ALJ

Notes to contributors

The Editor welcomes inquiries from prospective authors, and these notes are intended to give some guidance to anyone who would like to submit.

Manuscripts should not exceed 5 000 words. They should be submitted to the Editor electronically, preferably by email attachment.

Authors should indicate their position, email and postal addresses, and employing institution if applicable. A brief abstract (up to 300 words, preferably structured in format) should accompany all articles.

All submissions should contain 'Implications for best practice' - up to six points which summarise the article's findings in a way which is accessible to practitioners. These should highlight the implications for evidence-based policy and/or practice.

The best guide to current ALJ style is the material appearing in the journal itself.

Footnotes are not acceptable. Explanatory and supplementary material should appear in the text or be omitted; it should not appear in the references. As an Australian scholarly journal, ALJ follows the usage of The Macquarie Dictionary and the Chicago manual of style: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html.

Some simple stylistic requirements:

• no double spaces between a full stop and the following sentence
• contractions do not need a full stop following as in Dr or vol
• abbreviations are rarely written - do not use don't
• acronyms are written without full stops, for example RSPCA, ACT
• avoid double paragraph returns
• do not underline for emphasis - use italics
• use single quotes ('...') throughout except for embedded quotes [that is, quotes within quotes]

All substantial articles offered to ALJ go through a double-blind peer review process.

To allow enough time for the peer review processes and authors' revisions, these copy deadlines are intended as a general guide - 1st November, 1st February, 1st May, 1st August for issues 1, 2, 3 and 4 of the year.