Manuscript Submission Policy
Contemporary Rural Social Work is an on-line journal sponsored by the National Rural Social Work Caucus. It is published by the Center for Rural Education and Communities (CREC) in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of North Dakota. Submissions to the journal are peer reviewed. The journal publishes scholarly articles, social work practice notes, concepts for best practice in social work education, book and website reviews, and literary or media based reflections on rural culture. The journal encourages submissions of scholarly articles that address current issues related to practice, cultural competence, education, policy, human behavior, diversity, social and economic justice, research, and innovations in the field of rural social work. Articles may be conceptual, empirical, or theoretical and should make substantive contributions to the field.
Articles accepted for inclusion in Contemporary Rural Social Work are original works selected though peer-review. Manuscripts should be original work and should not have been previously published or copyrighted. Authors of articles accepted for publication must sign a Submission Agreement which grants exclusive serial rights to the University of North Dakota. Because this is an electronic journal, manuscripts should be submitted by email as attachments. Submissions must be in either MS Word or HTML. Articles will be published online. Please refer to Instructions for Authors below.
Manuscripts may be submitted to the Editor-in-Chief, Peggy Pittman-Munke.
All submissions should have author identification information. This information should be on a separate page and include:
Author(s) names
Author(s) affiliation(s)
Email address(es)
Phone number(s)
Instructions for Authors
As you prepare to submit your manuscript, we are pleased to provide you with the following checklist in order to ensure that your manuscript moves through our production process as smoothly as possible. All submissions are prescreened for suitability, and papers that fail to comply with these Instructions for Authors and APA guidelines may be rejected without peer review at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief. While your article is under review for CRSW, it cannot be submitted for consideration to any other publication.
Feel free to contact the Editor-in-Chief, Peggy Pittman-Munke if you would like to discuss the suitability of your manuscript for the journal.
As part of the submission process, authors are required to check their submissions’ compliance with all of the following items, and submissions that do not adhere to these guidelines may be returned to authors.
- The submission is original, written by stated authors, and has not been previously published
- The manuscript has not been submitted for publication to another journal and/or is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere while under review by CRSW.
- For writing and editorial style and all manuscript formatting, authors must follow guidelines in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th edition, 2009). Manuscripts may be rejected without review if they do not follow this Instruction.
- Except where otherwise indicated in APA 6th edition, the entire manuscript is double-spaced, uses 12-point Times New Roman font, employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses), and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed at the end of the manuscript with indicators in the text for the location of these elements.
- Spelling and grammar checks have been performed.
- In-text citations and the reference list follow APA (6th edition) guidelines.
- ALL references mentioned in the reference list are cited in the text, and vice versa.
- All authors have read and agree to publish the manuscript.
Helpful websites related to APA, 6th edition guidelines include:
Purdue University's APA Style Guide
Thank you for your thorough attention to the details in the Instructions list above. The time you and your authors take to prepare production-ready manuscripts will expedite the production process and enhance the quality of your journal.
If at any time you have an APA formatting question regarding your manuscript, please contact Angela Holkesvig, Copy Editor.