What to prepare before submitting?

• Check for Article Processing Charges (APC). Often a journal will require authors pay a fee to make published works freely available in open access. Check if your department or university has a fund to assist with these charges.
• Read the submission guidelines. This will ensure that you have the correct formatting and citation style. Some journals will be forgiving. Others will use a lack of adherence to guidelines as a reason for not considering your submission.
• Submit a proposal or full paper. Does the journal ask for a proposal or a full paper for the initial submission?
• Create an abstract. If the abstract is not requested in the submission form, include it in the paper itself unless otherwise instructed. The Purdue Online Writing Lab (Purdue OWL) has resources about how to write an abstract.
• Prepare common submission elements. These include the name of all authors contributing to the paper, author emails, article title, and keywords. Keywords will assist in the discovery of your work in search engines.
• Avoid personally identifying information. If the paper is being submitted to a standard blind peer-reviewer journal, then exclude all personally identifying information from your paper.
• Make your article accessible. Even if a journal does not require ADA compliance, you should always make sure your work is accessible to screen readers. Confer with your university’s accessibility center for guidance.
• Set up an OrCiD ID. An ORCiD ID is often requested in journal submissions and ensures your research outputs and activities are correctly attributed to you.