WOW Stories Call & Guidelines

WOW Stories Call for Manuscripts

WOW Stories: Connections from the Classroom is seeking manuscripts for publication in our refereed electronic journal, which is published two or three times each year. Manuscripts should focus on descriptions of practice connecting children and literature in ways that promote intercultural understanding. We especially welcome submissions by classroom teachers and educators.

Submit your manuscript now using our on-line form.

Manuscripts should:

• Describe classroom or library practice (K-12) that connects children and literature in ways that promote intercultural understanding.
• Take the form of a story or vignette that one educator might tell to another to share the responses of students to literature.
• Include children’s voices where appropriate through quotes of student talk, examples of student work, audio clips, or video clips.
• Include charts, graphs, children’s artifacts, bulleted points, and/or figures wherever possible to vary the format and enhance the content of the article.
• Be less than 2000 words.

As an electronic journal, WOW Stories can accommodate audio/visual clips as part of teacher vignettes. We particularly invite manuscripts written as a story that one educator might tell to another to share the ways in which students engaged with literature. Read the journal to see examples of the types of manuscripts that we are seeking and check back here for submission guideline updates.

Manuscripts are accepted at any time. However, the deadline for submission to the Fall 2010 issue is July 15, 2010. The deadline for submission to the Spring 2011 isue is January 15, 2011.

WOW Stories Call for Proposals for a Journal Issue

We invite literacy communities to submit a proposal for an issue of WOW Stories around a theme related to their use of multicultural or global literature to create intercultural understanding with students. Each two-to-three page proposal should include a description of the topic, a schedule for developing the vignettes, and the names of the authors who wish to contribute to the issue as well as the name of the main contact person. The issue should begin with a short introduction that presents the focus of the issue and introduces readers to the literacy community whose work is featured. The issue should include five or more vignettes around the theme.

Literacy communities include any group of educators from a particular school, library, project, writing group, or university course. Collaborating on an issue provides a community with an opportunity to reflect on their work together and grow in their own understandings as well as to share that work with a broader public. We encourage submissions of proposals and plan to publish two issues a year that are based in a specific community. Proposals for an issue will be submitted to our editorial board.

See Volume I, Issue 1 and Volume I, Issue 2, for examples of an issue from a particular community of educators. Email us with questions or to let us know about your interest in submitting a proposal for an issue.

For specific questions or inquiries, contact Dr. Janine M. Schall at jschall@utpa.edu.

WOW Stories Submission Guidelines

Manuscripts should be e-mailed to wow@email.arizona.edu, or submit your manuscript now using our on-line form.. Upon receipt, the editor will do an initial internal review. Manuscripts appropriate for the journal will be sent to two members of the Editorial Review Board for review. The principal author will receive an e-mail notification if the manuscript is sent out for review; if not, the manuscript will be returned to the principal author with an indication that it is not appropriate for the journal. Do not submit your manuscript to WOW Stories: Connections from the Classroom if it is under consideration for a different journal or publication. Your manuscript must represent original work and can not have been published previously.

Manuscripts sent to the Editorial Review Board will undergo blind review. To facilitate this process, names of the authors should not appear in the body of the manuscript or in any headings or citations. The title page with author contact information should be e-mailed in a separate file from the body of the manuscript. If there is more than one author, the title page should indicate who the main contact person is.

Once the editor receives the reviews, she will share them with the principal author, along with the publication decision–that the manuscript has been accepted pending minor revisions, that revisions are requested prior to a resubmission and further consideration of the manuscript, or that the manuscript is rejected.

Submitted manuscripts should not be currently under consideration by any other publication. The review process will take approximately four months.

Citations and References

Manuscripts should be in APA style. Please check your references to make sure they are formatted correctly.

When citing a source within a sentence use present tense. For example:
“Rosenblatt (1978) writes that transactional theory…..”
“According to Short (1997), children’s literature is…..”

Translations

While the language of WOW Stories: Connections from the Classroom is English, we encourage authors to include student voices in the language used during the learning engagement. However, please provide translations whenever possible.

In written dialogue the translation should go in brackets immediately after the home language.

* Yo voy en el bús a que mi nana. [I take the bus to my grandmother’s.]
* En mi casa todos ayudan, porque así es. Dice mi pa’ que todos tienen que hacer algo, no pueden hacer nada. [At my house everyone helps, because that’s how it is. My dad says that everyone has to do something, they can’t do nothing.]

Figures, Tables, Images, and other Media

If you are including student voices in a language other than English through a video, audio file or podcast, please provide subtitles or an English translation. If this is not possible, integrate an English-language summary into the manuscript so that the reader understands why the video or audio was included in the manuscript.

We encourage the use of figures, tables, images, and multimedia that enhance the content of the article and take advantage of the journal’s electronic format. While your manuscript is undergoing review, these should be integrated into the manuscript and may be lower quality for quick downloading by reviewers.

If your manuscript is accepted for publication, you are responsible for getting it publication-ready:

• Provide web-quality images and media. Images that are not web-quality will not be published.

• Move each figure or table to a separate file. The text of the manuscript along with each figure, table, or other image should be emailed in separate files. Each file should be labeled by Author’s last name Figure/Table Number. For example:

Schall figure 1
Gonzalez table 3

• All images should be titled and an indication must be made where to insert them into the manuscript to connect them to the text. This can be basic, or more detailed. For example:

[Insert Schall Figure 1: Sabrina's Response Journal]

[Insert Schall Figure 1: Sabrina's response journal indicates family reading time was more successful in helping her make connections]

• Images should not be sent as Word documents. Graphics should be either in GIF or JPEG format. All tables should be formatted using the Table tool (versus using tabs).

• If your image was generated in Word (such as a table or chart), it can be saved as a PDF by going to print it but using the PDF option instead. If it is an image placed in Word, then the image needs to be right clicked on and saved as a JPEG.

Photographs

We prefer first generation images. The resolution needs to be at least 640 x 480 and it would be better at 800 x 600. We accept the following formats:

• JPEG (use only the maximum quality compression setting)
• TIFF
• BMP
• GIF

Video

A video file submitted for consideration for publication should be in complete and final format and at as high a resolution as possible. Any editing of the video will be the responsibility of the author. Video files should be submitted in one of the following formats:

• MP4
• QuickTime
• WMV
• MPEG
• RealMedia

For video files over 8MB, authors may be asked to submit a CD or jump drive rather than sending electronically.

Audio

An audio file submitted for consideration for publication should be in complete and final format. Any editing of the audio file will be the responsibility of the author.

We accept files formatted as MP3 or for an iPod.

Consent Forms

We require consent to publish forms from each author.

Additionally, if you are quoting student work or student talk in your manuscript, YOU MUST HAVE INFORMED CONSENT from the student and/or parents. We will not publish a manuscript unless we have proof of consent. To show informed consent you may either:

• Use the WOW Stories form and have each student and/or parent complete and sign the forms.
• Copy the informed consent forms that you used when you did the research or classroom engagement and send those forms to the editor. If you choose to do this option, be aware that your students will no longer be anonymous since the editor will have access to their real names.
• Write a blanket letter of consent stating that you have those forms in hand but are not sharing them to maintain the privacy of the students. If this is the case, then you need to provide a blank copy of your permission form with your letter. This must be the sole purpose of your letter—don’t include other issues regarding your article in the content of the letter. Mail the blanket letter of consent and the blank copy of your permission form to the editor.

If you are using photographs or video clips that show children’s faces within your manuscript you MUST use either the first or second option for each identifiable child.

Publication Considerations

If your manuscript is accepted for publication, the authors must submit consent to publish forms, professional affiliation forms, and student consent forms along with the manuscript and related files in the electronic format as required. If this paperwork or electronic files are not completed the manuscript will not be published.