Submissions

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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 may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines below.

  • Your paper must be formatted using the MJLA template.
  • To guarantee the blind review process, you should follow the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review to anonymise your paper.

Author Guidelines

Dates: 

MJLA submissions open: 15 October 2023.

MJLA submissions close: 29 January 2024.

The MJLA accepts all types of papers written at UCM or for any external courses, as long as they fall within an interdisciplinary framework. We also encourage submission of book/art/article reviews such as those written for the courses ‘The Presence of Art’ and ‘Deep Reading’. Capstone and MARBLE projects may be submitted as well, with modifications. If you would like to submit an ARIE (Internship) paper, please get in touch with us via email.

All authors must be enrolled as undergraduates during the time that the research was conducted. Authors will be able to submit their work for one calendar year after their graduation. 

Please include explicit mention in your paper of how it fits within an interdisciplinary framework. An interdisciplinary perspective is achievable in a variety of ways. Papers can address questions from the perspectives of multiple disciplines and defend a well-considered, integrated viewpoint incorporating the relevant disciplines. However, interdisciplinarity can also be achieved by explaining the implications of a mono-disciplinary paper for debates in other disciplines or even why such papers are interesting for people working in other disciplines. What matters is that one addresses an audience that does not consist only of people familiar with only one discipline, but rather of academically engaged individuals with a variety of intellectual backgrounds.

  • Grade: the grade obtained must be of 8 or higher. 
  • Wordcount: the word count must be between 2500 and 4000 words (excluding references in the reference list). Capstone/Marble/ Ethnography/ external semester-long projects may be up to 5000 words in length, and the word count for book/art/article reviews is 1500-3000 words. 
  • Anonymity: Please ensure anonymity by removing your name and ID number from all pages and by following the ‘Ensuring a Blind Review’ guidelines to be found on the website.
  • Up to two works are permitted for submission per student for each cycle of submission.

Paper specifics:

  • Please include the name of your course coordinator and your tutor.
  • Ethics authorization: If applicable, please include an ethics authorization form as a separate document at the time of submission of your Manuscript. Ethics authorizations are mandatory for any paper that involves confidential data collection.
    • Retroactive submissions of ethical authorisations will not be possible/permitted!
  • Abstract: Make sure that each submission includes an abstract which ranges from 100 to 150 words. 
    • The abstract should be interesting, readable with varied sentence structure, and be written in active voice. Avoid using technical terms that few readers are likely to understand. If using technical terms, include definitions.
    • Please upload the abstract separately from the paper as part of step 3 of the submission process.
  • Keywords: Please include 4-6 keywords (which will help with digital indexing).
  • Guidance on Keywords: 
    • Keywords can cover broad or niche topics and could be based on the following: topic, title, methodology, theory utilised, disciplines etc.
  • Figures and equations
    • Do not include more than 5 figures or tables in your paper. 
    • Images and figures must be in grayscale. 
    • All figures must be correctly referenced in the APA-style
    • Permission for all figures must be obtained from the original author before submission
    • Figure legends should be marked clearly with their corresponding letters. Legends should contain sufficient detail to permit figure interpretation without reference to the text.
    • Quality of the images must be 1200 dpi for line art, 600 for grayscale. Accepted formats are JPEG, PNG and Word. 
    • Please ensure that all equations are editable. 
  • Use APA-style (7th edition) referencing.
    • Footnotes: APA-style referencing does not allow footnotes. 
    • End notes are not permitted.

Exceptional submissions:

The MJLA is also now accepting opinion pieces that are written outside of your courses. Opinion pieces are those which do not include new research data and do not fall under the ‘literature review’ category. Authors should provide a balanced overview of different opinions in the field and make it clear where they are expressing their own personal views and why. Because of the variability of opinion articles, the format is flexible. It is crucial, however, to provide an abstract, and the paper should be concise, well-structured and clear, with the traditional introduction, main body and conclusion sections. Please ensure that your opinions and statements are backed up by supporting information and references. 

Personal reflection articles are only accepted where a strong link with academic research is made. For other topics, please approach ‘The Bell’ for publishing there. 

  • Word Count: 500 - 1000 words 
  • Include a short bio 
  • Remember to be respectful of opposing views!

Submit the paper as a .doc or .docx document, not as a PDF.

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