Submissions

Author Guidelines

What happens to the manuscript?

When the manuscript is submitted it will be reviewed by the editorial group. If deemed within the scope of the journal and potentially possessing the qualities for publication it will be sent for review by at least two reviewers. The review process is double blinded. The reviewers will review the article and suggest to the editorial group if it should be accepted, if it requires revisions and further considerations or if it should be rejected (with or without the possibility to resubmit). Based on these recommendations the editorial group will make their decision. It is the ambition of the editorial group to provide feedback on submitted manuscripts within 4–5 months.

The review will be based on the following criteria:

• Importance and relevance of the paper: in relation to aims and scope of the journal.
• Originality and innovativeness: contribution in relation to prior research.
• Quality and soundness: research review, theoretical perspective, methodology, validity, ethics.
• Contextualisation: introduction of the general topic and the context of the study in relation to a Nordic and international readership.
• Structure and argumentation: in the paper as a whole.
• Language and style: proper language, following the instructions for authors.

Decisions concerning submitted manuscripts cannot be negotiated.

If a paper needs revisions the submitting author will be asked to re-submit within a stated frame of time. Failure to deliver a revised manuscript within this time may result in the manuscript being rejected. Revised manuscripts will be reviewed by the editorial group or sent out for further review.

Please read the following guidelines carefully.
Failure to comply may result in your submission being returned and therefore delayed.

General guidelines

The journal includes three types of publications:

• Research articles, based on original empirical and/or theoretical work, that will be subject to double-blind peer review.
• Magazine articles concerning vocational education and training that are published in a separate magazine section.
• Book reviews. Other articles and book reviews are subject to review by the editorial group.

Contributions could be submitted in English, Danish, Norwegian, or Swedish. To broaden the international readership, Nordic researchers are encouraged to submit and publish their contributions in English.

The manuscript should introduce the general topic or theme of the study, as well as the context of the study, in relation to both a Nordic (particularly for manuscripts in a Nordic language) and an international readership. To increase the coherence and continuity for our readers, authors are encouraged to review and refer to articles previously published in NJVET.

Submission of manuscripts

• Manuscripts should be submitted through our online system. If there are more than one author, the submitting author should be the corresponding author responsible for all communication with the journal.
• A manuscript will be considered under the condition it has not been submitted for publication to any other journal, nor is published or is planned to be published in any other journal or publication. (Manuscripts submitted to the journal can be checked for plagiarism using Similarity Check.)
  Possible exceptions:
  1. Where a version of the manuscript has already been published, the submitting author should attach a statement to this effect and identifying that the article can be published by NJVET with no costs incurred by the copyright holders. Authors are responsible for obtaining permissions from copyright holders.
  2. An English language version of an article that has been published elsewhere in another language may be submitted for consideration. When submitting a manuscript in this category the submitting author is required to state that this is the case. Further, the submitting author is required to provide a statement that a re-publication in English is allowed with no cost to NJVET incurred by the copyright holders. Authors are responsible for obtaining permissions from copyright holders. English language manuscript versions will be processed as others.
• All identification of the author(s) should be omitted from the manuscript so that it can be sent anonymously to reviewers. In places where reference is made within the manuscript to published work of the author(s), the author(s) should replace this reference in the text with the statement 'deleted for anonymity' and omit details of the publication from the reference list using only "Author" and the year. Please omit the text under the heading Acknowledgements and Notes on contributor(s) as well. The corresponding author will be asked to provide a complete manuscript with all sections and author information in a later part of the process. Se below for instructions for anonymising your document.
• Unless otherwise notified NJVET assumes manuscripts to be the property of the author(s).
• Authors are responsible for obtaining permissions from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations that have been previously published elsewhere.

Organisation of manuscripts

• Articles should be submitted in Microsoft Word format (.doc or .docx).
• Manuscripts should be submitted in Times New Roman font, size 12, with double spacing.
• Paper size of the document should be in A4-size.
• Use indentation as separator of paragraphs in body text and reference list.
• Citation in 40 or more words should be formatted as block quotes, i.e. separated from the body text, indented and without citation marks.
• There are no strict word limits for submissions, but articles are recommended to be of 4,000-8,000 words excluding references and endnotes. Book reviews are recommended to be of 1,500 words. Reviews of several books should be no more than 4,000 words.
• The manuscript should include an abstract of 150-200 words, for research articles stating the aim of the article, the methodological and theoretical perspectives adopted, the main findings and conclusions. For magazine articles and book reviews, the abstract should reflect the contents of the contribution. All abstracts should be in English.
• The abstract should be followed by 5-7 keywords in English.
• If the article is in a Nordic langauge, an English translation of the title should be included.
• Footnotes should not be used and endnotes kept to a minimum. Endnotes should appear after the main text and before the acknowledgement section.
• The manuscript should be presented with the following order: abstract, keywords, main text, endnotes, acknowledgements, references.

Tables, figures and photographs

Tables and figures should be designed to fit into a page 150 x 222.3 mm (15 x 22.3 cm) and attached in a separate document. Their preferred location should be indicated in the main text.

Tables and figures should be numbered consecutively (i.e. Table 1, Figure 1 etc.) followed by a title (at the end no period), for example: Table 1. Characteristics of focus group participants, 1990-1995 (n = 39)

Tables may be reformatted by the publisher to permit more compact typesetting.

References

In text citations and references should folow the APA Publication Manual, Seventh Edition.

In submissions of articles in Danish, Norwegian, or Swedish, the references should also be in this language, according to the APA guidelines. For example, in an article in Swedish, you should write ' s.' instead of ' p.' or ' pp.', ' Red.' instead of ' Eds.', ' I ' instead of ' In ' etc. It is the language of your text that decides the choice, not the language of the text you refer to.

Language policy

NJVET is attentive to the fact that many authors do not have English as a first language and may find it difficult to make their research available to an English language audience. To encourage contributions from, and to make the contributions available to, the Nordic as well as other countries NJVET has the following language policy:

Contributions can be submitted and published in English, Danish, Norwegian, or Swedish. To broaden the international readership, we encourage Nordic researchers to submit and publish their contributions in English.

For articles submitted in Danish, Norwegian, or Swedish, we offer the opportunity for authors, if the article is accepted, to translate their text into English after the review process, and having it published in English. In such cases, the authors are responsible for having the text translated it into high quality English, and for the translated version fully reflecting the accepted version of the article. This alternative should be requested when submitting and agreed upon with the editor responsible for the manuscript before the review process starts.

In articles published in Danish, Norwegian, or Swedish, the abstract and keywords should be written in English, and an English translation of the title should be included.

In English language articles, please follow the conventions of British English spelling consistently throughout the manuscript.

NJVET will consider publishing an English language version of an article that has been published elsewhere in another language, see above, in General guidelines.

Ensuring a Blind Review

To ensure the integrity of the blind peer-review for submission to this press, every effort should be made to prevent the identities of the authors and reviewers from being known to each other. This involves the authors, editors, and reviewers (who upload documents as part of their review) checking to see if the following steps have been taken with regard to the text and the file properties:

The authors of the document have deleted their names from the text, repleced them with "Deleted for anonymity" in running text and with "Author" and year used in the references, instead of the authors' name, article title, etc.

With Microsoft Office documents, author identification should also be removed from the properties of the file.

• PC users:

1. Either use the "Inspect document" tool found under File > Info and Remove all properties after inspection
2. or delete personal information in Windows Exploreror by right-clicking on the file and click on Properties > Details tab then click on Remove Properties and Personal Information.

• Mac users:

1. Open the file you would like to remove personal information from.
2. Click on the “Tools” menu and se
3. lect the “Protect Document” option.
4. In the “Protect Document” window check the box next to “Remove personal information from this file on save”
5. Save and close your document.

Publishing of Articles

Accepted articles are published continuously and open access. A published article is immediately assigned to the current issue of the journal, and the articles are brought togehter in at least three issues per volume.