Submission Guidelines

• Online Submissions
• Author Guidelines
• Book Review Submissions
• Submission Preparation Checklist
• AI Guidelines
• Funding
• Copyright Notice
• Fair Use

Online Submissions

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Author Guidelines

To submit a paper, you need to log in to our site, which requires you to be registered. If you are not registered, please complete the form on our registration page (which will log you in after it is submitted). If you are registered, please go to the paper submission page (which will ask you to log in if you are not already logged in).

• The submission must default to the 7th edition of the APA style guide. For example, Alvarez, A. (1970). The savage god: A study of suicide. New York, NY: Random House. Natarajan, R., & Chaturvedi, R. (1983). Geology of the Indian Ocean. Hartford, CT: University of Hartford Press. Maddux, K. (1997, March). True stories of the Internet patrol. NetGuide Magazine, 12(2), 88-92. Please note that it is our house preference to include a city and state or city and country (international publishers) for all publishers.
• Research articles should range between 6,000 and 8,900 words (all-inclusive). Papers must NOT exceed 8,900 words.
• Features, papers that are along the lines of opinion or op-ed pieces, should range between 3,500 and 6,000 words.
• Forum essays should range between 1,500 to 3,000 words. Forums are effectively considered Special Sections in several key respects. Thus, production costs for Special Sections and Forums will need to be subsidized by guest editors. Special Sections and Forums that may not be fully funded will be considered in light of IJoC's budgetary status at the time of submission. To inquire about or to submit a proposal for a Special Section or Forum, please contact Chi Zhang, Managing Editor, Special Sections, at [email protected].
• The submission can include files such as graphs, pictures, images, or video and audio files to be stored on IJoC server. Graphics should be in JPEG, GIF, PNG, or TIFF format. Audio segments should be in MP3, or AIFF, WAV (Windows Audio Wave) format. Video segments should be in Quicktime, MPEG, AVI (Video for Windows), or WMV (Windows Media Video) format. Other audio and video file formats may be acceptable; but please check with us before uploading them to confirm their compatibility with our software and our conversion programs. We encourage authors to obtain appropriate permissions to use materials originally produced by others, and require that any permission letters be provided.
• An abstract and keywords are required for an article submission. Please be sure to complete the text box for an abstract in the submission's metadata section.
• If you are requested by the Editor to submit revisions for review, you can upload a revised version to the system.
• This journal uses double-blind review, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process. To facilitate this, authors need to ensure that their manuscripts are prepared in a way that does not give away their identities. (Referees are not compensated for their reviews of submissions.)
• Please see the Submission Preparation List for specific guidelines.

Book Review Guidelines

The following are some guidelines for a book review essay. Your book review should concern only the book(s) that you’re reviewing with a word count of about 1,500 words (including the references). It should provide IJoC readers an engaging, informative and critical discussion of the work.

The review should also consider:

• The intended audience for the book and those who would find it useful
• The main objectives of the book and how effectively these are accomplished
• The context or impetus for the book (e.g., political controversy, review research, policy, theory, etc.)
• A comparison of other works on this subject
• Constructive comments about the strengths and weaknesses of the book
• See any IJoC book review by Oliver Boyd-Barrett as an example.

Please lead your essay with the following listing:

• Author(s) or editor(s) first and last name(s) and please indicate if it is an edited book
• Title of book
• Publisher's city and state and name of publisher
• Year of publication
• Price (please indicate paperback or hard cover)
• Total # of page expressed as XXX pp.
• Image of the book cover (200 pixels wide at a resolution of 72 dpi)

Under this listing, please include your information:

• Your first and last name
• Institution affiliation

Style Guidelines

• All references should follow APA (7th edition) formatting.
• Roman, 12 point
• Spacing: Multiple 1.3
• Margins: 1.7 top and bottom; 1.25 left and right sides
• All reviews should be submitted with American English spelling, rather than British English.
• The International Journal of Communication is a multi-disciplinary journal, thus authors must communicate to a wide audience rather than just those within their own field. Language must, therefore, be direct and void of unnecessary jargon and technical terms. Please use the active voice as much as possible. Submission Guidelines to the IJoC System
• Submit your book review by registering as an author at ijoc.org and follow the submission process to submit your essay.
• Only one submission per book reviewer is allowed at a time.
• Multiple reviewers are allowed only by pre-authorization from the IJoC Managing Editor, Special Sections, who also manages book reviews.

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions that do not adhere to these guidelines may be returned to authors.

1. The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for publication consideration (or an explanation has been provided in "Comments to the Editor").
   
   
2. The submission file is in Microsoft Word and should not exceed 8,900 words (all-inclusive). IJoC regularly checks submissions for plagiarism through iThenticate.
   
   
3. All URL addresses in the text (e.g., https://ijoc.org) are deactivated.
   
   
4. The text is double-spaced; uses a 12-point font (Times Roman preferred); employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate reference points, rather than at the end of the article.
   
   
5. The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.
   
   
6. The text has had the authors' names removed. If an author is cited, "Author" and year are used in the references and footnotes, instead of author's name, paper title, etc. The author's name has also been removed from the document's Properties, which in Microsoft Word is found in the File menu.

   Ensure that your submission is anonymized (including in "Properties). To anonymize your manuscript for double blind peer review, follow these instructions.

   Ensure there is no author information in the metadata of any of the files submitted (e.g., in Word; in Adobe). Remove acknowledgments, grant funding, or other author-related information from the manuscript. Check the figures for appearance of any author names.

   When referring to your own work within the paper, consider the likelihood of someone being able to identify you from the citation. Reduce that possibility by:

   a) Avoiding the first-person in association with any citation (e.g., replace “As we have shown (Jones, 2012) …” with “As Jones (2012) has shown…”).

   b) Remove references to your own unpublished/in press work except where essential; where such work is cited, delete the author’s name (i.e., cite as “Author, forthcoming”) and remove from the reference list.

   c) Avoid references that by implication identify the author (e.g., delete “This work is part of a larger grant project; Ibrahim, 2013, 2014”).

   d) Avoid excessive self-citation—typically, articles citing “Ramirez (2004, 2005, 2007, 2012, 2014) …” are by Ramirez!

   e) More generally, use common sense. Consider whether your writing has the potential to identify you to a reader who is an expert in the field; if it does, think about sensible ways to reduce that possibility.
   
   

7. Research articles should range between 6,000 - 8,900 words (including the abstract, images with captions, footnotes, references, and appendices, if any - ALL INCLUSIVE). Book reviews should range between 1,200 - 1,500 words. Feature articles, which are along the lines of opinion or op-ed pieces, should range between 3,500 - 6,000 words. Forum essays should range between 1,500 to 3,000 words (considered as part of Special Sections, only).
   
   
8. Ensure that the author's name has also been removed from the document's Properties, which is found in the Microsoft Word File menu. SEE #6.
   
   
9. Any endnotes should be converted to footnotes.
   
   
10. Authors must include their profile, including affiliation and position, when completing the bio information.
    
    
11. All articles should include an abstract of no more than 150 words and keywords.
    
    
12. All articles must follow the 7th edition of the APA style guide (Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association).
    
    
13. All articles must include a references list at the conclusion of their manuscript that conforms to the 7th edition of APA style.
    
    
14. If applicable, articles should include statements on funding, conflict(s) of interests, and Institutional Review Board (IRB)/ethics approval. Please add a footnote to the title page.
    
    
15. All spellings must be rendered in American English. To change British or Commonwealth spellings to their American equivalents, please see the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary.
    
    
16. Only one submission by an author will be considered at a time.
    
    
17. Articles and features are double-blind reviewed and therefore these papers must be anonymized. This journal uses double-blind review, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process. To facilitate this, authors need to ensure that their manuscripts are prepared in a way that does not give away their identities.

AI Guidelines

IJoC limits authors’ use of AI technologies in preparing their manuscripts to correcting language to improve clarity. Authors should disclose such AI use by adding a footnote to the title pages of their submissions. In addition, IJoC prohibits reviewers from using AI technologies to prepare reviews.

Funding

Authors should disclose all funding sources on the title page of their document. This should be included as a footnote after one of the authors’ names, as well as in the Supporting Agencies field in the metadata. Please redact or anonymize this for new submissions and reinstate it for final/accepted versions.