Submissions

Author Guidelines

The International Journal of Creativity Behind Bars (IJCI) welcomes a wide range of original submissions in English that focus on creativity in carceral facilities.

Solicited and contributed manuscripts for full articles must be double-spaced, a maximum of 8,000 words, not including references. Research notes are generally between 4,000 and 5,000 words and book reviews, 1,000 words. Perspectives manuscripts are about 1,500 words. Further guidelines can be found below.

Tips for determining contribution credit can be found here: https://credit.niso.org/

All manuscripts are submitted online via the website:

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Submission of an original manuscript to the Journal will be taken to mean that it represents original work not previously published, and that it is not being considered elsewhere for publication. Authors must take full responsibility for all figures, etc., and present them as camera-ready copy. The author(s) are responsible for obtaining permissions for the inclusion of any third-party material, including images, in the text.

There are no author processing charges to authors for submission or publishing.

Comments or queries should be submitted to johnrwhitman@mac.com.

Submissions

Go to the registration page to register as a user of the online system if you do not yet have a username and password. Ensure that you register as an “Author” when creating your account. Once you have an online account, login and click on the “Author” link. The “Author” page will include a link to begin the online submission process. When submitting online, please note that you need to click on “Save/Continue” at the bottom of each page in order to proceed to the next step in the submission process.

There are 5 steps to an online submission:

• In Step 1, please ensure that:
  • You select a section from the “Journal Section” menu.
  • You review, complete, and check off each item in the “Submission Checklist.”
• In Step 2, please ensure that:
  • You provide your personal information (name, email, etc.).
  • You provide the title of your article or reviewed book.
• In Step 3, please ensure that:
  • You upload a copy of your manuscript in Word (.doc/.docx) or RTF (.rtf) format
  • You upload a copy of your bio statement in Word (.doc/.docx) or RTF (.rtf) format
  • You remove all personal, identifying information from the submission file as per the provided instructions. Please note that this is not required for perspectives, creative work, or book reviews.
  • Do not include figures, tables, or images within your manuscript file. Instead, upload each separately in Step 4.
• In Step 4, upload all tables, figures, images, and supplementary files:
  • Tables should be saved and uploaded as separate Word (.doc/.docx) or RTF (.rtf) files
  • Ensure all personal, identifying information is removed from the supplementary files as per the provided instructions. Please note that this is not required for perspectives , creative work, or book reviews.
  • Figures and images should be saved and uploaded using high quality image formats: BMP, TIFF, EPS, JPEG (uncompressed); not GIF or compressed JPEG.
  • Audio and video files should be saved and uploaded using the MPEG format (MP3 for audio and MPEG for video).
• In Step 5, finish your submission by reviewing your submission details and confirming that your submission is complete.

Paper Abstracts

For each article the author must provide a 125-150 word abstract in English. These summaries should be placed immediately below the paper title, author and institutional affiliation. Each summary should be indented 2.5 cm (1/2") and double spaced.

Author Bio

The author(s) must supply a brief (25 word) bio giving name, rank, institution, institutional address, and email address. Author information and bio should be entered in Step 2 of the online submission process, and not as part of the submission file itself. For example: John R. Whitman is Executive Director of the Museum for Black Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 195 North Harbor Drive, 2405, Chicago, IL 60601, U.S.A., johnrwhitman@mac.com.

General Formatting

Authors are advised to follow the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA Manual, latest edition). A sample of the accepted format is provided as an outline.

Layout

• The text should be double-spaced.
• Start each paragraph at the margin (no tabs to indent first line). Place an extra blank line between paragraphs to separate.
• Dashes should be keyed in as double-hyphens with no space at either end. For example: word--word

Heading Styles

• First level headings: (Boldface, first word capitalized, justified at left margin, on a separate line)
• Second level headings: (Plain type, first word capitalized, justified at left margin, on a separate line)
• Third level headings: (Italic type, first word capitalized, justified at left margin, on a separate line)

Citations in the Text

• If the work has more than one author, give all the names the first time the work is referred to, then et al. thereafter.
• When titles of journals or books are mentioned, they should be italicized, not underlined.
• If the citation follows a quotation, place the parentheses after the quotation marks but before the end punctuation. For example: ''for the future of telecommunications'' (Smith, 1987, p. 42).

References

• Following the Notes, list only those works actually cited in the text.
• The heading for the references should be bold and left-justified, as References.
• Double space all entries.
• Begin each entry at the margin and indent the subsequent lines by 1/2 inch; i.e., hanging indent.
• Separate the main items in each entry by periods (i.e., name of author, title of book, etc.) Leave one space between a period and next part of the entry.
• Publication date should be in parentheses following author name. Title of book should be in italics and only the first word and first word after a colon should be capitalized (see examples above).
• For articles, the title should be in plain text, with only the first word capitalized; the title of the periodical or edited book should be in italics.
• For journals the volume number of the periodical volume is in italics, with the issue number in plain text and parentheses. Page numbers are given at the end of the reference but without the requirement for “page” or “p.” See examples below.
• The formats must be strictly adhered to in terms of punctuation and order of the items within each entry:
  - Book: Klein, Naomi. (2000). No logo: Taking aim at the brand bullies. New York, NY: Picador.
  - Article in a book: Garnham, Nicholas. (2004). The information society theory as ideology. In F. Webster (Ed.), The Information Society Reader (pp. 165-183). London, UK: Routledge.
  - Article in a journal: Aronczyk, Melissa. (2009). How to do things with brands: Uses of national identity. Canadian Journal of Communication, 34(2), 291-296.
  - Government document: Royal Commission on newspapers. (1981). Report. Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services Canada.
  - Website: Gurstein, Michael. (2000). Effective use: A community informatics strategy beyond the digitial divide. First Monday, 8(12). URL: http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue8_12/ gurstein/index.html [March 4, 2005].

Keyword index

• Authors should confine their selection to five keywords or less.

Use of Notes

• Footnotes are not used in this format; only endnotes are used.
• Do not use automatically formatted endnotes (automatically generated endnotes must be replaced manually prior to submission). Notes should appear at the end of the text and before the references (typed in a regular text). Endnote numbers in the text should be regular text formatted as eight-point superscript.
• Use of notes should be very sparing. They should be used only where additional explanations are absolutely necessary and cannot be incorporated in the text. Maximum: 10.
• Notes should be listed after the text and before the list of biographical references.
• The heading for the notes should be bold and left-justified, as Notes.

Perspectives Guidelines

This section provides a forum for issues and viewpoints to be shared by a greater diversity of voices from the field, including academics and practitioners. The length of Perspectives pieces should be around 1,500 words.

Research Note Guidelines

Research notes serve as incubators for new thinking. They introduce new research ideas, theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches, or preliminary results. These contributions can be conceptual in nature or based on the results of empirical studies.

At 4,000 to 5,000 words, research notes are shorter than research articles but still make a valuable contribution to the study of creativity in carceral facilities. These notes are peer-reviewed and subject to the same high standards as applied to research articles.

Book Review Guidelines

The book’s contents should be concisely stated. Most of the review should be dedicated to the assessment of the book’s strengths and weaknesses. Rather than listing in detail what is found in each of the chapters, the reviewer should emphasize what is most significant in the volume, the adequacy of the methods deployed, and the overall worth of the text. The issues addressed in the review could include some of the following:

* What are the origins of the text? How did it come to be produced?
* What is the book generally about? What is the intent of the author in writing the book (e.g., scholarship, policy making, evaluation, etc.)?
* What standpoint is taken (e.g., detached scholar, autobiographical, advocacy, etc.)?
* What is the line of argument, if any?
* What sort of evidence is used?
* How is the material organized and structured?
* To what extent does the author achieve his/her goals?
* Is the standpoint appropriate to the intentions and the subject matter?
* Do the steps in the argument follow logically?
* Are there hidden assumptions?
* Are the claims following from the argument well supported by evidence?
* Is the work generally persuasive? Why or why not?
* Is the work generally consistent (i.e., are there contradictions)?
* Is the work generally coherent (i.e., do the various parts complement one another and go together well)?
* Is the book well written?
* To what extent does the book make a contribution to our understanding of the particular area of communication in question?
* To whom (the readership) is the book addressed?

The length of the review should be around 1,000 words and it should be received before the agreed date with the book review editor.

Interested in having your book reviewed? Interested in doing a book review? Contact our Editor to send copies or to obtain a list of currently available titles. IJCI is interested in soliciting reviews from a wide variety of scholars, including students.