Policies

Information for Authors

Submissions to the Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education must meet the following requirements:

Written in APA style, following the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th edition.
Include a separate title page file, which includes complete contact information for all authors, including names, affiliations, complete street addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers. The title page should clearly indicate who the corresponding author will be, which is the individual responsible for communications with the editors, page proofs, and working with the publication and editorial staff.
Written submissions to the journal should be submitted in Times New Roman font, 12-point type, double-spaced, formatted as 8.5” × 11” pages with 1” margins on all sides. Authors should include appropriately formatted subheadings at reasonable intervals. Pages should be numbered consecutively. All abbreviations should be spelled out on their first use except for commonly known abbreviations. Articles will typically range from 4,000 to 7,000 words in length.
The journal welcomes submissions that include artwork, photography, video, and other forms of media. Authors including such media should include appropriate captions, image descriptions, or other means of making the media more universally accessible. For non-static media, such as videos, that are not easily captured in print format, authors should include a stable, permanent link to the media within their manuscript. Authors must supply documentation of permission to publish any media, including, as appropriate, photo releases for individuals appearing in photos, copyright clearance documentation, and/or media release documentation.
Manuscripts submitted for review must be anonymized, which means authors will need to remove all potentially identifying information. Outside of the separate title page file mentioned above, submitted files should not identify the authors, their affiliations, their funding sources, or other information that might identify authors. Authors should also consider anonymizing self-citations when doing so better anonymizes the manuscript. When authors describe themselves within the manuscript (for example, in a positionality section), they should consider describing themselves in ways that are not individually identifiable. For example, authors who describe their institution might do so by describing the institution type and region, rather than naming the institution.
All submissions must include an abstract of 100–120 words and 3–5 keywords. These should be included in the manuscript file in APA style.
In general, authors should avoid notes, but may include footnotes as necessary in compliance with APA style.
The reference list should only include sources cited in the manuscript, and all sources cited in the manuscript must be included in the reference list. All references should include digital object identifiers (DOIs) when possible, and all references must comply with APA style, 7th edition.
Tables and figures, if applicable, should be included in APA style, 7th edition formatting.
All manuscripts must be submitted in English with U.S. English spellings.
Authors who wish to include copyrighted material must submit documentation of permission to use copyrighted materials.
It is the policy of the journal not to reject a paper based on stylistic elements alone.
Authors seeking developmental review, described under the peer review policy section, should directly email the Editors, copying all editors, to initiate developmental review. They should NOT submit their manuscript to the submission system.

In addition, the journal strongly encourages authors to identify marginalized or minoritized populations in affirmative ways that allow adequate specificity. For example, if authors are writing about sexual identities only, the acronym LGBTQ+ is not well-matched to their actual analysis. In another example, the journal encourages authors to avoid deficit language, such as the phrase “sexual and gender minorities,” in favor of more affirming identifiers. Authors should similarly use affirmative and asset-oriented language around race, disability, language, immigration, age, education, and other factors.

Publication Frequency

The journal publishes on a continuing basis, with online publication to an open issue occurring shortly after final typesetting is complete. The journal publishes two issues per year, with additional issues added to accommodate special issues.

Peer Review Policy

The Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education uses doubly anonymous peer review. Reviewers evaluate anonymized manuscripts that conceal the identities of the authors, and authors are not informed of the identities of reviewers.

Upon receipt, each manuscript is evaluated by an Editor or Associate Editor to determine whether it aligns with the journal’s aims and scope and is appropriate for peer review. Manuscripts that proceed to peer review are evaluated by a minimum of two expert reviewers. Reviewers are selected based on their substantive or methodological expertise and their scholarly publication records in areas relevant to the submitted manuscript.

Reviewers are typically drawn from the journal’s Consulting Editors, who constitute a pool of dedicated expert reviewers but do not participate in editorial decision-making. The journal also appoints external ad hoc reviewers when additional subject-matter or methodological expertise is needed. Consulting Editors and ad hoc reviewers provide independent scholarly evaluations; final publication decisions are made separately by the responsible Editor or Associate Editor.

Manuscripts are evaluated based on: (1) their relevance to queer and trans studies in education and the aims and scope of the journal; (2) the quality of the conceptual or theoretical framework and its connections to relevant empirical, theoretical, and other literature; (3) the appropriateness, adequacy, and rigor of the methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry; (4) the extent to which the findings, results, warrants, or arguments are supported by the literature, theory, evidence, or data; (5) the manuscript’s overall contribution to the field and scholarly significance; and (6) the quality, clarity, and organization of the writing.

Final publication decisions for regular issues are made by the Associate Editor. In some cases, the Editor acts as Associate Editor for manuscripts, in which case they make the final publication decision. For special issues, the Special Issue Editor makes a recommendation, and the Editor makes a final publication decision.

The journal also offers a Developmental Review process, which is distinct from the anonymous peer-review process for final publication. In a Developmental Review process, authors are assigned to a Developmental Reviewer who works with the author in non-anonymous review to provide feedback and guidance to improve the manuscript. Developmental Review is available to authors who are early-career scholars, graduate students, international scholars, or new to queer and trans studies research. Developmental Review does not directly result in a publication decision. However, manuscripts that have been through Developmental Review are guaranteed a full review through the typical doubly anonymous peer-review process with the journal; that is, manuscripts that have been through Developmental Review will not receive a “desk reject” decision. In this way, Developmental Review offers authors additional support and guidance in refining their manuscript prior to formal publication review for the journal. Authors seeking developmental review, described under the peer review policy section, should directly email the Editors, copying all editors, to initiate developmental review. They should NOT submit their manuscript to the submission system.

The journal recognizes the COPE practices for ethics in peer review.

Publication Ethics

The Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education has a commitment to publication ethics and practices consistent with the COPE Core Practices. Related to this commitment, all editors, editorial staff, and editorial board members complete publication ethics training. The journal also endorses and complies with the APA Code of Ethics and the AERA Code of Ethics. In particular, the journal fully endorses and utilizes the APA and AERA Codes of Ethics with regard to allegations of misconduct, authorship credit, complaints and appeals, conflicts of interest, data sharing and reproducibility, and research ethics.

Specifically, the journal requires that all authors be credited for authorship in accordance with the APA and AERA Codes of Ethics on authorship. Additionally, the journal prohibits plagiarism. All content that originates from existing material must be appropriately cited and credited within the manuscript. Plagiarism constitutes misconduct and is grounds for rejection or retraction.

All allegations of misconduct should be directed to the Editors, who will initiate an appropriate investigation of the allegations. Similarly, all complaints and appeals related to the peer-review and publication process should be directed to the Editors, who will initiate an appropriate investigation of the allegations.

Conflicts of interest and competing interests: The journal requires that all authors, contributors, reviewers, and editorial board members disclose potential conflicts of interest as defined in the American Psychological Association position. Publications that involve an actual or potential conflict of interest must include a conflict-of-interest statement.

Data and reproducibility: Authors are encouraged to engage in transparent research processes. The journal also acknowledges that reproducibility, as a concept, is embedded in particular onto-epistemological considerations that may not apply to all ways of doing research or conceptualizations of knowledge. The journal encourages authors to share their data, when doing so is appropriate and ethically responsible, in compliance with both the AERA Code of Ethics and the APA Code of Ethics.

Human subjects research: All research involving human participants must have received appropriate ethical review and approval, or a formal determination of exemption, from an Institutional Review Board, research ethics committee, or equivalent body before the research was conducted. Authors must identify the approving body and, when applicable, the approval number in the manuscript. Authors must also confirm that informed consent was obtained from participants, or that the appropriate ethics body approved a waiver or alteration of consent. When participants are minors or otherwise unable to provide legally effective consent, authors must obtain appropriate permission and assent consistent with applicable ethical and legal requirements. Separate consent must be obtained for the publication of identifiable information, images, recordings, or other materials when participants could reasonably be recognized.

When appropriate, the journal will publish corrections or retractions to published articles.

Statement Regarding Support and Funding

The Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education is published by Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and financially supported by the VCU Libraries and the VCU School of Education. The journal also accepts donations from individuals and organizations to support the work of the journal and to support our efforts to fund graduate students in the field.

Copyright Policy

Authors submitting work for publication in the Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education agree to assign the exclusive right to publish, reproduce, and license the work to the journal. The journal publishes all works under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license. All articles in the journal are Open Access and may be freely downloaded and shared in their original version for any non-commercial purpose, provided that the journal is properly credited. Authors also agree that the journal may permit commercial uses of articles, such as for the purposes of indexing and publicizing the journal and research published in it. Whenever possible, shared versions should directly link to the journal, ideally by linking to the digital object identifier (DOI). Authors are free to post published versions of their articles to archives, preprint servers, and institutional repositories, provided that they link directly to the journal’s version of record whenever possible by linking to the DOI.

This is an Open Access journal, which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or their institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of Open Access.

Privacy Statement

Information supplied to the journal for the purposes of manuscript submission and peer review will not be sold or provided to any third parties for marketing or other purposes. However, it may be used for the purposes of communicating about the journal.

Financially Supporting the Journal

The Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education is a platinum Open Access journal, meaning everything published by the journal is available for free to anyone throughout the world with no subscription or access fees. The journal also does not charge authors any fees for publication, article processing fees, or other mandatory fees of any kind. As a result, the journal relies on donations for our financial support, in addition to support from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Education and the Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries.

The journal recommends that submitting authors consider a donation to the journal to support its operation and Open Access model. No donation is ever required for submission or publication, and the presence or amount of a donation has absolutely no bearing on publication decisions for the journal. We recommend authors consider a donation of $50 per submission to support the work of the journal.

The journal also happily accepts individual donations from anyone interested in supporting the work of the journal. We are able to accept one-time donations or recurring monthly contributions. Those interested in considering a sponsorship of the journal should contact the Editors. All donations to the journal are processed by the VCU Foundation, a nonprofit organization affiliated with Virginia Commonwealth University, and are tax deductible for U.S. federal income tax purposes.

Donations are accepted through our online donation portal via the VCU Foundation.

The journal is archived in APTrust.

Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Model Use Policy

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) and large language model (LLM) tools present opportunities for researchers, while also presenting ethical and moral challenges. These tools have substantial challenges with bias, inaccuracy, hallucinated content, and unauthorized reproduction and use of intellectual property. They additionally present tensions with an ethic of liberation and justice in their environmental and human labor repercussions. The Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education (JQTSIE) urges authors to carefully consider appropriate and ethical uses of AI and LLM tools in their research. Additionally, we provide the following requirements for manuscripts submitted to the journal:

No AI or LLM tool may be listed as an author. They lack the capacity to assume responsibilities required for authorship, to enter into agreements necessary for publication, and to meet other requirements of authorship. Additionally, as described further below, JQTSIE requires manuscripts submitted for publication to be human-authored.
All manuscripts must be written by human authors. The use of AI or LLM tools to generate substantial portions of the manuscript text is prohibited for this journal. This does not preclude the use of AI or LLM tools for ideation, to brainstorm organization, to gain feedback on flow or argumentation, or to check grammar and spelling. However, all language in the manuscript must ultimately be that of the authors.
Any use of AI or LLM tools must be clearly and completely disclosed within the manuscript. If authors are using AI or LLM tools in any way, they must describe what tools they used, how they used them, and what the outcomes of that use were. This is consistent with research best practices, in that it provides readers with transparency into the research process and the decisions made by the authors. Those choices will be subject to the same scrutiny by reviewers as the use of other techniques or tools in research.
AI and LLM tools may not be used to create or manipulate figures, images, or any form of research data. The exception to this is research in which the focus is on AI- or LLM-generated images or data, in which case the authors would clearly discuss the fact that the data, figures, or images had been created or manipulated by AI or LLM tools.

If JQTSIE, its Editors, Associate Editors, Consulting Editors, Reviewers, or Editorial Assistants suspect that AI or LLM tools may have been used in ways that do not comply with these policies, they will notify the Editor who handles inquiries and appeals, who will initiate a scientific-integrity inquiry in compliance with COPE ethical standards and journal policies.

In addition to these requirements for authors, the journal strictly prohibits the use of AI or LLM tools in the peer-review process. Specifically, the journal prohibits any reviewer or member of the editorial board from uploading or otherwise providing manuscripts to any AI or LLM system for any purpose. This practice protects the intellectual property rights of the authors while also ensuring the integrity of our peer-review process. Reviewers may only use AI or LLM models for feedback on readability, expression, grammar, and spelling in their own review text, but they may never provide any portion of the authors’ manuscript to any AI or LLM tool.

The journal uses AI or LLM tools, including grammar-checking software, in the copyediting process. In using grammar-checking software, the journal only uses “correctness” screens and has disabled the generative suggestions. No other aspect of journal processes utilizes AI or LLM tools.

Address

This journal is published in collaboration with the VCU School of Education.

1015 West Main Street
Richmond, VA 23220