Submission Policies

Who Can Submit?

Anyone may submit an original article to be considered for publication in Middle Grades Review provided the author owns the copyright to the work being submitted or is authorized by the copyright owner or owners to submit the article. Authors are the initial owners of the copyrights to their works (an exception in the non-academic world to this might exist if the authors have, as a condition of employment, agreed to transfer copyright to their employer).

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 MGR, 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 MGR. If you have concerns about the submission terms for MGR, please contact the editors.

Submission Types

1. Essays pose opinion, positing or discussing theory, and/or offering critique (under 3,000 words, excluding references). Using an academic tone, essays take a stance on a specific topic, issue, conceptual framework or policy to bring a new perspective. Essays call for readers to act and think anew.
   
   
2. Research and Inquiry are reports of original research that represent any paradigm or methodology (under 7,500 words, excluding references). Although not required, MGR prioritizes inquiry that involves middle grades students in at least one of the following ways: as participants, consultants or co-researchers.
   
   
3. Practitioner Perspectives are accounts of teacher and/or student practice (under 3,000 words, excluding references). Practitioner perspectives discuss practices grounded in relevant literature and research. They describe implementation through personal experience, share observations and/or findings, and consider the implications of such practices.
   
   
4. Responses are brief responses to previous articles in any of the above three categories. Responses should stimulate debate in the middle grades community by extending the original manuscript’s content, or by presenting an opposing interpretation or perspective (under 2,000 words, excluding references).

Because MGR is an online venue, authors are encouraged to include digital media that support the manuscript. These include links to other sites, embedded audio and/or visual, and visual representations of student work or other data.

Formatting Requirements

MGR has no general rules about the formatting of articles upon initial submission. There are, however, rules governing the formatting of the final submission. See Final Manuscript Preparation Guidelines for details. It is ultimately the responsibility of the author to produce an electronic version of the article as a Microsoft Word file.

All manuscripts must be written in APA Style, 7th edition. 

It is understood that the current state of technology of Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) is such that there are no, and can be no, guarantees that PDF documents will work perfectly with all possible hardware and software configurations.

Rights for Authors, Attribution and Usage Policies

Authors of original work accepted for publication in Middle Grades Review grant first publication rights to Middle Grades Review but retain ownership of the copyright of their content and all other rights. All content, unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC-BY-NC-ND) license, which permits unrestricted noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that it is properly attributed. Please see the Copyright Statement for a full explanation of copyright.

The corresponding author must include a signed Author Agreement Form, acknowledging the Copyright Statement, with the submission.

Corrections and Retractions

If only a small part of an article reports flawed data or unethically plagiarizes a few sentences, MGR and UVM Press reserve the right to issue a correction. If an article is seriously flawed based on intentional misconduct, includes a conflict of interest, or includes largely plagiarized sections, MGR and UVM Press reserve the right to retract or remove the work.

Conflicts of Interest and Funding Sources

Authors must declare conflicts of interest and/or sources of funding.

Human Subjects Research and IRB approval

Research involving human participants must be approved by the authors’ Institutional Review Board or equivalent committee.