Instructions for Manuscript Submission
Authors should submit original manuscripts through ScholarOne. New users will be required to create an account. Manuscripts under review at the High School Journal cannot be under consideration or review for publication elsewhere.
Length
Scholarly research should aim to be no more than 8,000 words in length, excluding references.
Practitioner commentaries should be no longer than 2,000 words in length.
Format
Out of consideration for authors’ time, the High School Journal accepts initial submissions formatted with in-line citations and bibliographies in the authors’ preferred citation format (e.g. APA, Chicago, etc.).
If, after review and revision, a manuscript is accepted for publication, the author will be expected to submit the final version formatted according to the most recent edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA).
Language
Manuscripts should be written in plain English, with enough detail that the work can be broadly understood by the Journal’s diverse readership.
Blinding
Manuscripts submitted for peer review should not identify any author of the work. This does not mean all self-references must be blinded, but that they should be blinded in cases where the text specifically indicates authorship.
For example, if an author named Amy Johnson cites herself in the following context, blinding is not necessary: “High schools are an important venue for adolescent development (Johnson, 2022).
The following scenario also does not require blinding: “Johnson (2022) demonstrated that high school students experience high levels of anxiety during exams.”
However, she should blind any self-reference in scenarios such as: “I use a survey instrument I designed and validated in previous work (Johnson, 2022).” In this case, the first-person reference reveals the author, so the self-citation should be replaced with “Author” and the publication year, as in: “I use a survey instrument I designed and validated in previous work (Author, 2022).”
Abstract and keywords
Along with your manuscript you will submit a short summary of the work in no more than 200 words, as well as a list of suggested keywords. These elements are particularly important in the selection of reviewers, and to help others find your work after publication.
Review Process
All submissions will be screened for scope and quality by an Editor. Manuscripts that do not fit the Journal’s aims, or of a quality that is unlikely to meet the Journal’s standards will be desk-rejected.
All manuscripts that pass this initial screen will advance to double-blind peer review. Our commitment to training doctoral students means that one review will come from a current doctoral student from our Student Editorial Board, and two will come from external reviewers with a doctoral degree. All reviews will be considered when making decisions about the final disposition of a manuscript. Our aim is to send authors an initial decision on their manuscript as expediently as possible.