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Policies

Contents

Who Can Submit?

We give primary consideration to students at ACU currently enrolled in courses within the ACU Graduate School program. Submissions from those recently graduated from an ACU graduate program and from past graduate alumni may also be considered. Submissions from those outside the university will be considered infrequently.

The editors aim for a representation across disciplines. Articles which qualify for publication but are not accepted for the current issue may be held in reserve for possible publication for the next two issues.

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Author Guidelines

Submissions should be complete final copies. Works in progress are not accepted. Creative submissions are accepted and encouraged. Works previously prepared for coursework, presentation at conferences or for other types of presentations are welcomed. Articles which have been submitted for publication in other journals will not be accepted.

See Final Manuscript Preparation Guidelines for details.

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General Submission Rules

Submitted articles cannot have been previously published, nor be forthcoming in an archival journal or book (print or electronic). Please note: "publication" in a working-paper series does not constitute prior publication. In addition, by submitting material to Conversations: A Graduate Student Journal of the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Theology, the author is stipulating that the material is not currently under review at another journal (electronic or print) and that he or she will not submit the material to another journal (electronic or print) until the completion of the editorial decision process at Conversations: A Graduate Student Journal of the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Theology. If you have concerns about the submission terms for Conversations: A Graduate Student Journal of the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Theology, please contact the editors.

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Editorial and Publishing Process

Submissions should be made online. At the time of submission, authors must represent and warrant that submitted manuscripts have not been published elsewhere, are not currently under review elsewhere, have been submitted with the full knowledge of their institutional home (if any), and are not infringing of copyright or other rights of third parties.

We accept submissions until March 15 for the May issue and until October 15th for the December issue. In order to represent multiple disciplines, no more than three articles from one discipline will be accepted per Issue.

Submissions will be double blind reviewed (meaning neither the authors' names nor the reviewers' names are disclosed) by 2 peer reviewers (one in and one out of the author’s field of study). Submissions will be evaluated against a rubric. Four actions are possible for each submission: Accept, Accept with minor revisions, Accept with major revisions, or Reject. Rubrics with reviewer comments may be made available to submitters. Two main areas will be analyzed – Competence (does the article meet technical standards, i.e. thesis, support, scholarly resources, organization, tone, etc) and Quality (does the article demonstrate depth, originality, relevance to the field of study, significance, etc.)

Peer Reviewers will have 21 days per essay to complete their assessment. After completing the review, rubrics and comments will be returned to the editor who will then contact the author of the essay.

The Competency Rubric will require a minimum score be met in order for the article to be considered for publication. However, certain categories (Support, Organization, and Vocabulary) must be scored at least a 3 on the rubric for consideration.

The Editor is responsible for the final selection of articles for the journal.

If Conversations: A Graduate Student Journal of the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Theology agrees to publish the article, its author will retain copyright to the article for the full term of the copyright, all renewals, and extensions.

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Open Access and Copyright

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Conversations: A Graduate Student Journal of the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Theology joins the library and information community in supporting open access and knowledge dissemination as established by the Budapest Open Access initiative. We support this philosophy by making the full text of all articles freely available without charge to users or their institutions. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author—provided they completely and accurately identify the original articles' author(s), citation details, and publisher.

Conversations: A Graduate Student Journal of the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Theology is published using the publishing infrastructure provided by the ACU Library. They are committed to making high quality information available to anyone around the world, regardless of institutional affiliation or ability to pay. Authors can seek publication in this journal knowing that we adhere to standards of preservation, of discovery and dissemination, and of a general philosophy that information is best when shared freely.

At this point in time, those of us working with Conversations: A Graduate Student Journal of the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Theology find the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0) license to best support open access scholarly publishing. Authors who submit to this journal will have the opportunity to choose their particular license from a pull-down menu when they submit their work. At that time they can opt for the CC-BY 4.0 license we recommend or select a more restrictive license for their work. Remember, in all citations Conversations: A Graduate Student Journal of the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Theology must be identified as the original publisher of the work.

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Rights for Authors and Digital Commons @ ACU

As further described in our submission agreement (the Submission Agreement), authors retain copyrights to their materials published in this journal.

Attribution and Usage Policies

Reproduction, posting, transmission or other distribution or use of the article or any material therein, in any medium requires attribution to the author. We provide a recommended citation for each article to assist in sharing.

Personal Use

The following uses are always permitted to the author(s) and do not require further permission from Digital Commons @ ACU provided the author does not alter the format or content of the articles, including the copyright notification:

  • Storage and back-up of the article on the author's computer(s) and digital media (e.g., diskettes, back-up servers, Zip disks, etc.), provided that the article stored on these computers and media is not readily accessible by persons other than the author(s);
  • Posting of the article on the author(s) personal website, provided that the website is non-commercial;
  • Posting of the article on the internet as part of a non-commercial open access institutional repository or other non-commercial open access publication site affiliated with the author(s)'s place of employment (e.g., a Phrenology professor at the University of Southern North Dakota can have her article appear in the University of Southern North Dakota's Department of Phrenology online publication series); and
  • Posting of the article on a non-commercial course website for a course being taught by the author at the university or college employing the author.

For questions, contact the editors.

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General Terms and Conditions of Use

Users of the Digital Commons @ ACU website and/or software agree not to misuse the Digital Commons @ ACU service or software in any way.

The failure of Digital Commons @ ACU to exercise or enforce any right or provision in the policies or the Submission Agreement does not constitute a waiver of such right or provision. If any term of the Submission Agreement or these policies is found to be invalid, the parties nevertheless agree that the court should endeavor to give effect to the parties' intentions as reflected in the provision, and the other provisions of the Submission Agreement and these policies remain in full force and effect. These policies and the Submission Agreement constitute the entire agreement between Digital Commons @ ACU and the Author(s) regarding submission of the Article.

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