Submissions

Author Guidelines

Manuscript Preparation

Below follows a description on what to consider when preparing and submitting a AER manuscripts for AEJ. Should you want to submit a astronomy education and practicve manuscript, you should consult the instructions at the end.

Content Guidelines for AER manuscripts

Readability and Accessibility:
Take special care to ensure that manuscripts are well organized, clearly written in scientific English, and written in a style consistent with that of other scientific and educational journals, such as Physical Review Physics Eduactioan Review, Science Education, Science, or Nature. It is not possible for editors to undertake extensive corrections of manuscripts, due to time constraints and the risk that the authors’ meaning might be distorted. If your first language is not English, you must consider seeking help from a native English speaker when writing your manuscript or have it edited by an academic translation service. 
To eliminate grammatical errors, misspellings, and omission of symbols, we strongly recommend you to carefully proofread your manuscript before submission.

The manuscript text should be directed at a general readership audience, so as to make it understandable to a broad spectrum of researchers. We strongly recommend avoiding jargon and the excessive use of acronyms, even for commonly used terms. If jargon and acronyms are necessary, please define them in the text the first time they are used.

To enhance readability, use the provided templates and display all but the simplest equations, rather than including them as inline text. Format figures and tables such that their content and details are readable when they are sized for the journal page.

General Content:
Clearly state the relation of the submitted manuscript to previously published peer-reviewed work, including papers, meeting abstracts, and conference proceedings. 

Length:
AEJ has no word limits but encourages authors to write short and concise, using a clear language.

Manuscript Format:

The final version of the manuscript will be uploaded by Astronomy Education Journal staff as a standard LaTeX format.  We appreciate that some authors are expert in LaTeX while other authors have never even heard of the acronym. Hence, we accept both Word and LaTeX submissions. If you are comfortable with LaTeX, please use the provided tempate. You can also submit in Word, using this template

The template can be uploaded as a zip file into Overleaf if you have access. If you are more comfortable with Word, this is also acceptable. While images can be embedded into the Word or LaTex document, the highest resolution versions should also be included separately. If you are using LaTeX, please upload a pdf of your article as well as the source files.

Please note that AEJ uses APA-like referencing.

If in further doubt email: urban.eriksson@fysik.lu.se

Articles must adequately reference the academic and practitioner literature to place the article in context.

Resubmission

If the editor requires revision following the first round of reviews. You will need to log into the AEJ journal system, and select the article in your submissions page. To intiate the second review stage you will need to: 

1. Upload the new file in the revisions section. To upload a new file click on ‘Upload file.’ A new window will open allowing you to upload your file(s). Select the appropriate option from the dropdown menu
2. Ensure that you clearly highlight all the changes made (for example using Track changes, or commenting in a PDF)
3. Ensure that you submit a separate document "Author Response to Reviewer". This document clearly lists all the changes that have been made. We have a template (Word and LaTeX) with line numbers available that will allow you to easily reference where the changes are located.
4. Once the revised files have uploaded, ensure that you see the correct files under revision.
5. Add a discussion by clicking on the "Add discussion" link, to the right of "Review Discussions". This will notify the editor that you have re-submitted. If you receive an error in this step, please send an email to urban.eriksson@fysik.lu.se, notifying the editor that you have resubmitted.

The peer review process will be repeated, and you will likely receive additional revisions to make. Once these are completed and accepted, you will then be moved to the next stage.

Review Process and Status Updates

Once you have submitted your manuscript, you can log in to the AEJ website and see at which stage your manuscript is situated. This will be visible by clicking on the Review link or tab. Some of common status updates:

A Review is Overdue: This means that your manuscript has been sent for review but the reviewers have not replied as yet. 

New Reviews have been submitted and are being considered by the Editor: This means that we have received the reviews and the editor will do a final check before making a final decision.

Awaiting response from reviewers: This means that the reviewers have been notified of the manuscript and have yet to reply. They are still within the deadline limit set by the editor.