Top 5 tips for submitting your paper

Posted by Hannah Crago on 2021-03-25

Introduction

Since we put out our first call for papers on our newly launched publishing platform, we’ve seen a great range of content being submitted. We want to keep this going, so we’re sharing some top tips for when you’re preparing to submit to the Essex Student Journal.

Tip 1: Read the submission guidelines

Our submissions guidelines page has a whole range of information to help you tailor your work to the Essex Student Journal. This includes a template document for you to paste your work into, which ensures your document is in the correct format for publication. The submission guidelines also explain about the different formats of paper we accept (see Tip 2), the referencing style you need to use, and more. Basically, the submission guidelines are your one stop shop to making sure your paper is ready to go for submission!

Tip 2: Choose your format wisely

At the Essex Student Journal, we generally accept three types of submission: essays, case studies, and research papers. Each of these formats has a different purpose, and a different structure. Make yourself familiar with these formats by reading through the table on our submissions guidelines page, and decide which one best suits your work. More detailed information on this can also be found in our ‘Preparing to Submit to the Essex Student Journal’ video.

Tip 3: Remember you will need to make some changes to your original assignment

We greatly encourage students to make use of their previous assignments for submission to the Essex Student Journal, but remember that a published piece is different to an assignment. This means you’ll need to make some tweaks to your original work to ensure it matches with our submission guidelines. The audience for the Essex Student Journal is also different from your assignment’s audience which affects the way it’s written (see Tip 4).

Tip 4: Think about your audience

The Essex Student Journal is a multi-disciplinary journal, so your readers are likely not to be experts in your field. Keep this in mind before submitting your paper, and try to explain keywords and concepts without assuming prior knowledge. Signposting and guiding your audience through your paper is also really important, as it keeps the reader focused, and ensures they don’t get lost in your writing.

Tip 5: Choose an engaging title, and make your abstract count!

The title an abstract are usually what your audience base their decision on whether to read the paper. Making sure your title is engaging is therefore essential for capturing the reader’s attention, but it also needs to be informative. Similarly, your abstract should represent the full content of your work in no more than 200 words, so making sure you are concise, but informative, is crucial. Why not have a look at some of the previous work published with the journal to get an idea of how titles and abstracts are written?

More information

All of these tips and more are explored in more depth in our short video on ‘Preparing to Submit tothe Essex Student Journal’. Taking the time to watch this before submitting will help make sure your paper is already well on its way to publication when you submit. If you have any questions please do get in touch. We look forward to reading lots of great submissions to the Essex Student Journal soon!