Guide for Authors
Assessing Writing is a refereed international journal providing a forum for ideas,
research and practice on the assessment of written language.
Assessing Writing publishes articles, book reviews, conference
reports, and academic exchanges concerning writing assessments of all kinds, including traditional ('direct' and standardised forms of)
testing writing, alternative performance assessments (such as portfolios), workplace sampling and classroom assessment. The journal focuses
on all stages of the writing assessment process, including needs evaluation, assessment creation, implementation, and validation, and
test development; it aims to value all perspectives on writing assessment as process, product and politics (test takers and raters; test
developers and agencies; educational administrations; and political motivations). The journal is interested in review essays of key issues
in the theory and practice of writing assessment.
Assessing Writing embraces internationalism and will attempt to reflect
the concerns of teachers, researchers and writing assessment specialists around the world, whatever their linguistic background. Articles
are published in English and normally relate to the assessment of English language writing, but articles in English about the assessment
of writing in languages other than English will be considered. While
Assessing Writing frequently publishes articles about the
assessment of writing in the fields of composition, writing across the curriculum, and TESOL (the teaching of English to speakers of
other languages), it welcomes articles about the assessment of writing in professional and academic areas outside these fields.
The
scope of the journal is wide, and embraces all work in the field at all age levels, in large-scale (international, national and state)
as well as classroom, educational and non-educational institutional contexts, writing and programme evaluation, writing and critical
literacy, and the role of technology in the assessment of writing. Through this scholarly exchange,
Assessing Writing contributes
to the development of excellence in the assessment of writing in all contexts, and, in so doing, to the teaching and appreciation of
writing.
Book Reviews
Books for review should be sent to the Book Reviews Editor: Deborah Crusan, c/o Christopher Tancock,
Social Science Journals, Elsevier Ltd., The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford, OX5 1GB, United Kingdom. Those with unsolicited
reviews or suggestions for books to review should contact the Book Review Editor at:
deborah.crusan@wright.edu
Contact details for submission
Authors are requested to submit their papers electronically by using the
Journal
of Second Language Writing online submission and review web site (
http://ees.elsevier.com/asw ). This site will guide
authors stepwise through the submission process. Authors are requested to submit the text, tables, and artwork in electronic form to
this address. Authors who are unable to provide an electronic version or have other circumstances that prevent online submission are
requested to contact the Editors prior to submission to discuss alternative options; email:
lizhl@hkucc.hku.hk. The Publisher
and Editors regret that they are not able to consider submissions that do not follow these procedures.
Ethics in publishing
For information on Ethics in publishing and Ethical guidelines
for journal publication see
http://www.elsevier.com/publishingethics and
http://www.elsevier.com/ethicalguidelines.
Conflict of interest
All authors are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including
any financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organizations within three years of beginning the submitted work
that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, their work. See also
http://www.elsevier.com/conflictsofinterest.
Submission declaration
An article submitted for review should not exceed 8,500 words (excluding tables), should
not have been published previously (except as an abstract or part of a published lecture or academic thesis) and should not be under
consideration for publication elsewhere. All contributors to the work and the responsible authorities where the work was carried out,
must agree to the submission of the article for review and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form without
the written consent of the Publisher.
Changes to authorship
This policy concerns the addition,
deletion, or rearrangement of author names in the authorship of accepted manuscripts:
Before the accepted manuscript is published
in an online issue: Requests to add or remove an author, or to rearrange the author names, must be sent to the Journal Manager from
the corresponding author of the accepted manuscript and must include: (a) the reason the name should be added or removed, or the author
names rearranged and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, fax, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement.
In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed. Requests that are not
sent by the corresponding author will be forwarded by the Journal Manager to the corresponding author, who must follow the procedure
as described above. Note that: (1) Journal Managers will inform the Journal Editors of any such requests and (2) publication of the accepted
manuscript in an online issue is suspended until authorship has been agreed.
After the accepted manuscript is published in an
online issue: Any requests to add, delete, or rearrange author names in an article published in an online issue will follow the
same policies as noted above and result in a corrigendum.
Copyright
Upon acceptance of an
article, authors will be asked to complete a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' (for more information on this and copyright see
http://www.elsevier.com/copyright).
Acceptance of the agreement will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. An e-mail will be sent to the corresponding
author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' form or a link to the online version of this
agreement.
Subscribers may reproduce tables of contents or prepare lists of articles including abstracts for internal circulation
within their institutions. Permission of the Publisher is required for resale or distribution outside the institution and for all other
derivative works, including compilations and translations (please consult
http://www.elsevier.com/permissions). If excerpts
from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s)
in the article. Elsevier has preprinted forms for use by authors in these cases: please consult
http://www.elsevier.com/permissions.
Retained author rights
As an author you (or your employer or institution) retain certain rights; for details
you are referred to:
http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.
Role of the funding source
You
are requested to identify who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article and to briefly
describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing
of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement then this
should be stated. Please see
http://www.elsevier.com/funding.
Funding body agreements and
policies
Elsevier has established agreements and developed policies to allow authors whose articles appear in journals
published by Elsevier, to comply with potential manuscript archiving requirements as specified as conditions of their grant awards. To
learn more about existing agreements and policies please visit
http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies.
Open access
This journal offers you the option of making your article freely available to all via the ScienceDirect
platform. To prevent any conflict of interest, you can only make this choice after receiving notification that your article has been
accepted for publication. The fee of $3,000 excludes taxes and other potential author fees such as color charges. In some cases, institutions
and funding bodies have entered into agreement with Elsevier to meet these fees on behalf of their authors. Details of these agreements
are available at
http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies. Authors of accepted articles, who wish to take advantage of this
option, should complete and submit the order form (available at
http://www.elsevier.com/locate/openaccessform.pdf). Whatever
access option you choose, you retain many rights as an author, including the right to post a revised personal version of your article
on your own website. More information can be found here:
http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.
Language
and language services
Please write your text in good English (American or British usage is accepted, but not a mixture
of these). Authors who require information about language editing and copyediting services pre- and post-submission please visit
http://webshop.elsevier.com/languageservices or our customer support
site at
http://support.elsevier.com
for more information.
Submission
Submission to this journal proceeds totally online and
you will be guided stepwise through the creation and uploading of your files. The system automatically converts source files to a single
PDF file of the article, which is used in the peer-review process. Please note that even though manuscript source files are converted
to PDF files at submission for the review process, these source files are needed for further processing after acceptance. All correspondence,
including notification of the Editor's decision and requests for revision, takes place by e-mail removing the need for a paper trail.
Review
Policy
As
Assessing Writing has adopted a double blind reviewing policy, please remove all identifying features from
the paper itself by ensuring that no author's name appears in the main text, in-text citations, reference list, or any running header.
Papers that have not had all such features removed will be returned without review to the author for alteration.
Please
write your text in good English (American or British usage is fine, but not a mixture). Italics should not be used for Latin expressions,
for example, in vivo, et al., per se. Article submissions should not normally exceed 8,500 words excluding tables.
Use of wordprocessing software
We accept most wordprocessing formats, but Word is preferred. Please submit
your file in this format and not as a PDF. The text of the article should be in single-column format with the layout kept as simple as
possible. There is no need to format the text as this will be undertaken in processing the article. For example, please do not justify
text. However, do use bold, italics, subscripts, superscripts, etc. For more information on the preferred way to prepare your text for
submission please visit:
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorshome.authors/howtosubmitpaper.
Article
structure
Please look at a recent issue of
Assessing Writing to identify the usual structure of articles. A free
sample copy of the journal is available at:
http://www.elsevier.com/locate/asw.
Subdivision
- numbered sections
Divide your article into clearly defined and numbered sections. Subsections should be numbered 1.1
(then 1.1.1, 1.1.2, ...), 1.2, etc. (the abstract is not included in section numbering). Use this numbering also for internal cross-referencing:
do not just refer to 'the text'. Any subsection may be given a brief heading. Each heading should appear on its own separate line.
Material and methods
Provide sufficient detail to allow the work to be reproduced. Methods already published
should be indicated by a reference: only relevant modifications should be described.
Appendices
If
there is more than one appendix, they should be identified as A, B, etc.
Acknowledgements
Place acknowledgements, including
information on grants received, before the references, in a separate section, and not as a footnote on the title page.
Footnotes
Should be used as little as possible. Number them consecutively using superscript Arabic numbers.
Essential
title page information
Provide the following data on the title page (in the order given):
Title. This should
be kept concise and informative as titles are often used in information-retrieval systems.
Author names and affiliations.
Provide present affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) below the names of each of the authors. Indicate all affiliations
with a lower-case superscript letter immediately after the author's name and in front of the appropriate address. Also please provide
the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name and the e-mail address of each author.
Corresponding
author. Clearly indicate who is willing to handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication. It is very important
that the telephone number (with country and area code) is provided in addition to the e-mail address and the complete postal address
for the corresponding author.
Present/permanent address. If an author has moved since the work in the article was done, or
was visiting at the time, a "Present address" (or "Permanent address") may be indicated as a footnote to that author's name.
Abstract.
A concise abstract is required (of between 100-200 words) stating the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions.
An abstract is often read separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone.
Keywords. Immediately after the
abstract, please provide a maximum of 6 keywords, avoiding general or plural terms and multiple concepts (avoid, for example, "and",
"of"). Only abbreviations firmly established in the field may be eligible. These keywords will be used for indexing purposes.
Abbreviations.
Define abbreviations that are not standard at their first occurrence in the article.
Vitae. Include a short (maximum 50 words)
biography of each author.
Graphical abstract
A Graphical abstract is optional and should
summarize the contents of the article in a concise, pictorial form designed to capture the attention of a wide readership online. Authors
must provide images that clearly represent the work described in the article. Graphical abstracts should be submitted as a separate file
in the online submission system. Image size: Please provide an image with a minimum of 531 × 1328 pixels (h × w) or proportionally
more. The image should be readable at a size of 5 × 13 cm using a regular screen resolution of 96 dpi. Preferred file types: TIFF,
EPS, PDF or MS Office files. See
http://www.elsevier.com/graphicalabstracts for examples.
Authors can make use of Elsevier's
Illustration and Enhancement service to ensure the best presentation of their images also in accordance with all technical requirements:
Illustration Service.
Highlights
Highlights are mandatory for this journal. They consist of a short collection of bullet points
that convey the core findings of the article and should be submitted in a separate file in the online submission system. Please use 'Highlights'
in the file name and include 3 to 5 bullet points (maximum 85 characters, including spaces, per bullet point). See
http://www.elsevier.com/highlights
for examples.
Artwork
Electronic artwork
General points
• Make sure you use uniform lettering and sizing of your original artwork.
• Save text in illustrations as 'graphics'
or enclose the font.
• Only use the following fonts in your illustrations: Arial, Courier, Times, Symbol.
• Number
the illustrations according to their sequence in the text.
• Use a logical naming convention for your artwork files.
•
Provide captions to illustrations separately.
• Produce images near to the desired size of the printed version.
• Submit
each figure as a separate file.
A detailed guide on electronic artwork is available on our website:
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions
You are urged to visit this site; some excerpts from the detailed information are given here.
Formats
Regardless
of the application used, when your electronic artwork is finalised, please 'save as' or convert the images to one of the following formats
(note the resolution requirements for line drawings, halftones, and line/halftone combinations given below):
EPS: Vector drawings.
Embed the font or save the text as 'graphics'.
TIFF: Color or grayscale photographs (halftones): always use a minimum of 300 dpi.
TIFF: Bitmapped line drawings: use a minimum of 1000 dpi.
TIFF: Combinations bitmapped line/half-tone (color or grayscale): a
minimum of 500 dpi is required.
If your electronic artwork is created in a Microsoft Office application (Word, PowerPoint, Excel)
then please supply 'as is'.
Please do not:
• Supply files that are optimised for screen use (e.g., GIF, BMP, PICT,
WPG); the resolution is too low;
• Supply files that are too low in resolution;
• Submit graphics that are disproportionately
large for the content.
Color artwork
Please make sure that artwork files are in an acceptable
format (TIFF, EPS or MS Office files) and with the correct resolution. If, together with your accepted article, you submit usable color
figures then Elsevier will ensure, at no additional charge, that these figures will appear in color on the Web (e.g., ScienceDirect and
other sites) regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in color in the printed version.
For color reproduction
in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Elsevier after receipt of your accepted article. Please indicate
your preference for color: in print or on the Web only. For further information on the preparation of electronic artwork, please see
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.
Please note: Because of technical complications which can arise by converting
color figures to 'gray scale' (for the printed version should you not opt for color in print) please submit in addition usable black
and white versions of all the color illustrations.
Figure captions
Ensure that each illustration
has a caption. Supply captions separately, not attached to the figure. A caption should comprise a brief title (
not on the figure
itself) and a description of the illustration. Keep text in the illustrations themselves to a minimum but explain all symbols and abbreviations
used.
Tables
All tables must be submitted separately from the main article. Number tables
consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text. Place footnotes to tables below the table body and indicate them with
superscript lowercase letters.
Citation in text
Please ensure that every reference cited
in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice versa). Any references cited in the abstract must be given in full. Unpublished
results and personal communications are not recommended in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the text. If these references
are included in the reference list they should follow the standard reference style of the journal and should include a substitution of
the publication date with either 'Unpublished results' or 'Personal communication'. Citation of a reference as 'in press' implies that
the item has been accepted for publication.
Web references
As a minimum, the full URL should
be given and the date when the reference was last accessed. Any further information, if known (DOI, author names, dates, reference to
a source publication, etc.), should also be given. Web references can be listed separately (e.g., after the reference list) under a different
heading if desired, or can be included in the reference list.
Reference management software
This
journal has standard templates available in key reference management packages EndNote (
http://www.endnote.com/support/enstyles.asp)
and Reference Manager (
http://refman.com/support/rmstyles.asp). Using plug-ins to wordprocessing packages, authors only
need to select the appropriate journal template when preparing their article and the list of references and citations to these will be
formatted according to the journal style which is described below.
Reference style
Text:
Citations in the text should follow the referencing style used by the American Psychological Association. You are referred to the Publication
Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition, ISBN 978-1-4338-0561-5, copies of which may be ordered from
http://books.apa.org/books.cfm?id=4200067
or APA Order Dept., P.O.B. 2710, Hyattsville, MD 20784, USA or APA, 3 Henrietta Street, London, WC3E 8LU, UK. Details concerning this
referencing style can also be found at
http://linguistics.byu.edu/faculty/henrichsenl/apa/apa01.html.
List:
references should be arranged first alphabetically and then further sorted chronologically if necessary. More than one reference from
the same author(s) in the same year must be identified by the letters 'a', 'b', 'c', etc., placed after the year of publication.
Examples:
Reference to a journal publication:
Van der Geer, J., Hanraads, J. A. J., & Lupton, R. A. (2010). The art of writing a scientific
article.
Journal of Scientific Communications, 163, 51–59.
Reference to a book:
Strunk, W., Jr., &
White, E. B. (2000).
The elements of style. (4th ed.). New York: Longman, (Chapter 4).
Reference to a chapter in an edited
book:
Mettam, G. R., & Adams, L. B. (2009). How to prepare an electronic version of your article. In B. S. Jones, & R. Z.
Smith (Eds.),
Introduction to the electronic age (pp. 281–304). New York: E-Publishing Inc.
Video
data
Elsevier accepts video material and animation sequences to support and enhance your scientific research. Authors who
have video or animation files that they wish to submit with their article are strongly encouraged to include these within the body of
the article. This can be done in the same way as a figure or table by referring to the video or animation content and noting in the body
text where it should be placed. All submitted files should be properly labeled so that they directly relate to the video file's content.
In order to ensure that your video or animation material is directly usable, please provide the files in one of our recommended file
formats with a preferred maximum size of 50 MB. Video and animation files supplied will be published online in the electronic version
of your article in Elsevier Web products, including ScienceDirect:
http://www.sciencedirect.com. Please supply 'stills'
with your files: you can choose any frame from the video or animation or make a separate image. These will be used instead of standard
icons and will personalize the link to your video data. For more detailed instructions please visit our video instruction pages at
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.
Note: since video and animation cannot be embedded in the print version of the journal, please provide text for both the electronic and
the print version for the portions of the article that refer to this content.
Supplementary data
Elsevier
accepts electronic supplementary material to support and enhance your scientific research. Supplementary files offer the author additional
possibilities to publish supporting applications, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound clips and more. Supplementary files
supplied will be published online alongside the electronic version of your article in Elsevier Web products, including ScienceDirect:
http://www.sciencedirect.com. In order to ensure that your submitted material is directly usable, please provide the data
in one of our recommended file formats. Authors should submit the material in electronic format together with the article and supply
a concise and descriptive caption for each file. For more detailed instructions please visit our artwork instruction pages at
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.
Submission checklist
The following list will be useful during the final checking of an article prior to sending
it to the journal for review. Please consult this Guide for Authors for further details of any item.
Ensure that the following
items are present:
One author has been designated as the corresponding author with contact details:
• E-mail address
• Full postal address
• Telephone and fax numbers
All necessary files have been uploaded, and contain:
•
Keywords
• All figure captions
• All tables (including title, description, footnotes)
Further considerations
•
Manuscript has been 'spell-checked' and 'grammar-checked'
• References are in the correct format for this journal
•
All references mentioned in the Reference list are cited in the text, and vice versa
• Permission has been obtained for use
of copyrighted material from other sources (including the Web)
• Color figures are clearly marked as being intended for color
reproduction on the Web (free of charge) and in print, or to be reproduced in color on the Web (free of charge) and in black-and-white
in print
• If only color on the Web is required, black-and-white versions of the figures are also supplied for printing purposes
For any further information please visit our customer support site at
http://support.elsevier.com.
Use of the Digital
Object Identifier
The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) may be used to cite and link to electronic documents. The DOI consists
of a unique alpha-numeric character string which is assigned to a document by the publisher upon the initial electronic publication.
The assigned DOI never changes. Therefore, it is an ideal medium for citing a document, particularly 'Articles in press' because they
have not yet received their full bibliographic information. The correct format for citing a DOI is shown as follows (example taken from
a document in the journal
Physics Letters B):
doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2010.09.059
When you use the DOI to create URL
hyperlinks to documents on the web, the DOIs are guaranteed never to change.
Offprints
The
corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail. For an extra charge, paper offprints can
be ordered via the offprint order form which is sent once the article is accepted for publication. The PDF file is a watermarked version
of the published article and includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image and a disclaimer outlining the terms and conditions
of use.
Additional information
Fast Electronic Publication
Once the article
has been proofed, it will be published immediately on the journal's 'Articles in Press' section online, thus making it available to subscribers
to read and cite. For more information, visit:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/10752935.
Discount
Authors are entitled to a 30% discount on Elsevier books (excluding major reference works).
For inquiries relating to the submission of articles (including electronic submission) please visit this journal's
homepage. Contact details for questions arising after acceptance of an article, especially those relating to proofs, will be provided
by the publisher. You can track accepted articles at
http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle. You can also check our Author
FAQs (
http://www.elsevier.com/authorFAQ) and/or contact Customer Support via
http://support.elsevier.com.
