IJ-SoTL: Note to Authors

Collecting all of the information from you, your articles, your bios, supporting documents, and ultimately making it available on the Web requires a lot of focus on details. In an effort to insure that all information is correct, we ask you to look through your information that is posted on our Current Issues page. Let us know if you find problems with your manuscript, bios, contact information, formatting, broken links, or technical problems with the site in general. Please read about some known issues that are listed below.

Contributors Who Are Submitting for the First Time

If this is the first time you are submitting a manuscript to IJ-SoTL, please read through the rest of this page.

Reporting Problems

If you find a problem, please notify Stacy Kluge at the Center for Teaching, Learning & Scholarship via email: skluge@georgiasouthern.edu.

Word Processing

Articles, essays, book reviews, and readers' responses are submitted to us as Microsoft Word documents. We realize that everyone does not use the same word processor. For example, Microsoft Word and Corel Word Perfect are two popular processors, but there are others. Not only are there different word processors, but there are different versions of the processors for both PC and Macintosh platforms. These differences will sometimes cause formatting problems. For example, if an article is typed in Corel Word Perfect, and then saved as an MS Word document, the document can be opened in any MS Word software; however, this frequently introduces technical problems (formatting, bullet styles changing, images shifting, etc.). We do our best to overcome these issues to render the document as close to your expectations as possible, but there may be something we miss. If you find major discrepancies in the information or documents we post to the Web, we will work with you to resolve them.

Links and PDFs

We convert all documents to PDFs so that our audience can open them using Adobe Acrobat Reader. This conversion process also introduces technical errors. One of the major problems with this conversion process is that embedded links (URLs) cease to work. Examples follow.

Embedded link:

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Full URL:

http://www.georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl/index.htm

Though either of these will work in an MS Word document, when converted to PDF, the embedded link ceases to work. We recommend that you not use embedded links in your texts. Instead, when you wish to refer to a Web resource, use the following convention.

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning <http://www.georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl/index.htm>

This will insure that the links work, and your readers will be able to see the link on printed paper. There is a way around this for us, but because of the number of articles, essays, and pages, it is very time consuming and possibly introduces even more errors.

Non-Text Objects

Some authors use "objects" in their documents. An object can be arrows, math formulas, images, etc. In the original document, the author achieves the look they desire. When we open certain documents, these objects sometimes shift or change. This frequently occurs when documents have been created in a different version of MS Word than ours or in a different word processor, etc. There are possible ways to prevent this difficulty.

Math Symbols & Formulas

Complex math symbols are problematic, especially if they are inserted into the document as an object from another program. If you are going to use complicated math symbols and formulas in your documents, you could convert them into an image, and then insert the image. Sometimes the math programs will do this for you, but if not, you could do a "screen shot" of the formula, crop it in an image editing program (Photoshop, Fireworks, Paint Shop Pro, others), and insert it into your document. If you don't know how to do screen shots or use image editing software, perhaps there is a tech-savvy person nearby who can help you.

Final Draft of Your Document - Insuring Integrity

The best possible way to insure that your document's integrity remains intact is for you to convert it to PDF in the program in which you created it. To do that, you would need Adobe Acrobat Professional. If you don't have Acrobat Professional, perhaps someone in your office or department does.

Follow these Guidelines:

The document must be accepted by IJ-SoTL with all revisions complete.
Convert the document to PDF.
Check all links to see if they work.
Check formatting.
Check objects/images for positioning, alignment, etc.

When you are pleased with the PDF, send it to Alan Altany (aaltany@georgiasouthern.edu), the IJ-SoTL editor. Please note in your email that you have chosen to submit the revised, accepted version of your manuscript as a PDF to avoid technical issues.