Send submissions to: merj@bournemouth.ac.uk

There are two options for submission

* Full articles: 5000 – 7000 words, not including references (fully developed outcomes of research)

* MERJ Research Forum pieces: 1500 – 3000 words (interim research findings, ‘thought pieces’, research in development)

Articles submitted to MERJ must be accompanied by:

• author name(s);
• Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCiD);
• email address(es);
• institutional affiliation(s);
• an abstract (200–300 words);
• four keywords.

Style

Please use APA 7th Edition. Principles and examples can be found here: https://apastyle.apa.org

Submissions should be in Word format, with 1.5 line spacing, in a standard 12pt font (e.g. Arial, Helvetica, Times Roman) and be left–justified. Please don’t use additional spaces and returns in order to create indentations.

Avoid using footnotes if possible; there may be occasions when it is unavoidable, but, generally, aim to incorporate the information in the main body of the text.

Author details should be provided on a separate page or file. Please don’t include any author details in a running header or footer, as they will need to be deleted before the article is sent out for anonymised peer review.

Submissions can be in British or American English, but please be consistent.

Images, figures and tables

Please provide any images, figures and tables as separate high resolution files with clear filenames. Indicate their insertion point in the text with the appropriate caption, e.g. “insert Table 1 here with the caption: ‘Dimensions of the motivation framework'”.

Editorial Process

Submissions will be assessed first by the editors to ascertain appropriateness for the journal, and to identify any issues which could be addressed prior to the review process. Preliminary feedback/decisions will be communicated to authors.

The next step is for the submission to be anonymised and reviewed separately by two reviewers with appropriate expertise – a ‘double blind’ process, in which the author’s identity is masked, and the reviewers are not aware of each other’s identities. Reviewers are asked to abide by the Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

The editor will assess the two reports and make a judgement on outcome, which will be communicated to authors, along with the reports. If revisions are requested (which is typical) these will be reviewed by the editor, unless a resubmission is required, in which case the submission will be treated as if it were new.

Before publication authors will be sent a final version of their article for checking.

Note: MERJ is published online, with no corresponding print edition, therefore there is no need for continuous pagination; each article will begin with ‘page 1’.

Agreement to Publish

Authors submitting an article, report or book review do so on the understanding: that it is their own original work to submit; that it has not previously been published in a similar form; that references to other authors’ work are fully and accurately attributed; that they own or have permission to publish any images, figures or tables included; that it is not being considered for publication anywhere else; and that they are happy for it to be made available under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY 4.0).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The Media Education Research Journal is an Open Access journal. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, redistribute, print, search and link to material, and alter, transform, or build upon the material, or use it for any other lawful purpose as long as they attribute the source in an appropriate manner according to the CC BY licence. Authors retain copyright and are free to republish submissions, providing that acknowledgement of prior publication in MERJ (with full citation) is included. We are happy for work to be placed in institutional repositories or individuals’ websites on the same basis of acknowledgement.

MERJ does not charge authors to publish scholarly work – there are no Article Processing Charges (APCs) of any kind.