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Start SubmissionPLEASE NOTE: Only submissions by EuroSLA members of good standing are considered for publication. Co-authored submissions require that at least one author is a EuroSLA member of good standing.
Article types | Structure | Language & text | Data & Symbols | Figures & Tables | Appendices | References
Submissions should be made electronically through this website. The submissions should be submitted in a Word file format.
Please ensure that you consider the following guidelines when preparing your manuscript. Failure to do so may delay the processing of your submission.
Research articles (including methods articles, systematic reviews and meta-analyses) must describe the results of unpublished original research. These should make a substantial contribution to knowledge and understanding of the subject matter and should be supported by relevant figures and tabulated data. Research articles should be no more than 8,000 words in length. In addition to the main body of the paper, this word limit includes the abstract, acknowledgements, references, endnotes, tables/figures and their legends. Please note: supplementary materials can be submitted to the Open Science Framework, or other open data repository, to help keep within word length – see more details in the Research Data part of our Research Integrity section.
EuroSLA keynote articles can describe previously unpublished original research, but they can also offer a synthesis of previously published work by the author (EuroSLA keynote speaker). The articles are still expected to make a substantial contribution to knowledge and understanding in the subject matter. The articles should be no more than 8,000 words in length. In addition to the main body of the paper, this word limit includes the abstract, acknowledgements, references, endnotes, tables/figures and their legends.
Title page
To ensure blind peer review, please only list the title and abstract on the submitted manuscript title page.
The names of all authors, affiliations, contact details, biography (optional) and the corresponding author details must be completed online as part of the submission process.
Author names should include a forename and a surname. Forenames cannot include only initials.
The affiliation should ideally include ‘Department, Institution, City, Country’, however only the Institution and Country are mandatory.
Abstract
Articles must have the main text prefaced by an abstract of no more than 250 words summarising the main arguments and conclusions of the article. This must have the heading ‘Abstract’ and be easily identified from the start of the main text.
A list of up to six key words should be placed below the abstract.
Main text
The body of the submission should be structured in a logical and easy to follow manner. A clear introduction section should be given that allows non-specialists in the subject an understanding of the publication and a background of the issue(s) involved. Methods, results, discussion and conclusion sections may then follow to clearly detail the information and research being presented.
Acknowledgements (optional)
Any acknowledgements must be headed and in a separate paragraph, placed after the main text but before the reference list.
Endnotes
Notes will appear between the between the Acknowledgements and Reference sections.
Competing interests
If any of the authors have any competing interests then these must be declared. A short paragraph should be placed before the references. Guidelines for competing interests can be found here.
References
All references cited within the submission must be listed at the end of the main text file.
Where applicable, the studies must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee and the authors should include an ‘ethics and consent’ statement after any endnotes and before (any acknowledgements and) the references list detailing this approval, including the name of the ethics committee and reference number of the approval. Authors should uphold the highest ethical standards in the production of their scholarly works. Some important guidelines are offered below. For a more detailed discussion of ethical guidelines, see the Linguistic Society of America’s Ethics Statement (May 2009) at http://www.linguisticsociety.org/sites/default/files/Ethics_Statement.pdf.
Reporting standards and data retention
Articles should be objective, and data should be presented accurately. Papers should contain enough detail to allow others to replicate the work. Authors should retain raw data for a period of ten years after publication and may be asked to provide raw data during the editorial review.
Originality, acknowledgment, and plagiarism
Submitted works should be entirely original; if others’ work and/or words have been used, they should be appropriately cited and, if appropriate, permission for the citation should be obtained from the source. Plagiarism occurs in many forms (e.g., submitting another’s entire paper as one’s own, copying or paraphrasing sentences from another paper without attribution, appropriating results of research conducted by others); all forms are completely unacceptable.
Redundant or concurrent publication
Authors should not submit the same or a very similar manuscript to more than one journal concurrently. In general, authors should not submit previously-published papers for publication in another journal.
Authorship
All those who have made significant contributions to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the study should be listed as co-authors. Those who have made lesser contributions to the paper should be acknowledged. The corresponding author should ensure that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper.
Working with human participants
If the work involves the use of human participants, the author should ensure to check the boxes in the submission checklist stating that the researchers:
If the author's institution has an ethics assessment committee, the researcher must also check the box stating that this committee has approved the research.
Conflicts of interest
All authors should disclose any financial or other conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their study.
Significant errors in published works
If the author discovers or is informed by a third party of a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her article, the author must promptly notify the journal editor and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper. Please note, whilst JESLA covers the Article Processing Charge, authors are liable for any corrigenda fees post-publication.
Capitalisation
For the submission title:
Capitalize only the first letter of the first word of a sentence and of proper nouns and adjectives, e.g., “The capitalization of titles in English” not “The Capitalization of Titles in English”. Also capitalise the first letter of the first word after a colon.
Headings
Do not put a full stop (period) at the end of a heading.
Number and format headings as shown:
1. First-level heading
1.1. Second-level heading
1.1.1. Third-level heading
Aim to use no more than 3 levels of heading. However, if a fourth-level heading is required, use 11 pt italic.
Spelling
Submissions must be made in English. Authors are welcome to use American or British spellings as long as they are used consistently throughout the whole of the submission.
When referring to proper nouns and normal institutional titles, the official, original spelling must be used.
Grammar
American or English grammar rules may be used as long as they are used consistently and match the spelling format (see above). For instance, you may use a serial comma or not.
Phonetic transcription
Use unicode fonts for phonetic symbols, which should be in Charis SIL, like the main text. The symbols can be downloaded at no cost from the SIL webpage: http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?&item_id=IPAhome
Font
The font used should be double-line spaced with 12-point font, left-aligned and unjustified. This may be changed during the typesetting process.
Emphasis
Italics may be used for:
Bold may be used sparingly to draw attention to a particular linguistic feature in numbered examples (not in running text). Underlining or capital letters should not be used for emphasis.
FULL CAPS can be used for focal stress and abbreviations:
Lists
Use bullet points to denote a list without hierarchy or order of value. If the list indicates a specific sequence, then a numbered list must be used.
Lists should be used sparingly to maximise their impact.
Quotation marks
Use double quotation marks except for quotes within another speech, in which case single quotation marks are used.
Place direct quotations that are 40 words, or longer, in a free-standing, indented block, and omit quotation marks.
The standard, non-italicised font must be used for all quotes.
It must be clear from the text and/or citation where the quote is sourced. If quoting from material that is under copyright, then permission will need to be obtained from the copyright holder.
All quotations in languages other than English should be followed by the translation in square brackets.
Omissions are indicated by ellipsis points without brackets.
Any insertions by the author are to be enclosed in square brackets: [emphasis mine].
Acronyms & Abbreviations
With abbreviations, the crucial goal is to ensure that the reader – particularly one who may not be fully familiar with the topic or context being addressed – is able to follow along. Spell out almost all acronyms on first use, indicating the acronym in parentheses immediately thereafter. Use the acronym for all subsequent references.
A number of abbreviations are so common that they do not require the full text on the first instance.
Abbreviations should usually be in capital letters without full stops.
Common examples from Latin origin do not follow this rule and should be lower case and can include full stops.
Initials require full stops and have a space between them, e.g., R. W. Langacker.
Use of footnotes/endnotes
Use endnotes rather than footnotes (we refer to these as ‘Notes’ in the online publication). These will appear at the end of the main text, before ‘References’.
All notes should be used only where crucial clarifying information needs to be conveyed. Notes should be numbered consecutively throughout the text. Note numbers in the text should be superscript (small raised) without punctuation or brackets. The note number should directly follow the word in question or a punctuation mark, with no blank space.
Page numbering
Please insert page numbers at the top right-hand corner.
Linguistic examples
Italics should be used for words, phrases and sentences treated as linguistic examples in running text:
The and a(n) are articles in English.
Italics should also be used for non-English words.
For numbered examples, use Arabic numerals (1,2,3, etc.) in parentheses and indent the line:
(1) John drank yet another glass of water.
Examples from languages other than English must be glossed (with word-by-word alignment) and translated (cf. the Leipzig Glossing Rules recommended as basic guidelines here: http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php). Example numbers are enclosed in parentheses, and left-aligned. Example sentences usually have normal capitalization at the beginning and normal punctuation. The gloss line has no capitalization and no punctuation. Morphemes are separated by hyphens. For the abbreviations in the interlinear gloss CAPS should be used. In the final formatting these may be converted into small caps. Please refrain from the use of lower case.
If one word in language A corresponds to two words in language B use a full stop to glue the two together:
When child language examples are given, make sure that an identification is present, as well as an age indication (years; months) and the source of the utterance (e.g., a published source, ‘author’s own unpublished data’, CHILDES file X – plus full references as required by the CHILDES contributor).
Symbols
Symbols are permitted within the main text and datasets as long as they are commonly in use or have explanatory definition on their first usage. Letters used as statistical symbols or algebraic variables should be in italics, e.g., p(for significance level).
Hyphenation, em and en dashes
There is no set rule on the use of hyphenation between words, as long as they are consistently used.
Em dashes should be used sparingly. If they are present, they should denote emphasis, change of thought or interruption to the main sentence and can replace comas, parentheses, colons or semicolons.
En dashes can be used to replace ‘to’ when indicating a range. No space should surround the dash.
Numbers
For numbers zero to nine please spell the whole words. Please use figures for numbers 10 or higher.
We are happy for authors to use either words or figures to represent large whole figures (i.e. one million or 1,000,000) as long as the usage is consistent throughout the text.
If the sentence includes a series of numbers, then figures must be used in each instance.
If the number appears as part of a dataset, in conjunction with a symbol or as part of a table, then the figure must be used.
If a sentence starts with a number it must be spelt, or the sentence should be re-written so that it no longer starts with the number.
Do not use a comma for a decimal place.
Numbers that are less than zero must have ‘0’ precede the decimal point.
Units of measurement
Symbols following a figure to denote a unit of measurement must be taken from the latest SI brochure. Seehttp://www.bipm.org/utils/common/pdf/si_brochure_8_en.pdf for the full brochure.
Formulae
Formulae must be proofed carefully by the author. Editors will not edit formulae. If special software has been used to create formulae, the way it is laid out is the way they will appear in the publication.
All text and labels in tables, figures and illustrations should be clearly legible.
Please incorporate all tables, figures, and illustrations directly in the manuscript, following the flow of the text. Once the paper has been accepted for publication, the figures and illustrations will have to be submitted as supplementary files with clear callouts in the body of the manuscript.
Figures
Figures, including graphs and diagrams, must be professionally and clearly presented. If a figure is not easy to understand or does not appear to be of a suitable quality, the editor may ask to re-render or omit it.
All figures must be cited within the main text, in consecutive order using Arabic numerals (e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.).
Each figure must have an accompanying descriptive main title situated beneath the figure. This should clearly and concisely summarise the content and/or use of the figure image. A short additional figure legend is optional to offer a further description.
The source of the image should be included, along with any relevant copyright information and a statement of authorisation (if needed).
If your figure file includes text, then please present the font as Ariel, Helvetica, or Verdana. This will mean that it matches the typeset text.
Tables
Tables must be created using a word processor's table function, not tabbed text.
Tables should be included in the manuscript. The final layout will place the tables as close to their first citation as possible.
All tables must be cited within the main text, numbered with Arabic numerals in consecutive order (e.g. Table 1, Table 2, etc.).
Each table must have an accompanying descriptive title. This should clearly and concisely summarise the content and/or use of the table. A short additional table legend is optional to offer a further description of the table. The table title and legend should be placed above the table.
Tables should not include:
NOTE: If there are more columns than can fit on a single page, then the table will be placed horizontally on the page. If it still can't fit horizontally on a page, the table will be broken into two.
Supplementary materials can be added to the submission as separate files to be considered alongside the manuscript. If published, the supplementary material will be hosted as a separate file and linked to from the main publication. Please note: supplementary materials can also be submitted to the Open Science Framework, or other open data repository, to help keep within word length – see more details in the Research Data part of our Research Integrity section.
Citations in Text
JESLA uses an APA-style reference system. Please refer to https://apastyle.apa.org/ for current formatting guidelines. In APA style, in-text citations are placed within sentences and paragraphs so that it is clear what information is being quoted or paraphrased and whose information is being cited.
Examples:
The last name of the author and the year of publication are inserted in the text at the appropriate point.
from theory on bounded rationality (Simon, 1945)
If the name of the author or the date appear as part of the narrative, cite only missing information in parentheses.
Simon (1945) posited that
When a work has two authors, always cite both names every time the reference occurs in the text. In parenthetical material join the names with an ampersand (&).
as has been shown (Leiter & Maslach, 1998)
In the narrative text, join the names with the word “and.”
as Leiter and Maslach (1998) demonstrated
When a work has three or more authors, cite only the surname of the first author followed by “et al.” (Latin for “and others”) and the year of publication. Please make sure to write down the names of all authors in the Reference List or Bibliography.
Kahneman et al. (1991) found
The names of groups that serve as authors (corporate authors) are usually written out each time they appear in a text reference.
(National Institute of Mental Health [NIMH], 2007)
When appropriate, the names of some corporate authors are spelled out in the first reference and abbreviated in all subsequent citations. The general rule for abbreviating in this manner is to supply enough information in the text citation for a reader to locate its source in the Reference List without difficulty.
(NIMH, 2007)
When a work has no author, use the first two or three words of the work's title (omitting any initial articles) as your text reference, capitalizing each word. Place the title in quotation marks if it refers to an article, chapter of a book, or Web page. Italicize the title if it refers to a book, periodical, brochure, or report.
on climate change (“Climate and Weather,” 1997)
Guide to Agricultural Meteorological Practices (1981)
Anonymous authors should be listed as such followed by a comma and the date.
on climate change (Anonymous, 2008)
To cite a specific part of a source (always necessary for quotations), include the page, chapter, etc. (with appropriate abbreviations) in the in-text citation.
(Stigter & Das, 1981, p. 96)
De Waal (1996) overstated the case when he asserted that “we seem to be reaching ... from the hands of philosophers” (p. 218).
If page numbers are not included in electronic sources (such as Web-based journals), provide the paragraph number preceded by the abbreviation “para.” or the heading and following paragraph.
(Mönnich & Spiering, 2008, para. 9)
Reference list
References cited in the text of a research paper must appear in a Reference List or bibliography. This list provides the information necessary to identify and retrieve each source.
Two additional pieces of information should be included for works accessed online.
Examples:
Articles in journals, magazines, and newspapers
References to periodical articles must include the following elements: author(s), date of publication, article title, journal title, volume number, issue number (if applicable), and page numbers.
Books
References to an entire book must include the following elements: author(s) or editor(s), date of publication, title, place of publication, and the name of the publisher.
Dissertations
References for dissertations should include the following elements: author, date of publication, title, and institution (if you accessed the manuscript copy from the university collections). If there is a UMI number or a database accession number, include it at the end of the citation.
Essays or chapters in edited books
References to an essay or chapter in an edited book must include the following elements: essay or chapter authors, date of publication, essay or chapter title, book editor(s), book title, essay or chapter page numbers, place of publication, and the name of the publisher.
Encyclopedias or dictionaries and entries in an encyclopedia
References for encyclopedias must include the following elements: author(s) or editor(s), date of publication, title, place of publication, and the name of the publisher. For sources accessed online, include the retrieval date as the entry may be edited over time.
Research reports and papers
References to a report must include the following elements: author(s), date of publication, title, place of publication, and name of publisher. If the issuing organization assigned a number (e.g., report number, contract number, or monograph number) to the report, give that number in parentheses immediately after the title. If it was accessed online, include the URL.
Audio-visual media
References to audio-visual media must include the following elements: name and function of the primary contributors (e.g., producer, director), date, title, the medium in brackets, location or place of production, and name of the distributor. If the medium is indicated as part of the retrieval ID, brackets are not needed.
Undated Web site content, blogs, and data
For content that does not easily fit into categories such as journal papers, books, and reports, keep in mind the goal of a citation is to give the reader a clear path to the source material. For electronic and online materials, include stable URL or database name. Include the author, title, and date published when available. For undated materials, include the date the resource was accessed.
Entire Web site
When citing an entire Web site (and not a specific document on that site), no Reference List entry is required if the address for the site is cited in the text of your paper.
Witchcraft In Europe and America is a site that presents the full text of many essential works in the literature of witchcraft and demonology (http://www.witchcraft.psmedia.com/).
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.
One of the authors is a EuroSLA member of good standing (i.e. a current member who has attended at least one EuroSLA conference in the last four years).
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms. If a submission is rejected or withdrawn prior to publication, all rights return to the author(s):
Submitting to the journal implicitly confirms that all named authors and rights holders have agreed to the above terms of publication. It is the submitting author's responsibility to ensure all authors and relevant institutional bodies have given their agreement at the point of submission.
Note: some institutions require authors to seek written approval in relation to the terms of publication. Should this be required, authors can request a separate licence agreement document from the editorial team (e.g. authors who are Crown employees).
Authors publishing in JESLA face no financial charges for the publication of their article. (However, whilst JESLA covers the Article Processing Charge, authors are liable for any corrigenda fees post-publication).
This does not mean that we do not have publishing costs. Instead, our costs are currently covered by the European Second Language Association.
Those authors who have access to funds earmarked for Article Processing Charges (via a research grant or through their institution) will be asked to use those funds to cover the £440 (excl. VAT) APCs of their publication in JESLA. For authors without access to such funds, APCs will be paid by the European Second Language Association.
The APC covers all publication costs (editorial processes; web hosting; indexing; marketing; archiving; DOI registration etc.) and ensures that all of the content is fully open access. This approach maximises the potential readership of publications and allows the journal to be run in a sustainable way.
If you do not know about your institution’s policy on open access funding, please contact your departmental/faculty administrators and institution library, as funds may be available to you.