Guidelines

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES FOR CONTRIBUTORS

to the Australian Review of Applied Linguistics

General

ARAL now follows "Your Paper Your Way"

We now differentiate between the requirements for new and revised submissions. If this is the first time submitting your paper, you do not need to follow the official ARAL formatting instructions. You may choose to submit your manuscript as a single Word or PDF file to be used in the initial refereeing process, with only minimal expectations for formatting (your paper must still follow the style of a general academic paper, including appropriate citation, paragraphing and headings).

Only if/when your paper is invited to be revised following initial review will you be requested to put your paper in to a 'correct format' for acceptance (following the official ARAL style guide below) and provide all additional items required for the publication of your article.

Declaration of generative AI for ARAL submissions

The named authors of any contribution to ARAL are ultimately responsible and accountable for the contents of the work as specified below. Any ideas presented should be original. ARAL reserves the right to reject any submission where there is evidence that AI-technologies have been used in inappropriate ways in the creation of the manuscript. The guidance we offer only refers to the writing process, and not to the use of AI tools to analyse and draw insights from data as part of the research process.

Using the statement below, authors should disclose in the manuscript they submit any use of AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process by following the instructions below. The author disclosure does not apply to the use of basic tools for checking grammar, spelling, references etc. If there is nothing to disclose, there is no need to add a statement.

AI and AI-assisted technologies should not be listed as an author or co-author, or be cited as an author. Authorship implies responsibilities and tasks that can only be attributed to and performed by humans. Where authors use generative artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process, authors should only use these technologies to improve readability and language use. Applying the technology should only be done with human oversight and control, and authors should carefully review and edit any AI or AI-assisted output, as AI is not to be considered as an author because it can generate authoritative-sounding output that can be incorrect, incomplete or biased.

AI disclosure instructions

Authors must disclose the use of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process by adding a statement at the end of their manuscript in the core manuscript file, before the References list. The statement should be placed in a new section:

Electronic files

Files. Contributions should be between 6000 - 8000 words for an article and 1500-2000 words for book reviews (inclusive of the references, tables and figures, captions, footnotes, and appendixes). They should be in English following the American Psychological Association (APA) style. Authors are expected to follow the layout and formatting guidelines specified below, and are advised to check their paper for grammatical and stylistic consistency in English before submission.

Please take care that you supply all the files, text as well as graphic files, used in the creation of the manuscript, and be sure to submit the final version of the manuscript. And please delete any personal comments so that these will not mistakenly be typeset and check that all files are readable.

File naming conventions. When naming your file please use the following convention: use the first three characters of the first author’s last name; if that name is Johnson, the file should be named JOH.DOC, JOH.WP5, etc. Do not use the three character extension for things other than the identification of the file type (not JOH.ART, JOH.REV). Figures can be named as follows JOH1.EPS, JOH2.TIF, JOH3.XLS, etc.

Software. Word (PC/Mac) is preferred. If you intend to use other word processing software, please contact the editors first.

Graphic files: Please supply figures as Encapsulated Postscript (EPS) or Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) conversion in addition to the original creation files.

For graphics that are not available in digital format, such as photographs, spectrographs, etc., please provide sharp and clear prints (not photocopies) in black & white.

Structure

When preparing your manuscript, please order the sections in the following way: title, author’s name and affiliation (only in the accepted final draft), abstract, keywords, numbered sections and subsections, funding information (see the explanation below), acknowledgements (see the explanation below), reference list, appendixes.

The ARAL journal provides a vibrant platform to address and discuss current issues in Applied Linguistics. Understanding that our contributors are also readers of ARAL, we encourage authors, where appropriate, to consider and engage with the academic discussion from previously published ARAL papers.

Statement on the use of AI
If relevant. See above.

Funding information
If you received funding through a grant for the research that is discussed in the article, provide details on this, including funder name and grant number in a separate section called “Funding information” before (an Acknowledgment section and) the References.

Acknowledgments
Please add any acknowledgments (other than funding information, see above) in a separate, unnumbered section entitled “Acknowledgments”, placed before the References section.

Lay-out (if you paper is accepted revisions only)

In order to facilitate smooth production, it is important that you follow the journal’s style for consistency. In this respect we advise you to make use of our electronic styles in addition to these guidelines.

Do not add running heads, implement full justification or hyphenation, or the exact margin settings as used by Benjamins in printing. It is sufficient to characterize elements such as examples, quotations, tables, headings etc. in the formatting in a clear and consistent way, so that they can be identified and formatted in the style of the journal.

Formatting that should be supplied by you is the formatting of references (see below) and font enhancements (such as italics, bold, caps, small caps, etc.) in the text.

Whatever formatting or style conventions are employed, please be consistent.

Tables and figures. All tables, trees and figures must fit within the following page size (if necessary, after – limited – reduction) and should still be legible at this size:

11.5 cm (4.52”) x 19 cm (7.48”).

Suggested font setting for tables: Times Roman 10 pts (absolute minimum: 8 pts).

Tables and figures should be numbered consecutively, provided with appropriate captions and should be referred to in the main text in this manner, e.g., “in Table 2”, but never like this “in the following table: “. Please indicate the preferred position of the table or figure in the text if these are provided at the end of the paper or in separate files.

Running heads. Please do not include running heads with your article. However, in case of a long title please suggest a short one for the running head (max. 55 characters) on the cover sheet of your contribution.

Emphasis and foreign words. Use italics for foreign language, highlighting and emphasis. Bold should be used only for highlighting within italics and for headings. Please refrain from the use of FULL CAPS (except for focal stress and abbreviations) and underlining (except for highlighting within examples, as an alternative for boldface), unless this is a strict convention in your field of research. For terms or expressions (e.g., ‘context of situation’) please use single quotes. For glosses of citation forms, use double quotes.

Transliteration. Please transliterate into English any examples from languages that use a non-Latin script, using the appropriate transliteration system (ISO or LOC).

Symbols and special characters. In case you have no access to certain characters, we advise you to use a clear convention to mark these characters. You can use our font table (Appendix A) or any other regular table to list the correspondences between your symbols and the required ones. If you use any phonetic characters, please mark these by the use of a character style if possible. This will enable us to retrieve those characters in your document.

Chapters and headings. Chapters or articles should be reasonably divided into sections and, if necessary, into sub-sections. If you cannot use the electronic styles, please mark the headings as follows:
Level 1       =   bold, 2 line spaces before, section number flush left. Text 1 line space below.
Level 2        =   1 line space before, section number flush left. Text 1 line space below.
Level 3ff      =   italics, 1 line space before, section number flush left. Text immediately below.
Numbering should be in arabic numerals; no italics; no dot after the last number, except for level 1 headings.

Quotations: In the main text quotations should be given in double quotation marks. Quotations longer than 3 lines should be indented left and right, without quotations marks and with the appropriate reference to the source. They should be set off from the main text by a line of space above and below.

Listings: Should not be indented. If numbered, please number as follows:
1. ..................... or a. .......................
2. ..................... or b. .......................
Listings that run on with the main text can be numbered in parentheses: (1).............., (2)............., etc.

Examples and glosses

Examples should be numbered with Arabic numerals (1,2,3, etc.) in parentheses.

Examples in languages other than the language in which your contribution is written should be in italics with an approximate translatio. Between the original and the translation, glosses can be added. This interlinear gloss gets no punctuation and no highlighting. For the abbreviations in the interlinear gloss, CAPS or small caps can be used, which will be converted to small caps by our typesetters in final formatting.

Please note that lines 1 and 2 are lined up through the use of spaces: it is essential that the number of elements in lines 1 and 2 match. If two words in the example correspond to one word in the gloss use a full stop to glue the two together (2a). Morphemes are separated by hyphens (1, 2b).

Every next level in the example gets one indent/tab.

              (1)         Kare wa    besutoseraa  o          takusan kaite-iru.        
                            he     TOP best-seller     ACC    many     write-PERF    
                            “He has written many best-sellers.”     

              (2)         a.           Jan houdt.van Marie.
                                          Jan loves         Marie
                                          “Jan loves Marie.”
                            b.           Ed en    Floor   gaan samen-wonen.
                                          Ed and Floor   go      together-live.INF
                                          “Ed and Floor are going to live together.”

Notes

Notes should be kept to a minimum and should be submitted as numbered endnotes.

***Note: footnote indicators in the text should appear at the end of sentences and follow punctuation marks.

References

It is essential that the references are formatted to the specifications given in these guidelines, as these cannot be formatted automatically. Please use the reference style as described in The APA Publication Manual (7th ed.).

Authors/contributors are encouraged to supply – with a reference, not instead of – the DOI if they happen to have that information readily available.

DOIs should be formatted the same as URLs.

https://doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2018.1560449

URLs should not be preceded by “Retrieved from,” unless a retrieval date is needed. The website name is included (unless it is the same as the author), and web page titles are italicized.

The publisher location should not be included in the reference.

References in the text: These should be as precise as possible, giving page references where necessary; for example (Fillmore 1990; Clahsen 1991: 252-253) or, as in Brown et al. (1991: 252). All references in the text should appear in the references section.

References section: References should be listed first alphabetically and then chronologically. The section should include all (and only!) references that are actually mentioned in the text.

Examples

Book:

Görlach, M. (2003). English words abroad. John Benjamins.
Spear, N. E., & Miller, R. R. (Eds.). (1981). Information processing in animals: Memory mechanisms. Lawrence Erlbaum.

Article (in book):

Adams, C. A., & Dickinson, A. (1981). Actions and habits: Variation in associative representation during instrumental learning. In N. E. Spear & R. R. Miller (Eds.), Information processing in animals: Memory mechanisms (pp. 143-186). Erlbaum.

Article (in journal):

Claes, J., & Ortiz López, L. A. (2011). Restricciones pragmáticas y sociales en la expresión de futuridad en el español de Puerto Rico [Pragmatic and social restrictions in the expression of the future in Puerto Rican Spanish]. Spanish in Context, 8, 50–72.
Rayson, P., Leech, G. N., & Hodges, M. (1997). Social differentiation in the use of English vocabulary: Some analyses of the conversational component of the British National Corpus. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 2(1), 120–132.

Additional Style Guidance

Please use in-text citations, numbered endnotes, and Reference list of the works cited.

1.  Please do not justify the right margin of your manuscript or the electronic version on disk.  Leave a ragged right margin.

2.  Please double space everything, including quotations and footnotes.

3.  Please use American spellings and punctuation, including:

• spellings in -ize, -or, etc.
• punctuation that includes a comma before and or or in a series of 3 items (e.g. lexis, morphology, and syntax)
• commas to set off any preceding dependent clause of a complex sentence or to divide a compound sentence
• double quotes to enclose a quotation and single quotes to indicate a quote within a quote;
• end quotes after punctuation (i.e., “to be done.”)
• comma after i.e. and e.g.
• do not punctuate lists

4.  Miscellaneous

• indicate a new paragraph with a single tab (except for the first paragraph of the section and after the indented quote)
• set off any introductory phrase of five words or more with a comma, e.g. “Toward the end of World War II,...”
• dates should be of the form “15 December 1998”
• decades should be of the form “the 1980s”
• spell out centuries, e.g., “eighteenth century”
• use “and” in place of “&”, “see” in place of “cf.”, and “for example” in place of “e.g.” in text outside brackets
• use minimal capitalization, e.g., “translation studies”, “the Roman Catholic church”;
• use minimal hyphenization, e.g., “postcolonial”
• possessives of names ending in “s” should take the form of “Yeats's”
• please avoid inappropriately gendered language, finding locutions as well that avoid awkward forms like “his/her” whenever possible

Appendixes

Appendixes should follow the References section.

Review and publication process

If the manuscript is a good fit for the journal and meets all the submission requirements, it is then sent out to the reviewers.

NOTE: Until acceptance, please ensure that every time you submit your manuscript (including revisions), it is anonymised to allow for blind review. If any names of the authors are mentioned anywhere in the text or reference list, please replace those with “Author.” Please keep the year of publication, but all other elements of the reference, including co-authors, should be omitted.

Please allow at least 3 months for each round of peer review.

Accepted papers follow the pipeline for publication: copyediting, typesetting, proofs by the author and the editor, and publication OnlineFirst. The papers that have been published online are later assigned to an issue.

Submission checklist upon acceptance

When submitting the final version of your accepted manuscript, in addition to following the guidelines above, please be sure that you also include:

• a one-paragraph abstract of your article
• a list of approximately five keywords to aid in searching and indexing
• a short (2-3 sentence) professional profile
• an affiliation, mailing address, and email of all authors.

Proofing procedure

The first author of a contribution will receive a PDF of first proofs of the article for correction via email and will be requested to return the corrections to the journal editor within 7 days of receipt. Acrobat Reader can be downloaded for free from www.adobe.com, which will enable you to read and print the file. Please limit corrections to the essential. Please make sure that all your changes are visible by using sticky note comments, ‘highlight’ and ‘insert’ functions, but not altering the pdf itself. It is at the publisher’s discretion not to implement substantial textual changes or to charge the author. If it is absolutely necessary to change larger chunks of text (i.e., more than just a few words), it is best to submit the changes in a separate WORD document (with identical PDF).

Please contact the journal editor if you cannot handle proofs for your article in electronic format (i.e., receive the proofs as a PDF-attachment at your email address).

Book Reviews

Book review maximum length is 1500 -2000 words, including references (no more than 4 references). The review should integrate both critical review of the book and cogent evaluation of chapter contents using reader-friendly language. While the review should be logically presented, avoid using formulaic structure that is bland and mechanic. Rather, consider organically structuring the review with compelling statements, supported by interesting observations and discerning views that can appeal to a wider readership of ARAL.

Both solicited and unsolicited reviews are welcome. However, if you would like to submit an unsolicited book review, please contact the book review editor to discuss your expression of interest (EOI) first and provide a statement about your academic background, expertise on the reviewed topic, and experience in research publishing. Postgraduate students in PhD or MPhil programs should also provide a statement of support from a supervisor or an academic mentor in their EOI before proceeding with their unsolicited reviews.

Including third party materials

If any third-party material is included in your tables and figures, please obtain necessary permissions from the copyright owners and include those with your submission or email them to araleditorgmail.com. The caption should include a full reference to the original source:

Figure/Table 1. Caption. Reprinted from/Adapted from “article/book title” by A. Author, year of publication, Journal Title, volume(issue), p. xx. Copyright [year] by Elsevier. Reprinted with permission from Publisher

All editorial correspondence should be sent to:

araleditorgmail.com