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Submission guidelines

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On this webpage

Scope

This page deals with material that is submitted formally to ASO.

Some parts of the website allow Contributors to add comments informally. In those situations you should observe the various requirements of our Standards for Authors.

Who can submit material to ASO?

Anyone who wants to a make scholarly contribution to the Alexander Technique. You don't need to be a qualified teacher or one of our official Contributors. However, if your material meets our standards, then we would normally invite you to become a Contributor.

What type of material can be submitted?

There are four main categories of material:

  1. original material (previously unpublished) where ASO is to be the eventual publisher;
  2. important material that has been published previously elsewhere but is hard to obtain and that ASO is now going to republish it;
  3. original material (previously unpublished) where the eventual publisher has not yet been decided;
  4. formal comments and reviews on material that ASO is making available to Contributors for the purpose of review or comment  (see the pages on Peer and Community Review and Community and open commentary for further information about these processes).

Material in the first two categories will normally be published by ASO in the form of PDF documents. Thus at some point in the process we will become concerned with the finer points of layout and formatting.

Material that is not going to be published in "print format" will exist in a simpler, online format.  Not only are we less concerned with the finer points of layout and format, we would actually find it difficult to accommodate  more sophisticated features. 

Within each category, there are many types of material that can be accepted for publication, review or commentary, such as book reviews, original research, contributions to Alexander theory, letters to the editor.

How to submit your material

All submissions should be sent to the Editor (email editor@alexanderstudies.org) in the first instance, specifying clearly:

  • the title of the material
  • the nature of the material
  • the purpose for which it has been submitted

The designated format of submissions from authors depends on the purpose for which the material is submitted, for example whether it is submitted for peer review or for (online) community review or comment.

References and footnotes

Whatever the type and category of your submission, please make sure that

  • there are working links to any end-notes;
  • all citations and references are accurate and complete.

Submitted for community review, community commentary or open commentary

All the above processes involve material being posted on the ASO website in a way that restricts access to our designated Contributors only.  The material may be copied off and printed out by a Contributor but no special provision is made for this (i.e. ASO does not provide a version specially formatted for print): the emphasis is on the online version with the inevitable constraints that are involved.

For ease of uploading to the online area by the editorial team, all such material should normally be submitted as Microsoft Word documents with minimal formatting. However,

  • we require the use of the MS Word endnote system for any endnotes, as we can automatically convert these to html links
  • heading styles, bold, italic and underline may be used
  • bullets and numbering and tables may be used but if the layout is particularly complicated (e.g. multiple levels of automatic numbering) we may ask you to provide a version in a simplified format

Most other formatting will be stripped out before any text is uploaded and then simple formatting re-applied to the online version.

If you are submitting a Target Article (i.e. the subject of any online commentary or review) then we welcome the paragraphs (not including quotes) being numbered sequentially to facilitate comments. See here for an example:

Any multi-media material submitted will be treated as sui generis and dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

The guidelines above apply both to "target articles" and to the submissions that are provided as reviews or comments on target articles.

Submitted for peer review

Peer review is never conducted on-line. Copy should be submitted as a Word document which may be as close to the proposed final version as possible. (Where material is in rough draft format the appropriate avenue for feedback would normally be via community review).

Submitted for republication or for final publication by ASO

In many cases, the material may already have been submitted for comment or review, possibly in a simpler format suitable for display directly on the website. Moving from online to print, the material would ideally be provided: 

  • with all essential formatting in place
  • without footnotes (use end-notes instead for most purposes)
  • in a simple single-column or double-column format

Most of the work involved in republication centres around end-note/citations/references, so just re-iterate that we appreciate it if you provide these in as complete a state as possible and with dynamic links to end-notes.

With most commercial publishing ventures, the more sophisticated formatting for print is carried out by the journal. Dependent as we are on volunteer input, we would benefit greatly if this work could be taken on by the original author(s) or by barefoot copy editors looking to build up experience, or of a particularly generous disposition.

House style and style guides

We would like authors to format documents for publication in the house style, which might best be done using templates provided by ASO.  The library of templates is under construction and no doubt will develop on a just-in-time basis, as the need for different formats arises.

In the meantime, when material is intended for eventual publication by ASO please contact the editors about the preferred style and we will work with you to arrive at the best results.

Copy-editing

Material published by ASO will be checked and copy-edited as necessary by ASO editors prior to final publication.