Submission Guidelines

Authors wishing to submit new or revised manuscripts should go to this Web site and follow the directions for submission: http://editorialexpress.com/efp/

Questions may be directed to the editors at [email protected].

Submission Guidelines for Research Articles

Content

• EFP uses a single-blind review process. The first page of the submission should include:
  • the title of the paper
  • each author's name, title, and affiliation
  • an abstract (200 words or fewer)
  • any acknowledgments
  • disclosure of all sources of financial support (including consulting arrangements) directly related to the research contained in the submission
• Manuscripts should not be under active consideration at any other journal. Author(s) are responsible for explicitly stating how their manuscripts are substantively different from closely-related work by overlapping author(s) that has been or will be submitted to other journals. Manuscripts that are discovered to be under active submission at another journal will automatically be rejected.
• Manuscripts should provide enough descriptive information about data sets and any sample restrictions so that other researchers could replicate findings. Editors expect authors to retain their data and programs for at least five years after article publication, and to share those data and programs with other researchers wishing to replicate or extend the findings. In the case of papers using proprietary data that cannot be released to other researchers, please notify the Editors in the cover letter at the time of submission. If reporting experimental results, please include an Appendix with the instructions and protocol. If reporting original survey results, please include an Appendix providing or describing the survey instrument.

Format and Style

• Manuscripts, including references, should be double-spaced in a font roughly equivalent to Times New Roman 12, and should preferably be limited to 40 pages in total—including tables, figures, and references. Manuscripts over 40 pages may be returned to authors to be cut down prior to review, at editors’ discretion.
  • Appendices may include additional content; these appendices will only be published online. Appendices should be submitted as part of the manuscript document (rather than uploaded separately), but will not count towards page limits.
• Carefully review manuscripts for grammar mistakes and typos prior to submission.
• Manuscripts should be left justified.
• All pages—including tables, appendices, and references—should be serially numbered. Please double-check to make sure that equations, tables, figures, and appendix sections are numbered and listed in the order that they are referred to in the text.
• Each table or figure (graphic) should appear on its own page, located after the main text of the manuscript and the references section.
• Tables and figures should include sufficient notes so as to be straightforward for the reader to interpret without consulting the main text. Accepted manuscripts should follow the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed. Initial submissions may follow guidelines of other accepted styles for formatting generally used in social sciences work (e.g., APA format), but will be expected to reformat according to Chicago Manual of Style guidelines upon conditional acceptance.
• In-text Citations
  • In-text citations for accepted manuscripts must follow Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed.
  • Use the "author-date" system keyed to a list of works in the reference list. In-text citations are in chronological, then alphabetical, order. List all authors up to three; use et al. for four or more authors. For example: (Jones 2007); with two authors, (Jones and Smith 2007); with four or more authors, (Jones et al 2007); with two or more works by one author (Jones 2007, 2012); with more than one source cited together, (Smith 1990; Jones 2007).
  • Include page numbers for direct quotations, for example (Jones 2007, p. 115).
• Reference List
  • Reference list for accepted manuscripts must follow Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed.
  • Arrange citations in alphabetical order according to surname of the first author or name of institution responsible for the citation. List authors for each citation, even when the previous citation has the same author(s).
  • In listing more than one name in references (Cheng, David C., Benton E. Gup, Jr., and Larry D. Wall) use a comma before "and."
  • Dates of publications should be placed immediately after authors' names.
  • Multiple works by the same author should be listed in chronological order of publication. Distinguish two or more works by the same author in the same year using a lower-case letter after the year (2007b). The lower-case letters should indicate the order the articles are cited in the text.

Submission Guidelines for Policy Briefs

Education Finance and Policy welcomes the submission of policy briefs targeted at providing knowledge to education policy makers and stakeholders who are working to affect or implement education policy.

Content

Policy briefs to be published in Education Finance and Policy are intended to provide policy makers and education stakeholders with an understanding of:

• the scope of a problem related to education that is important to policy makers or education stakeholders who are working to affect education policy;
• the state of the literature about this problem and, if applicable, possible policy solutions;
• ideas about possible policy options to address this problem; and
• if appropriate, an argument for a particular policy solution.

Policy briefs may bring to bear new empirical evidence to either describe a problem or a solution. Authors of policy briefs should strive for objectivity; they may make an argument, but the argument should be evidence-based and even-handed in its treatment of policy options.

Audience

The audience for policy briefs published in Education Finance and Policy is policy makers and stakeholders who are working to affect or implement education policy. Briefs should be written in a language accessible to this audience—educated readers who understand the context but may not be familiar with the methodologies used in the research addressing this context. The language used in the briefs should be comprehensible to a non-academic audience and to people who may not be familiar with the language used when discussing a specific topic. The brief should define all key terms.

Format

Policy brief submissions should aim to be no more than 12 pages in length for the main text (e.g., excluding tables, figures, and references). Briefs should be double-spaced and written in Times New Roman size 12 font.

We recommend that policy briefs have the following components:

• introduction summarizing the problem and all key findings,
• problem definition
• objective review of the previous literature
• new empirical evidence (if appropriate)
• discussion of policy alternatives
• recommendation (if appropriate)
• a discussion of the implications for policy and practice

To make the brief easier for policy makers to skim, authors should use headers and sub-headers to highlight key points and to index the information provided in the brief. Where possible, authors should use tables and figures to make key points and/or synthesize information. To avoid bogging down readers, authors should place any technical discussion of methods in table notes or in an Appendix. Appendices will be posted online. Authors should avoid footnotes to the extent possible. The style of a policy brief should be simple and direct. Authors should limit the use of passive voice, avoid sentences with many clauses, and avoid excessive use of adverbs and transitional terms like “for the most part,” "however," "in addition", etc.

Peer Review

Education Finance and Policy uses a single anonymized review process; reviewers know the identities of the authors, but reviewers should only interact directly with the editors and their reviews are submitted anonymously to authors.

Peer Review Taxonomy

Identity transparency: Single anonymized
Reviewer Interacts with: Editor

Review Information Published: None