AMERICAN JOURNAL OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

Author Guidelines

Manuscript Submission Guidelines: American Journal of Qualitative Research (AJQR)

Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of the American Journal of Qualitative Research will be reviewed.

As part of the submission process, you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights to the work, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you.

Supplemental Material

American Journal of Qualitative Research adheres to the APA reference style (7th edition). Please review the APA style to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.

  • Manuscripts submitted for review are expected to be free from language errors and must be written and formatted strictly by following the latest edition of the  APA style.
  • Online submission of manuscripts is mandatory for all types of paper.
  • Manuscripts must be in Microsoft Word format only.
  • If you are comfortable using templates (strongly recommended), use the following link for the manuscript template before your submission.  

    https://www.ajqr.org/files/208/ajqr-word-template.docx

  • If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the APA output file here.

Reference Style

Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using AJQR Language Services.

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.

  1. 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).
  2. The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
  3. Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
  4. Submissions to the journal should be submitted with double-space in Times New Roman font, 12-point type, formatted as 8.5” x 11” pages with (Top:2,5 cm, Bottom:2 cm,  Left:2,5 cm,  Right:2,5 cm) margins on all sides. Authors should include appropriately formatted subheadings at reasonable intervals. Pages should be numbered consecutively. All abbreviations should be spelt out on their first use except for commonly-known abbreviations. For Research Articles, the total length should typically be 6,000 to 10,000 words (excluded tables, figures, and references). For Notes from the Field, the total length should typically be 2,000 to 3,000 words. For Book Reviews, the total length should typically be 1,500 to 2,500 words.  All illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
  5. All submissions must include an abstract of 150-300 words and 3-6 keywords. These should be included in the manuscript file in APA 7 style.
  6. Manuscripts submitted for review must be anonymized, which means authors will need to remove all potentially identifying information. Outside of the separate title page file mentioned above, submitted finals should not identify the authors, their affiliations, their funding sources, or other information that might identify authors. Authors should also anonymize any self-citations in the manuscript following APA style requirements. Self-citations only need to be anonymized if it might be apparent to reviewers that it is a self-citation.
  7. The reference list should only include sources cited in the manuscript, and all sources cited in the manuscript must be included in the reference list. All references should include digital object identifiers (DOI) when possible, and all references must comply with APA style, 7th edition.
  8. Tables and figures may be included in APA style, 7th edition formatting.
  9. All manuscripts must be submitted in English.
  10. Authors who wish to include copyrighted material must submit documentation of permission to use copyrighted materials.
  11. If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.

Alert: Starting in 2020, the American Journal of Qualitative Research will transition to the APA 7th edition style guide for publications and will expect that at least one author has an ORCID iD.

ORCID iDs: All published articles must include an ORCID iD for at least one author, preferably the first author (see APA 7 ed. Section 2.7). The open researcher and contributor identifier (ORCID) is a free, 16-digit, linkable, persistent digital identifier (iD) that helps keep individual researchers distinguished from one another, especially other researchers who may have the same name. Authors may want to read What is ORCID before registering for one.

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