Writing Rules

Note: Please read the explanations in the Submission Guidelines tab and upload the article. Please DO NOT write PERSONAL INFORMATION in the template file while uploading the article.
- Please fill in the template and upload the during submission. Click for template
- Please fill in the copy right transfer agreement and upload the document during submission. Click for copy right transfer agreement.
- Personal information should not be written in the manuscript file.
- Please provide a 'Title Page' including your personal information such as author names and affiliations, and upload both files in the submission.

The IJCER (International Journal of Contemporary Educational Research) welcomes any papers on educational sciences: especially teaching and teacher education, educational management, counseling and student services, rural education and small schools, elementary and early childhood education, higher education, adult-career, and vocational education, assessment and evaluation, science, reading, english, and communication educational , disabilities and gifted education, mathematics, and environmental education, social studies and social science education and urban education articles. The IJCER is a refereed journal and has a double-blind review. Any manuscript submitted for consideration in publication in the IJCER is reviewed by at least two international reviewers with expertise in the relevant subject area. No submission fee is required for manuscripts. The IJCER is a non-profit journal and publication is completely free of charge. The publication language of the journal is English. Papers must suitable with grammatical rules. For this reason, after all the evaluation processes are completed, the papers should be proofreading. Proofreading is required for all articles to be published in the journal. A paper without proofreading will not be accepted for publication.

IJCER will be more selective in giving further consideration for submissions. Authors must submit an ethics committee approval document for articles published in IJCER (only for necessary papers).The ethics document should including the name of the relevant institution, the date of the document, and the decision-number information of the document. If your study is a paper that does not require an ethics committee document, please indicate this situation. An ethics committee document is not needed for articles produced from theses.

The articles should be original, unpublished, and not in consideration for publication elsewhere at the time of submission to the International Journal of Contemporary Educational Research (IJCER) and during the review process. IJCER will be more selective in giving further consideration for submissions. We decided to lessen the number of articles published to ensure a more rigorous review procedure. Accordingly, the below studies will not be accepted for review process:

- Studies that offer a descriptive review of literature,
- Descriptive studies based on opinions of stakeholders,
- Basic metaphor studies,
- Descriptive quantitative studies using a single instrument and reporting differences in terms of some variables,
- Correlational studies on a field that has been researched to a great extent,
- Studies that are not directly related to educational sciences,
- Qualitative studies that depend too much on positivist paradigm, i.e. quantifying the findings without exerting a through qualitative analysis
- Studies that are too local, that do not depend on international literature, and that are not related to international readers.

The studies listed above may be rejected during the first consideration of the manuscript. An author cannot publish in IJCER until 4 issues have been published following his/her publication. This is valid for both individual articles and shared authorship.

Peer Review Process: Blind review is a method used to make sure scientific publications are produced with the highest quality. This method is fundamental to the objective review of scientific studies and is preferred by many scientific journals. Reviewer views are determinant in the publication quality of the International Journal of Contemporary Educational Research. All manuscripts submitted to the International Journal of Contemporary Educational Research are blind reviewed according to the steps below:

Blind Review Method: International Journal of Contemporary Educational Research uses the double-blind review method in the review process of all studies. In this method the identities of the authors and reviewers are confidential.

Initial Review Process: The studies submitted to the International Journal of Contemporary Educational Research are reviewed by the editors first. At this stage, the studies which are not related with the journal's aim and scope, weak in terms of language and wording, lack originality, contain critical scientific mistakes and do not meet the publishing criteria are rejected. The authors of such studies are informed in one month following the submission date. The studies deemed acceptable, on the other hand, are submitted to a field editor related with the subject of study that the work focuses on.

Pre-review Process: In the pre-review process, the field editors evaluate the introduction and literature, method, findings, results, discussion parts of the studies in detail with respect to the publishing policies and scope of the journal as well as originality. As a result of this process, those studies that are found unacceptable are returned within four weeks the latest together with the field editor report. And the studies which are deemed appropriate are assigned to reviewers.

Assigning Reviewers: Reviewers are assigned according to the content of the studies and their subject of expertise. The field editor who reviews the study recommends two reviewers, based on their subject of expertise, from the reviewer pool of the International Journal of Contemporary Educational Research or a new reviewer related with the subject of study addressed in the article. The recommendations are then evaluated by the editors and the studies are passed on to the reviewers who are obligated to guarantee that they will not share any document or detail about the study they review.

Reviewer Reports: In general, the reviewer reports are based on the originality of the studies, methods, ethical considerations, consistent presentation of the findings and results and analysis of the studies with respect to literature.

Reviewing Process: Reviewers are given 6 weeks for review. It is compulsory for the authors to complete the editing of their work within 1 month according to the rules stated. Reviewers may ask multiple editing of a study if they deem necessary.

Review Result: The field editor evaluates the review by reviewers within 2 weeks at the latest and as a result of this evaluation the field editor informs the editors about his/her final decision regarding the study.

Editorial Board Decision: Based on the review done by the field editor and reviewers, editors report the views of the editorial board to the author(s) in a week at the latest along with the suggestions made by the field editor and reviewers. In this process the studies that are not accepted for publication are returned without request for plagiarism detection. The final decision about the accepted studies is made based on the results of the plagiarism detection report.

How long does the Publication Review Process last? It is anticipated that the publication review process of the studies submitted to the International Journal of Contemporary Educational Research be completed in 3-6 months. However, the period during which editors or reviewers ask the author(s) to do editing and the author(s) complete the editing is not included in this time frame.

Zero-tolerance to Plagiarism

IJCER has a zero-tolerance plagiarism policy. We check the submissions by using two methods: Plagiarism prevention tools and reviewer checks. All submissions will be checked by iThenticate plagiarism prevention software before being sent to reviewers

Text Formatting
-The manuscript should be submitted in Word. Personal information should not be written in the manuscript file. Please fill in the template and upload the during submission. Personal information should not be written in the manuscript file.

- Please provide a 'Title Page' including your personal information such as author names and affiliations, and upload both files in the submission.
- Please fill in the template and upload the document during submission.
- Please fill in the copy right transfer agreement and upload the document during submission.

Please Check Rules below before submission,
Language
Papers are accepted only in English.
Word count:
For submission, it is recommended that your article is within 5000-8000 words (exclude title, author names, affiliations, abstract, keywords, main body, references, appendices).
Page Setup•Please use margins of 2.5 cm (1 inch).
•Please use A-4 page size.
•Please use font style as Times New Roman.
Title Page•Please use 14-point bold for your article title, with an initial capital letter for any proper nouns. Please margin the article title to the center.
•All the authors of a paper should include their full names, affiliations, postal addresses, telephone and fax numbers and email addresses on the title page of the manuscript. One author should be identified as the Corresponding Author. Please use one line for all author names and one line for all author information.
•An informative 10-point bold abstract (100 to 200 words) presenting the main points of the paper and conclusions.
•Please include descriptive keywords (4 to 5). Separate keywords with a comma. Capitalize the first letter of each keyword (e.g., Science education, Survey development).

Main Text
•Please use 10-point font size.
•Please margin the text to the justified.
•Manuscripts should be single spaced.
•Footnotes and endnotes are not accepted. All relevant information should be included in main text.
•Do not indent paragraphs; leave a space of one line between consecutive paragraphs.
•Do not underline words for emphasis. Use italics instead.
•Both numbered lists and bulleted lists can be used if necessary.
•Before submitting your manuscript, please ensure that every in-text citation has a corresponding reference in the reference list. Conversely, ensure that every entry in the reference list has a corresponding in-text citation.

Headings
•Subdivide text into unnumbered sections, using short, meaningful sub-headings. Please do not use numbered headings.
•Please limit heading use to three levels.
•Please use 12-point bold for first-level headings, 10-point bold for second-level headings, and 10-point italics for third -level headings with an initial capital letter for any proper nouns.
•Leave one blank line after each heading and two blank lines before each heading. (Exception: leave one line between consecutive headings.)
•Please margin all headings to the left.

Tables and Figures
•Please embed tables and figures in appropriate areas within the document and center them horizontally. Tables and figures should not exceed the given page margins.
•Provide captions (maximum length: 6 to 8 words) for each table or figure. Centre the caption above the table and below the figure. Please reference the table or figure in the text.
•Please do not use vertical lines in tables.
•For figures, GIF and JPEG (JPG) are the preferred formats.

Acknowledgements or Notes
Please collate acknowledgements or notes in a separate section at the end of the article before the references.

References
•At the end of the article, please list all references in alphabetical order (based on authors’ last names) at the end of the article.
•Please use the level-one heading, “References.”
•Follow the citation procedures of the American Psychological Association (APA 7).

Examples of APA style:
Do not number in-text citations. Provide the last name(s) of the author(s) and the date of publication in parentheses. If the author’s name appears within the sentence, then provide only the date of publication in parentheses.

Examples:

Citation
According to Jones (1998), APA style is a difficult citation format for first-time learners.
APA style is a difficult citation format for first-time learners (Jones, 1998).

Journal article
Harlow, H. F. (1983). Fundamentals for preparing psychology journal articles. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 55, 893-896.
Scruton, R. (1996). The eclipse of listening. The New Criterion, 15(30), 5-13.

Article in a Magazine
Henry, W. A., III. (1990, April 9). Making the grade in today's schools. Time, 135, 28-31.

Newspaper article
Schultz, S. (2005, December 28). Calls made to strengthen state energy policies. The Country Today, pp. 1A, 2A.

Book, authored
Calfee, R. C., & Valencia, R. R. (1991). APA guide to preparing manuscripts for journal publication. American Psychological Association.

Book, edited
Duncan, G. J., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (Eds.). (1997). Consequences of growing up poor. Russell Sage Foundation.

Edited Book with an Author or Authors
Plath, S. (2000). The unabridged journals. K. V. Kukil (Ed.). Anchor.

Edition Other Than the First
Helfer, M. E., Kempe, R. S., & Krugman, R. D. (1997). The battered child (5th ed.). University of Chicago Press.

Article or Chapter in an Edited Book
O'Neil, J. M., & Egan, J. (1992). Men's and women's gender role journeys: A metaphor for healing, transition, and transformation. In B. R. Wainrib (Ed.), Gender issues across the life cycle (pp. 107-123). NY: Springer.

Dissertation, Published
Lastname, F. N. (Year). Title of dissertation. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from Name of database. (Accession or Order Number)

Dissertation, Unpublished
Lastname, F. N. (Year). Title of dissertation. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Name of Institution, Location.

Conference Proceedings
Schnase, J. L., & Cunnius, E. L. (Eds.). (1995). Proceedings from CSCL '95: The First International Conference on Computer Support for Collaborative Learning. Erlbaum.

Internet reference
Angeli, E., Wagner, J., Lawrick, E., Moore, K., Anderson, M., Soderland, L., & Brizee, A. (2010, May 5). General format. Retrieved from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/