Submissions

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Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
  • Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
  • The text is double-spaced; uses 12-point Times New Roman font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.
  • If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions on Ensuring an Anonymous Review have been followed.
  • To comply with the terms of the publisher's Crossref membership, Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) must be included with references when they are available. To check for DOIs, you can use the Simple Text Query on the Crossref website. By checking the box, you assert that you have included DOIs where applicable.
  • It is the responsibility of the lead author of any manuscript to obtain any and all necessary permissions for copywrite material which is utilised (refer to Copywrite Notice)
  • Submissions should include, on a separate page, the following:
    a title (and if necessary a sub-title) for the manuscript
    • an abstract of between 200 and 300 words
    • five key words
    • ORCD id for each contributing author
    • Author(s) name(s), institution/affiliation, and a brief biography of between 40 and 60 words
  • All figures, charts, graphs, and images include alt text.

Author Guidelines

IJRC welcomes submissions by academics and practitioners alike who are involved in the study of rural criminology or with responses to rural crime. Prospective authors should contact the editors of IJRC concerning any questions about types of submissions for publication in the journal.

Submissions should be provided in Microsoft Word, double-spaced, with 1 inch (2.54cm) margins, left justification only, and no headers or footers. Endnotes should be appropriately numbered in the text using the ‘insert endnote’ functionality of Microsoft Word, with each notation placed at the end of the narrative. Citations and references should follow the formatting style of the American Psychological Association (APA 7). Articles should use American Psychological Association (APA) 7 style guide.

Alternative text, also called "alt text" must be included for all images, charts, graphs, and figures. Alt text should be limited to 150 characters, and can be added to Word documents easily. Alt text should:

  • Be descriptive and concise: Describe the image clearly but keep it brief. A few words to a short sentence for a simple image or illustration is ideal, and one to two sentences is appropriate for more detailed graphs and charts. See examples below.
  • Add context: Include information that conveys the image's purpose and relevance within the article. Avoid simply describing what the image looks like.
  • Avoid redundancy: Do not start with phrases like "image of" or "picture of." Avoid repeating any information that is used in the figure caption or text. Screen readers will announce the figure as an image, then read the alt text, and then read the figure caption, and the user will ideally be able to gather the information of the whole image from all three elements.
  • Include relevant information: If the image contains relevant text, include it in the alt text.

Examples: We have included two generic cases in which an author would need to provide alt-text.

  • Photograph/illustration: Describe what is shown. (Examples: A woman smiling with short brown hair and glasses from the shoulders up. OR A dog sits on the foreground with a sign that reads “No loitering” with a forest in the background.)
  • Graph/diagram: Say what kind of graph or diagram is being shown (if applicable) and describe what is being measured/compared. Reminder, if the details of the graph/diagram are already described in the figure caption, it doesn’t necessarily have to be repeated in the alt-text. (Examples: A bar graph titled “Average cats per city” comparing the number of cats per household on the y-axis and the names of different cities on the x-axis. The cities include Columbus, Phoenix, Toronto, and Sacramento.)

Please contact the editors for questions about formatting and referencing style. A submission preparation checklist is offered below.

Articles

Full-length manuscripts focused on rural criminological theory and research are generally in the range of 6,000-10,000 words inclusive of references, tables, figures and appendices.

Research Notes

Shorter-length manuscripts of between 3,000 and 6,000 words (inclusive of references, tables, figures and appendices) are generally more narrow in focus or report preliminary findings of research and emergent theoretical discussions about matters associated with rural criminology.

Policy and Practice: Notes from the Field

Manuscripts of between 3,000 and 8,000 words (inclusive of references, tables, figures and appendices) are generally focused on crime reduction strategies and criminal justice policies for rural places. Manuscripts about the challenges of rural criminological research are also welcomed. Here, we also actively encourage practical insights from those outside of academia on innovations planned or being deployed to address rural offending and victimisation.

Reviews

Like articles, submissions of reviews for publication in IJRC are of two types. First, there are reviews of between 1,000 and 3,000 words for a single book or other scholarly work. Second, reviews of two or more books or other multiple scholarly works are permissible so long as there is an explicit theme which unites the narrative. Reviews of multiple works should range between 3,000 and 7,000 words. Reviews of conferences, films, television documentaries and other sources about the context of rural crime, crime prevention and criminal justice policy are likewise eligible for publication in IJRC.

Special Issues

In addition to ongoing regular issues, the IJRC is planning to publish a special themed issue each year.

We are open to any imaginative proposals, which could be (but not limited to):

  • theoretical, empirical or a combination of both
  • qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods or a combination of all
  • themed around geographic locations – broadly (e.g. Asia; the South Pacific) or specifically (e.g. boom towns; tourist locations)
  • focussed on particular demographics (e.g. hobby farmers, tourists); on victims (e.g. people with disabilities), on offenders (e.g. farmers as offenders), on criminal justice institutions and processes (e.g. access to justice), on certain crime types (e.g. burglary; elder abuse; alcohol and other drugs); on rural criminology itself (e.g. teaching at University level; research methods) and so on

Proposals should seek to incorporate a variety of ‘voices’ and perspectives, such as by including practitioners, early career researchers and higher degree students.

Special issue editors will be provided with substantial support – and mentoring as required – as they bring their issue together through the various stages from conception, to peer-review, copy editing and production.

Proposals should contain the following:

  • An abstract for the special issue of 500 words which articulates the theme
  • A brief biography and CV for special issue editors
  • An indication of the anticipated number of articles, research notes and note from the field which might be contained in the special issue
  • An anticipated/preferred timeline – e.g. when, ideally, you might release the call for papers, collect abstracts/manuscripts, and a suggested month and year for publication (turnaround from agreement on a special issue to its publication will be in the order of 12-18 months)

Special issues are normally edited by one or two editors for a special issue: please consult with the IJRC editors about additional special issue editors.

This information should be emailed to Joe Donnermeyer: donnermeyer.1@gmail.com

Creative and other scholarly works

This section allows for contributions which are of a more creative nature which might not fit in any of the other sections. Here you can think about photo essays, other forms of visual criminology, items that are teaching-related and so on. Images must be in .png or .jpg format and accompanied by a caption that describes the image in detail. All materials, including images, submitted must be in compliance with IJRC’s Copyright Notice. It is expected that submissions in this section will be between 1000 and 3000 words including image descriptions. Submissions in this section must conform with the aims and scope of the IJRC – that is, they must have a distinctly rural criminological focus. Submissions in this section will be editor-reviewed, either by the Journal’s editors and/or members of the Editorial Advisory Board.

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