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Perspectives on Early Childhood Psychology and Education

Authors of Final Manuscripts Responsibilities

The final draft of the manuscript should be no longer than 30 pages including title page, abstract, keywords, impact statement, manuscript, references, tables, etc. Authors may submit supplemental materials for the online version of the publication; this includes tables, appendices, etc.

Final manuscripts should follow APA formal writing guidelines. Manuscripts should be typed on standard-sized pages (8.5" x 11") with 1" margins on all sides. Writing should be done in sans serif font like 11-point Arial or serif font like 12-point Times or Times New Roman and double-spaced. A page header, including your paper title and the page number, should be included.

Reference lists should also follow APA guidelines. A hanging indentation of one-half inch from the left margin should be used. An example reference follows: Soto, C. J., & John, O. P. (2017). The next big five inventory (BFI-2): Developing and assessing a hierarchical model with 15 facets to enhance bandwidth, fidelity, and predictive power. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(1), 117-143. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000096

Final Manuscript Preparation Guidelines for Perspectives on Early Childhood Psychology and Education

This document provides details on typesetting and layout requirements pertaining to final publisher manuscript preparation to Perspectives on Early Childhood Psychology and Education.

Formatting Requirements

  • Do not include a title page or abstract upon initial submission. Do begin the final accepted document with a title page, and include the abstract.
  • Do not include page numbers, headers, or footers. These will be added by the editors.
  • The article must be in English (unless the journal expressly permits non-English submissions for a special issue).
  • Submit your manuscript, including tables, figures, appendices, etc., as a single file (Word, RTF, or PDF files are accepted).
  • Page size should be 8.5 x 11-inches.
  • Font:
    1. Main Body—12 pt. Times or the closest comparable font available
    2. Footnotes—10 pt. Times or the closest comparable font available
  • If figures are included, use high-resolution figures, preferably encoded as encapsulated PostScript (eps).
  • Copyedit your manuscript.
  • When possible, there should be no pages where more than a quarter of the page is empty space.

Additional Recommendations

Indenting, Line Spacing, and Justification

Indent all paragraphs except those following a section heading. An indent should be at least 2 em-spaces.

Do not insert extra space between paragraphs of text with the exception of long quotations, theorems, propositions, special remarks, etc. These should be set off from the surrounding text by additional space above and below.

Don't "widow" or "orphan" text (i.e., ending a page with the first line of a paragraph or beginning a page with the last line of a paragraph).

All text should be left-justified (i.e., flush with the left margin—except where indented). Where possible, it should also be right-justified (i.e., flush with the right margin). "Where possible" refers to the quality of the justification. For example, LaTeX and TeX do an excellent job of justifying text. Word does a reasonable job. But some word processors do a lousy job (e.g., they achieve right justification by inserting too much white space within and between words). We prefer flush right margins. However, it is better to have jagged right margins than to have flush right margins with awkward intra- and inter-word spacing. Make your decision on whichever looks best.

Language & Grammar

All submissions must be in English.

Authors should use standard English grammar. The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White (now in its fourth edition) is the "standard" guide, but other excellent guides (e.g., The Chicago Manual of Style, University of Chicago Press) exist as well.

Colored text

Set the font color to black for the majority of the text. We encourage authors to take advantage of the ability to use color in the production of figures, maps, etc., however, you need to appreciate that this will cause some of your readers problems when they print the document on a black & white printer. For this reason, you are advised to avoid the use of colors in situations where their translation to black and white would render the material illegible or incomprehensible.

Please ensure that there are no colored mark-ups or comments in the final version, unless they are meant to be part of the final text. (You may need to "accept all changes" in track changes or set your document to "normal" in final markup.)

Emphasized text

Whenever possible use italics to indicate text you wish to emphasize rather than underlining it. The use of color to emphasize text is discouraged.

Font faces

Except, possibly, where special symbols are needed, use Times or the closest comparable font available. If you desire a second font, for instance for headings, use a sans serif font (e.g., Arial or Computer Modern Sans Serif).

Font size

The main body of text should be set in 12pt. Avoid the use of fonts smaller than 6pt anywhere in the document or figures.

Non-English terms

Whenever possible, non-English terms should be set in italics rather than underlined.

Headings

Headings (e.g., start of sections) should be distinguished from the main body text by their fonts or by using small caps. Use the same font face for all headings and indicate the hierarchy by reducing the font size. There should be space above and below headings.

Main text

The font for the main body of text must be black and, if at all possible, in Times or closest comparable font available.

Titles

Whenever possible, titles of books, movies, etc., should be set in italics rather than underlined.

Footnotes

Footnotes should appear at the bottom of the page on which they are referenced rather than at the end of the paper. Footnotes should be in 10 pt. Times or closest comparable font available, they should be single spaced, and there should be a footnote separator rule (line). Footnote numbers or symbols in the text must follow, rather than precede, punctuation. Excessively long footnotes are probably better handled in an appendix. All footnotes should be left and right-justified (i.e., flush with the right margin), unless this creates awkward spacing.

Tables and Figures

To the extent possible, tables and figures should appear in the document near where they are referenced in the text. Large tables or figures should be put on pages by themselves. Avoid the use of overly small type in tables. In no case should tables or figures be in a separate document or file. All tables and figures must fit within 1" margins on all sides (top, bottom, left and right) in both portrait and landscape view.

Mathematics

Roman letters used in mathematical expressions as variables should be italicized. Roman letters used as part of multi-letter function names should not be italicized. Whenever possible, subscripts and superscripts should be a smaller font size than the main text.

Short mathematical expressions should be typed inline. Longer expressions should appear as display math. Also expressions using many different levels (e.g., such as the fractions) should be set as display math. Important definitions or concepts can also be set off as display math.

Equations should be numbered sequentially. Whether equation numbers are on the right or left is the choice of the author(s). However, you are expected to be consistent in this.

Symbols and notation in unusual fonts should be avoided. This will not only enhance the clarity of the manuscript, but it will also help insure that it displays correctly on the reader's screen and prints correctly on her printer. When proofing your document under PDF pay particular attention to the rendering of the mathematics, especially symbols and notation drawn from other than standard fonts.

References

It is the author's obligation to provide complete references with the necessary information. References should appear right after the end of the document, beginning on the last page if possible. Each reference should give the last names of all the authors, their first initials, and their middle initials.

The information to be given with each citation in the references is as follows:

Articles in traditional journals:

Required: Author's (authors') name(s), title of article, name of journal, year of publication (or "n.d." if no date), volume number, page numbers.

If available: issue number and month/season of publication. For forthcoming (in press) articles, put expected year of publication and substitute "forthcoming" for the volume and page numbers. DOIs when available should be included.

If available: A hyperlink to the article.

Books:

Required: Author's (authors') name(s), title of book, year of publication (or "n.d." if no date), publisher, publisher's address, edition (if not first). For forthcoming (in press) books, put expected year of publication and add "forthcoming."

Chapters in collections or anthologies:

Required: Name(s) of author(s) of chapter, name(s) of editor(s) of book, title of chapter, title of book, year of publication (or "n.d." if no date), publisher, publisher's address, and edition (if not first). For forthcoming (in press) books, put expected year of publication and add "forthcoming."

Working papers:

Required: Author's (authors') name(s), title of working paper, year (or "n.d." if no date), location (e.g., "Department of Economics Working Paper, University of California, Berkeley" or "Author's web site: http://www.someurl.edu/author." If the working paper is part of series, then the series name and the number of the working paper within the series must also be given.

Other works:

Required: Author's (authors') name(s), title of work, year (or "n.d." if no date), and information about how the reader could obtain a copy.

Within the references section, APA guidelines should be followed. All authors' names should be inverted and first and middle names should be written as initials. Please provide the last name and first/middle initials for all authors of a reference up to and including 20 authors. All authors should be separated by a comma and a ampersand (&) should be placed before the last author. Reference lists should be alphabetized by the last name of the first author of each reference. Provide the full name of academic journal titles in your reference. An example is as follows:

Nguyen, T., Carnevale, J. J., Scholer, A. A., Miele, D. B., & Fujita, K. (2019). Metamotivational knowledge of the role of high-level and low-level construal in goal-relevant task performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 117(5), 879-899.

Use hanging indents for citations (i.e., the first line of the citation should be flush with the left margin and all other lines should be indented from the left margin by a set amount). Citations should be double-spaced.

Within the text of your manuscript, the APA system should be followed as well. When work comes from one author your in-text citation should be structured like one of the following:

(Ahmed, 2016)

As Ahmed (2016) stated...

For work by two authors, your in-text citation should be structured as follows:

(Wegner & Petty, 1994)

As found by Wegner and Petty (1994)...

For work by three or more authors, your in-text citations should appear as follows:

(Kernis et al., 1993)

Kernis et al. (1993) found...

When an organization is the author, the in-text citation should appear as follows:

According to the American Psychological Association (2000),...