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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, or RTF document file format.
  • Where available, URLs or DOI for the references have been provided.
  • The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point 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 submission is an article for peer review, that the manuscript is below 7000 words before references and appendices.
  • If submission is a letter to the editors and so is not for peer review, that the manuscript is below 2000 words before references.
  • If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.

Author Guidelines

Referencing Style.

We prefer submissions to use either a) the American Psychiatric Association (APA) style of referencing or b) the Harvard style of referencing. This is to reflect wider practice in autism studies and academic publishing. All papers must include accurate citations and a reference list in either APA or Harvard format, providing sufficient information to identify the source paper referred to.

Autism Terminology.

We do not seek to impose restrictions on the use of autism terminology. However, we prefer submissions to use identity first language ('autistic person') to reflect the wishes of the autistic community (Kenny et al., 2016; Sinclair, [1999] 2013).

We do not impose either 'person first' or 'autism first' language, because some people in the autism community prefer one style and some prefer the other. However, it is essential for the language adopted in a journal read by autistic people and those who work with autistic people to be respectful to the autistic community.

Word Limits.

If a submission is an article for peer review, the word count cannot be higher than 7000 words. This limit does not include references and appendices. Submissions over this limit will not be accepted.

If a submission is a letter to the editors and is not for peer review, that the word count is below 2000 words. This limit does not include references. Submissions over this limit will not be accepted. 

Ensuring Blind Review.

To ensure the integrity of the blind peer-review of submissions to this journal, every effort should be made to prevent the identities of the authors and reviewers from being known to each other. This involves the authors, editors, and reviewers (who upload documents as part of their review) checking to see if the following steps have been taken with regards to the text and the file properties:

The authors of the document have deleted their names from the text, with "Author" and year used in the references and footnotes, instead of the authors' name, article title, etc.

With Microsoft Office documents, author identification should also be removed from the properties for the file by clicking on the following options found under File on the main menu of the Microsoft application: File > Save As > Tools (or Options if using a Mac) > Security > Remove personal information from file properties on save > Save.

With PDFs, the authors' names should also be removed from Document Properties found under File on Adobe Acrobat's main menu.

References.

Kenny, L., Hattersley, C., Molins, B., Buckley, C., Povey, C., & Pellicano, E. (2016). Which terms should be used to describe autism? Perspectives from the UK autism community. Autism, 20(4), 442–462.

Sinclair, J. [(1999) 2013]. Why I dislike “Person First” language. Autonomy, the Critical Journal of Interdisciplinary Autism Studies. 1(2).

Copyright Notice

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual  arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's  published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional  repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its  initial publication in this journal.
  3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online  (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and  during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges,  as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

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