Guidance on submitting to the AHEAD Journal

Writing for the AHEAD Journal

The Journal is published by AHEAD from its office in Dublin as an electronic publication, housed in a dedicated section on the AHEAD website. There will be no paper copies of the publication. The Journal Editor is Barbara Waters, and sub editor is Lorraine Gallagher. We are happy to answer any questions, please contact the sub editor Lorraine lorraine.gallagher@ahead.ie.  AHEAD has appointed an editorial panel who may advise on the range of content and practice included.

Articles are invited with a word length of 1500 – 2500 words. Shorter articles of c. 900 words are also invited. From time to time longer articles based on recent research, up to 3500 words, can be considered. Topics can include any area of practice in further and higher education which relates to the support, progression and achievement of students with disabilities; transition to employment, vocational and professional training and employment; reasonable accommodations and other areas of equality legislation. Please contact the sub editor Lorraine Gallagher lorraine.gallagher@ahead.ie if you are unsure if your topic might be relevant. Submissions from current or past students with disabilities are particularly welcome.

Submissions should be submitted electronically in MS Word in a standard Ariel font pt 12 and in double spacing, aligned left. Tables may be inserted but please leave out line boxes, although you may indicate text which should be highlighted, for example, by being placed in a box.

Illustrations and photographs are welcome and will be used subject to space. These should be submitted in jpeg format. Please include ALT text for all images.  Where individuals and children are identified please enclose details of permissions you have obtained.

As the AHEAD Journal is now housed in its own dedicated section on the AHEAD website, authors have the option to include embeddable content within articles. For example, video, vlogs and podcasts can be included as articles, subject to the Editor’s review and compatibility with the AHEAD Journal platform. This content must be hosted on a platform which allows AHEAD to embed the video, for example YouTube.  If your video is not already hosted on a platform such as YouTube we can host your video file and transcript on the AHEAD YouTube channel.

Please note, if submitting complementary video or sound files, closed captions or subtitles with voiceover/narration must be included. It must be format ready.

If you would like to include your Twitter handle AHEAD will be embed it directly into your article. This means readers can see it, follow you on Twitter and have the option to contact you directly.  If you do not wish for us to share this information then please do not provide your Twitter information.

Submissions should be in English and authors are advised to take note of helpful guidance on plain English. Final submissions should be emailed as Word attachments to lorraine.gallagher@ahead.ie.

All views expressed in this online publication are the views of the author and are not

necessarily endorsed by AHEAD, and while the purpose of the journal is to disseminate helpful practice we do not accept direct marketing or advertising of products or services from private enterprise. Where a reference has been included it has been as part of a project or research, but is not an endorsement of a product or service from AHEAD.

AHEAD will not be liable to you in respect of any loss or corruption of any data, database or software.

Editing

Articles may be subject to copy editing for grammar, style, and format by AHEAD. A brief style guide is given at the end.

The AHEAD Journal will have ISSN status and each edition will be numbered.

Copyright

Authors

Authors are asked to grant to AHEAD the irrevocable right to publish electronically and/or in hard copy any material submitted and to confirm that they are the copyright holder, and that any material submitted will not infringe third party intellectual property rights.

Readers

The AHEAD Journal will be publicly available and copyright will be held by AHEAD.  However, with prior permission from AHEAD, information from articles may be used elsewhere provided full acknowledgement is given, including the AHEAD Journal number and date, title of the article and the author.

Books for Review

AHEAD welcomes Review copies of books, and will assign a member of the Board, the Editorial Panel or other member, according to the topic, to write a review of the book and how it will help members and others in their work with students with disabilities.  

Style guide including accessibility recommendations – Important!

Footnotes

Do not use footnotes. Referencing should be limited to statistics and direct quotes. When citing statistics or a publication include (name, date) in the text at the appropriate point and   make sure that a full reference is available at the end of the document. Online resources should either have a hyperlink or direct link to the organisation and page.

Acronyms

Please spell out acronyms at the first time used.

Bullets

If a bullet is a full sentence or multiple sentences, it should start with a capital letter and end with a full stop. In other cases neither initial capitals nor final punctuation should be used. For example

• short recommendations
• things to consider
• other lists

Abbreviations

Do not use full stops for abbreviations – preferred example   Dr , Prof

Please try to avoid contractions such as eg, use ‘example’. Please avoid i.e. and etc.

Equality-related language

Never use ‘persons’. Use ‘people’.

Disability

• person with ….
• disabled/blind/deaf  people
• a wheelchair user

not

• suffering from/victim of
• the disabled/blind/deaf
• someone who is in a wheelchair or wheelchair-bound

Quotes

Use ‘single quote’ marks