forum piece, please contact the Editor in Chief.

 

Where to Submit

Please submit your complete submission packet to ijls.editors@yahoo.com and CC the editor at dr.nodoushan@gmail.com.

 

What if revision is required?

In most cases, IJLS reviewers may recommend that authors revise their manuscripts and send their revisions to IJLS for further processing. In such cases, authors may want to accept some of the comments and suggestions that have been made by the reviewers, and at the same time refute some others. IJLS fully understands that, after all, authors have worked on their papers for a long time, and that they may see points which may go unnoticed by reviewers. It is, therefore, strongly recommended that authors send in a 'rebuttal' note (in the form of a Microsoft Word *.doc or *.docx file) in which they respond to all the comments and suggestions made by the reviewers in an item-by-item fashion. They should clearly show which comments and suggestions they accept, and which comments and suggestions they refute. Where a comment or suggestion is refuted, the author is expected to provide the reason why.

 

What happens after a manuscript is accepted?

Once a manuscript is accepted for publication, a PDF proof will be sent to the corresponding author for final brush up. Corrected proofs must be returned to IJLS within 48 hours of receipt (along with the completed-and-signed Copyright Form). Corresponding authors are expected to contact their co-authors and base the modifications on their comments and points as well. After the corresponding author has sent the corrected proofs to IJLS, no further modification is possible.

• Co-authors should notice that IJLS will not respond to their demands directly, and that they should only work with the corresponding co-author of their manuscripts.
• If corresponding authors do not return their corrections to the journal within 48 hours of the receipt of page proofs, the journal will proceed with the publication of the editor's version of their manuscripts.

Note: When a co-authored manuscript is based on a supervised project (such as a master’s thesis or a PhD dissertation), the page proof of the accepted manuscript will ONLY be sent to the supervisor of the project to check and return to IJLS within 48 hours.

 

Will authors receive off-print copies of their published articles?

No; currently authors whose papers are published in this journal do not receive print copies of the journal or offprints of their published papers. They only receive a PDF copy through email. Print-on-Demand (PoD) copies are available for purchase only from Lulu Press Inc.

IMPORTANT NOTICE:

To join in the fight against climate change and global warming, we have stopped the just-in-case print version of the journal beginning with Volume 14, Number 3. Nevertheless, published authors (and interested readers) may request to receive--free of any charge--the digital-print-ready inside and the cover art of each journal issue which they can then deliver to the nearest digital-print shop in their neighborhoods and have the journal issue published in just-in-time digital-print-on-demand crown-quarto-size perfect-bound print format. We hope this small step can save at least some trees and help to fight climate change.

 

Is there any author fee?

No; currently authors do not pay any author fees to get their manuscripts reviewed by IJLS.

 

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