•  
  •  
 

Policies

Contents

Who Can Submit?

Primary consideration is given to undergraduates at ACU taking courses in the ACU Biology Department. Submissions from authors outside the department but within the ACU community will also be considered. Submissions from outside the university will be considered infrequently.

{ top }

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 Dialogue & Nexus, 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 Dialogue & Nexus. If you have concerns about the submission terms for Dialogue & Nexus, please contact the editors.

{ top }

Author Guidelines

With rare exceptions, the lead author must be an undergraduate student at Abilene Christian University, preferably a biology student taking the CORE Capstone course (BIOL497 Seminar). Contact the editor prior to submission if you do not meet this description. For example, Honors theses from other departments may be appropriate provided they adhere to the scope and interest of this journal.

See Final Manuscript Preparation Guidelines for details about the format of articles for submission.

{ top }

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.

Submissions are typically drawn from the ACU Capstone papers required of the CORE Capstone course (Biology Seminar 497). They are blind reviewed by two faculty in the ACU Biology Department plus the ACU Capstone CORE professor using the CREATE rubric . In some cases, faculty in the College of Biblical Studies may also be used as reviewers. Only papers averaging 20 or above (out of 26) will be further developed and edited with revisions where needed. Those below 20 will be rejected unless extensively rewritten and resubmitted. The rubric scores will be provided if requested.

Authors will receive email notification once reviewers agree on one of the following possible outcomes for the article:

  • Accept article: Article is accepted for publication exactly as it is (no modifications required).
  • Accept article with minor revisions: Article is accepted, assuming the author makes minor revisions as requested by the reviewer/editor.
  • Major revisions required for acceptance: The content of the article is not suitable for publication without major revisions. The author is invited to make the changes suggested by the editor and reviewers and submit a revision.
  • Reject article: The article is rejected as not being eligible for publication in the journal.

If Dialogue & Nexus agrees to publish the article, its author will retain copyright to the article for the full term of the copyright, all renewals, and extensions.

{ top }

Open Access and Copyright

Dialogue & Nexus 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 article's author(s), citation details, and publisher.

Dialogue & Nexus 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 Dialogue & Nexus 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 Dialogue & Nexus must be identified as the original publisher of the work.

{ top }

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.

{ top }

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.

{ top }