Instructions for authors
About the journal
International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology is an international, peer-reviewed journal publishing high-quality, original research. Please see the journal's Aims & Scope for information about its focus and peer-review policy.
Please note that this journal only publishes manuscripts in English.
International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology accepts experimental, review and theoretical discussion papers, with quantitative and/or qualitative methods.
Open access
You have the option to publish open access in this journal via our Open Select publishing program. Publishing open access means that your article will be free to access online immediately on publication, increasing the visibility, readership and impact of your research. Articles published Open Select with Taylor & Francis typically receive 32% more citations* and over 6 times as many downloads** compared to those that are not published Open Select.
Your research funder or your institution may require you to publish your article open access. Visit our Author Services website to find out more about open access policies and how you can comply with these.
You will be asked to pay an article publishing charge (APC) to make your article open access and this cost can often be covered by your institution or funder. Use our APC finder to view the APC for this journal.
Please visit our Author Services website or contact openaccess@tandf.co.uk if you would like more information about our Open Select Program.
*Citations received up to Jan 31st 2020 for articles published in 2015-2019 in journals listed in Web of Science®.
**Usage in 2017-2019 for articles published in 2015-2019.
Peer review
Taylor & Francis is committed to peer-review integrity and upholding the highest standards of review. All manuscripts are peer-reviewed, typically by two experts, with relevant expertise, and the journal Editor.
Find out more about what to expect during peer review and read our guidance on publishing ethics.
Preparing your paper
Reporting guidelines
The editor requires that manuscripts adhere to recognised reporting guidelines relevant to the research design used. The checklists identify essential matters that should be considered and reported upon in your paper. They are not quality assessment frameworks and your study need not meet all the criteria implied in the reporting guideline to be worthy of publication in the journal.You are required to submit a checklist from the appropriate reporting guideline with your paper as a guide to the editor and reviewers of your paper.Reporting guidelines endorsed by the journal are listed below:
Observational cohort, case control and cross sectional studies — STROBE — Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology http://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/strobe/
Randomised (and quasi-randomised) controlled trial — CONSORT — Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials http://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/consort/
Study of diagnostic accuracy/assessment scale — STARD — Standards for the Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies, http://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/stard/
Systematic review of controlled trials — PRISMA — Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses http://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/prisma/
Qualitative researchers might wish to consult the guideline Qualitative studies — COREQ — Consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research http://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/coreq/
Ethical guidelines
The International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology adheres to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) code of conduct for editors. Our guidelines should be read in conjunction with this broader guidance. The COPE guidelines can be found at https://publicationethics.org/about/guide/journal-editors
All studies must be conducted to a high ethical standard and must adhere to local regulations and standards for gaining scrutiny and approval.
For information on Taylor & Francis's ethical guidelines for journal publication, see https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com/ethics-for-authors/ .
Informed consent and patient details: Studies on patients or volunteers require ethics committee approval and informed consent, which should be documented in the paper. Appropriate consents, permissions and releases must be obtained where an author wishes to include case details or other personal information or images of patients and any other individuals in a publication. Written consents must be retained by the author and copies of the consents or evidence that such consents have been obtained must be provided to Taylor & Francis on submission. Unless you have written permission from the patient (or, where applicable, the next of kin), the personal details of any patient included in any part of the article and in any supplementary materials (including all illustrations and videos) must be removed before submission.
Structure
Your paper should be compiled in the following order: title page; abstract; keywords; main text; acknowledgments; declaration of interest statement; references; appendices (as appropriate); table(s) with caption(s) (on individual pages); figures; figure captions (as a list).
Word count
Please include a word count for your paper. A typical paper for this journal should not exceed 30 pages.
Style guidelines
Articles can be accompanied by supplementary audio and video files. This feature is encouraged.
Manuscripts should be in English, in 12-point type, double-spaced throughout including the reference section, with 2.5 cm margins.
The title page of the submission should include the article title, the author(s) name(s) and affiliation(s), and the complete mailing address of the author to whom all correspondence should be sent, the running head and up to five key words. This page should be uploaded as a separate document to enable blind peer review.
Please use the terms 'speech-language pathology' and 'speech-language pathologist' to ensure consistency throughout the journal.
Figures should be supplied as sharp, black and white graphs or diagrams, drawn professionally or with a computer graphics package. To ensure quality reproduction, figures should be supplied as high-resolution (minimum 300 d.p.i.) files, saved in .tif or .eps format.
Authors wishing to remain anonymous during the review process should ensure that no clues remain as to the identity of the author(s) following removal of the title page.
Please write clearly and concisely, stating your objectives clearly and defining your terms. Your arguments should be substantiated with well-reasoned supporting evidence.
For all manuscripts, gender-, race-, and creed-inclusive language is mandatory.
Preference of US to 'American', USA to 'United States', and UK to 'United Kingdom'.
Use of conservative British, not US, spelling, i.e. colour not color; behaviour (behavioural) not behavior; [he] practises not practices; centre not center; organisation not organization; analyse not analyze, etc.
Double "quotes" are used for quotations rather than single 'quotes', unless the "quote is 'within' another quote".
Punctuation should follow the British style, e.g. "quotes precede punctuation".
Punctuation of common abbreviations should follow the following conventions: e.g., i.e., cf. Note that such abbreviations are not followed by a comma or a (double) point/period.
Dashes: M-dash should be clearly indicated in manuscripts by way of either a clear dash (-) or a triple hyphen (---), N-dash should be indicated by a clear dash (-) or a double hyphen (--).
Apostrophes should be used sparingly. Thus, decades should be referred to as follows: 'The 1980s [not the 1980's] saw ...'. Possessives associated with acronyms (e.g. APU), should be written as follows: 'The APU's findings that ...', but, NB, the plural is APUs.
All acronyms for national agencies, examinations, etc., should be spelled out the first time they are introduced in text or references. Thereafter the acronym can be used if appropriate, e.g. 'The work of the Assessment of Performance Unit (APU) in the early 1980s ...'. Subsequently, 'The APU studies of achievement ...', in a reference ... (Department of Education and Science [DES] 1989a).
Brief biographical details of significant national figures should be outlined in the text unless it is quite clear that the person concerned would be known internationally. Some suggested editorial emendations to a typical text are indicated in the following with square brackets: 'From the time of H. E. Armstrong [in the 19th century] to the curriculum development work associated with the Nuffield Foundation [in the 1960s], there has been a shift from heurism to constructivism in the design of [British] science courses'.
The preferred local (national) usage for ethnic and other minorities should be used in all papers. For the USA, African-American, Hispanic, and Native American are used, e.g. "The African American presidential candidate, Jesse Jackson..." For the UK, African-Caribbean (not "West Indian"), etc.
n (not N), % (not per cent) should be used in typescripts.
Numbers in text should take the following forms: 300, 3000, 30 000. Spell out numbers under 10 unless used with a unit of measure, e.g. nine pupils but 9 mm (do not introduce periods with measure). For decimals, use the form 0.05 (not .05).
When using a word which is or is asserted to be a proprietary term or trade mark authors must use the symbol ® or ™ or alternatively a footnote can be inserted using the following wording: This article includes a word which is or is asserted to be a proprietary term or trade mark. Its inclusion does not imply it has acquired for legal purposes a non-proprietary or general significance, nor is any other judgement implied concerning its legal status.
Formatting
Papers may be submitted in Word format. Figures should be saved separately from the text.
References
References should follow American Psychological Association (APA) guidelines. Where a reference is cited within the text and contains more than two but less than six authors, cite all authors the first time the reference occurs; thereafter, only the surname of the first author followed by "et al." and the year need be included. In the reference list, references should be listed alphabetically then chronologically under each author. Please include DOI numbers when known.
Please include no more than 40 references for articles and no more than 50 references for reviews.
References should be as follows:
References to an entire book
Bernthal, J. E., Bankson, N. W., & Flipsen Jr., P. (Eds.) (2009). Articulation and phonological disorders: Speech sound disorders in children. (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.
References to a chapter in a book
Ingram, D. (2008). Cross-linguistic phonological acquisition. In M. J. Ball, M. R. Perkins, N. Müller & S. Howard (Eds.), The handbook of clinical linguistics (pp. 626-640). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Reference to an article in a journal
Tomblin, J. B., O'Brien, M., Shriberg, L. D., Williams, C., Murray, J., Patil, S., et al. (2009). Language features in a mother and daughter of a chromosome 7;13 translocation involving FOXP2. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 52(5), 1157-1174.
Proceedings, technical reports and unpublished literature
Langevin, M. (1997). Peer teasing project. In E. Healey and H. F. M. Peters (Eds.) 2nd World Congress on Fluency Disorders: Proceedings (pp. 169-171). The Netherlands: Nijmegen University Press.
Report from the National Technical Information Service (NTIS)
Osgood, D.W., & Wilson, J. K., (1990). Covariation of adolescent health problems. Lincoln: University of Nebraska. (NTIS No. PB 91-154 377/AS)
Unpublished literature: Use brackets, if necessary, to indicate that the material is a description of content, not a title.
Bordi, F., & LeDoux, J. E. (1993). [Auditory response latencies in rat auditory cortex]. Unpublished raw data.
Reference to a newspaper or magazine
Alphabetize works with no author by the first significant word in the title.
New drug appears to sharply cut risk of death from heart failure. (1993, July 15). The Washington Post, p. 12.
Kandel, E. R., & Squire, L. R. (2000, November 10). Neuroscience: Breaking down scientific barriers to the study of brain and mind. Science, 290, 1113–1120.
Reference to an Internet source
Give the universal resource locator in full
Chambers, J. G., Kidron, Y., & Spain, A. K., (May, 2004). Report 8: Characteristics of high-expenditure students with disabilities, 1999-2000. United States Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs, American Institutes for Research. http://www.csef-air.org/publications/seep/national/Rpt8.pdf accessed 16th August, 2005.
Reference to a personal communication
T. K. Lutes (personal communication, April 18, 2006)
Reference to a case in law
In text, italicize names of plaintiffs and defendants: Red v. Green 2004
Reference to government legislation
US Congress, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 1956 The Mutual Security Act of 1956, 84th Congress, second session, report 2273.
Checklist: what to include
Author details Please ensure everyone meeting the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME) requirements for authorship is included as an author of your paper.
All authors of a manuscript should include their full name and affiliation on the cover page of the manuscript. Where available, please also include ORCiDs and social media handles (Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn). One author will need to be identified as the corresponding author, with their email address normally displayed in the article PDF (depending on the journal) and the online article. Authors' affiliations are the affiliations where the research was conducted. If any of the named co-authors moves affiliation during the peer-review process, the new affiliation can be given as a footnote. Please note that no changes to affiliation can be made after your paper is accepted. Read more on authorship.
A structured abstract of 200 words. For papers reporting original research, a structured abstract with the following headings should be included:
Purpose: State the primary objective and any hypothesis tested;
Method: describe the research design and your reasons for adopting that methodology; state the methods and procedures employed, including where appropriate tools, hardware, software, the selection and number of study areas/subjects, and the central experimental interventions;
Result: state the main outcomes and results, including relevant data; and
Conclusion: state the conclusions that might be drawn from these data and results, including their implications for further research or application/practice.
For review essays, your structured abstract should follow this format:
Purpose: state the primary objective of the review;
Method: state the reasoning behind your literature selection; and the way you critically analyse the literature;
Result: state the main outcomes and results of your review; and
Conclusion: state the conclusions that might be drawn, including their implications for further research or application/practice. Read tips on writing your abstract.
Graphical abstract. This is an image to give readers a clear idea of the content of your article. It should be a maximum width of 525 pixels. If your image is narrower than 525 pixels, please place it on a white background 525 pixels wide to ensure the dimensions are maintained. Save the graphical abstract as a .jpg, .png, or .gif. Please do not embed it in the manuscript file but save it as a separate file, labelled GraphicalAbstract1.
You can opt to include a video abstract with your article. Find out how these can help your work reach a wider audience, and what to think about when filming.
6 keywords. Read making your article more discoverable, including information on choosing a title and search engine optimisation.
Funding details. Please supply all details required by your funding and grant-awarding bodies as follows:
For single agency grants
This work was supported by the under Grant .
For multiple agency grants
This work was supported by the under Grant ; under Grant ; and ; under Grant .
Disclosure statement. This is to acknowledge any financial interest or benefit that has arisen from the direct applications of your research. Further guidance on what is a conflict of interest and how to disclose it.
Data availability statement. If there is a data set associated with the paper, please provide information about where the data supporting the results or analyses presented in the paper can be found. Where applicable, this should include the hyperlink, DOI or other persistent identifier associated with the data set(s). Templates are also available to support authors.
Data deposition. If you choose to share or make the data underlying the study open, please deposit your data in a recognized data repository prior to or at the time of submission. You will be asked to provide the DOI, pre-reserved DOI, or other persistent identifier for the data set.
Supplemental online material. Supplemental material can be a video, dataset, fileset, sound file or anything which supports (and is pertinent to) your paper. We publish supplemental material online via Figshare. Find out more about supplemental material and how to submit it with your article.
Animations are limited to 30 seconds. Animations in the following forms (in order of preference) can be accepted from authors:
AVI's, QuickTime or Mpeg files
A sequence of still images
The following formats can be accepted:
All uncompressed formats widely used on PC, Mac and UNIX
JPEG for coloured and compressed images (suffix .jpg or .jpeg)
TIFF with a group IV compression for black and white compressed images (suffix .tiff)
EPS files for vector and a combination of vector and bitmap images (suffix .eps)
Authors who submit animations are requested to provide the following information:
AVI, QuickTime or Mpeg files-version used, and system used for disc file creation
Sequences of still images-format used, version, and system used for disc file creation Authors who are unable to supply the following: AVI, QuickTime or Mpeg file(s), may provide the publisher with a set of sequential still images. Note that an animated sequence will consist of 13 to 15 still images per second of animation; e.g. if an animated sequence is 10 seconds in duration, it is made up of 130 images. Animation should be mentioned in the text. Indicate an approximate location for the animation call-out in the margin.
Movie files. Movie files should be submitted as AVI, QuickTime or Mpeg file. These should be uncompressed and in a universal format for PC or Mac. For ease of download, the recommended upper limit for the size of a single file is 10 megabytes. When the size of a single file is bigger than this, some users may experience problems when downloading. Whenever possible, therefore this limit should be adhered to.
Sound files. Sound files should be submitted as .WAV or .MP3 files. These should be uncompressed and in a universal format for PC or Mac.
Figures and tables.Figures should be high quality (1200 dpi for line art, 600 dpi for grayscale and 300 dpi for colour). Figures should be saved as TIFF, PostScript or EPS files. Tables should present new information rather than duplicating what is in the text. Readers should be able to interpret the table without reference to the text. Please supply editable files. The usual statistical conventions should be used: a value written 10.0 ± 0.25 indicates the estimate for a statistic (e.g. a mean) followed by its standard error. A mean with an estimate of the standard deviation will be written 10.0 SD 2.65. Contributors reporting ages of subjects should specify carefully the age groupings: a group of children of ages e.g. 4.0 to 4.99 years may be designated 4 +; a group aged 3.50 to 4.49 years 4 ± and a group all precisely 4.0 years, 4.0. 1. Tables and figures should be referred to in text as follows: Figure 1, Table I, i.e. upper case. 'As seen in Table [or Figure] I [or 1]...' (not Tab., fig. or Fig). 2. Each table and/or figure must have a title that explains its purpose without reference to the text.
Phonetic fonts. To ensure that phonetic fonts convert to pdf correctly, use the font DoulosSIL. This can be downloaded free of charge from www.sil.org. Fonts must also be embedded. To do this click Tools from the top menu bar, go to Options and select the Save tab. Tick the box to 'Embed TrueType Fonts' and click OK. Authors are also asked to upload a pdf copy of their manuscript, designated as 'file not for review'. In the event that phonetic fonts do not convert properly, this will expedite the review process.
Mathematics.Special care should be taken with mathematical scripts, especially subscripts and superscripts and differentiation between the letter 'ell' and the figure one, and the letter 'oh 'and the figure zero. If your keyboard does not have the characters you need, it is preferable to use longhand, in which case it is important to differentiate between capital and small letters, K, k and x and other similar groups of letters. Special symbols should be highlighted in the text and explained in the margin. In some cases it is helpful to supply annotated lists of symbols for the guidance of the sub-editor and the typesetter, and/or a 'Nomenclature' section preceding the 'Introduction'. For simple fractions in the text, the solidus / should be used instead of a horizontal line, care being taken to insert parentheses where necessary to avoid ambiguity, for example, I/(n-1). Exceptions are the proper fractions available as single type on a keyboard. Full formulae or equations should be displayed, that is, written on a separate line. Horizontal lines are preferable to solidi. The solidus is not generally used for units: ms - 1 not m/s, but note electrons/s, counts/channel, etc. Displayed equations referred to in the text should be numbered serially (1, 2, etc.) on the right hand side of the page. Short expressions not referred to by any number will usually be incorporated in the text. Symbols should not be underlined to indicate fonts except for tensors, vectors and matrices, which are indicated with a wavy line in the manuscript (not with a straight arrow or arrow above) and rendered in heavy type in print: upright sans serif r (tensor), sloping serif r (vector) upright serif r (matrix). Typographical requirements must be clearly indicated at their first occurrence, e.g. Greek, Roman, script, sans serif, bold, italic. Authors will be charged for corrections at proof stage resulting from a failure to do so. Braces, brackets and parentheses are used in the order {[( )]}, except where mathematical convention dictates otherwise (i.e. square brackets for commutators and anticommutators). If you are submitting your manuscript as a Word document, please ensure that equations are editable. More information about mathematical symbols and equations.
Units. Please use SI units (non-italicized).
Using third-party material in your paper
If you wish to include any material in your paper for which you do not hold copyright, you will need to obtain written permission from the copyright owner prior to submission. More information on requesting permission to reproduce work(s) under copyright.
Declaration of interest
Please include a declaration of interest statement, using the subheading "Declaration of interest." If you have no interests to declare, please state this (suggested wording: The authors report no declarations of interest). For all NIH/Wellcome-funded papers, the grant number(s) must be included in the declaration of interest statement. Read more on declaring conflicts of interest.
Clinical Trials Registry
In order to be published in a Taylor & Francis journal, all clinical trials must have been registered in a public repository at the beginning of the research process (prior to patient enrolment). Trial registration numbers should be included in the abstract, with full details in the methods section. The registry should be publicly accessible (at no charge), open to all prospective registrants, and managed by a not-for-profit organization. For a list of registries that meet these requirements, please visit the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP). The registration of all clinical trials facilitates the sharing of information among clinicians, researchers, and patients, enhances public confidence in research, and is in accordance with the ICMJE guidelines.
Complying with ethics of experimentation
Please ensure that all research reported in submitted papers has been conducted in an ethical and responsible manner, and is in full compliance with all relevant codes of experimentation and legislation. All papers which report in vivo experiments or clinical trials on humans or animals must include a written statement in the Methods section. This should explain that all work was conducted with the formal approval of the local human subject or animal care committees (institutional and national), and that clinical trials have been registered as legislation requires. Authors who do not have formal ethics review committees should include a statement that their study follows the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki.
Consent
All authors are required to follow the ICMJE requirements on privacy and informed consent from patients and study participants. Please confirm that any patient, service user, or participant (or that person's parent or legal guardian) in any research, experiment, or clinical trial described in your paper has given written consent to the inclusion of material pertaining to themselves, that they acknowledge that they cannot be identified via the paper; and that you have fully anonymised them. Where someone is deceased, please ensure you have written consent from the family or estate. Authors may use this Patient Consent Form, which should be completed, saved, and sent to the journal if requested.
Health and safety
Please confirm that all mandatory laboratory health and safety procedures have been complied with in the course of conducting any experimental work reported in your paper. Please ensure your paper contains all appropriate warnings on any hazards that may be involved in carrying out the experiments or procedures you have described, or that may be involved in instructions, materials, or formulae.
Please include all relevant safety precautions; and cite any accepted standard or code of practice. Authors working in animal science may find it useful to consult the International Association of Veterinary Editors' Consensus Author Guidelines on Animal Ethics and Welfare and Guidelines for the Treatment of Animals in Behavioural Research and Teaching. When a product has not yet been approved by an appropriate regulatory body for the use described in your paper, please specify this, or that the product is still investigational.
Submitting Your Paper
This journal uses Taylor & Francis' Submission Portal to manage the submission process. The Submission Portal allows you to see your submissions across Taylor & Francis' journal portfolio in one place. To submit your manuscript please click here.
If you are submitting in LaTeX, please convert the files to PDF beforehand (you will also need to upload your LaTeX source files with the PDF).
Data Sharing Policy
This journal applies the Taylor & Francis Basic Data Sharing Policy. Authors are encouraged to share or make open the data supporting the results or analyses presented in their paper where this does not violate the protection of human subjects or other valid privacy or security concerns.
Authors are encouraged to deposit the dataset(s) in a recognized data repository that can mint a persistent digital identifier, preferably a digital object identifier (DOI) and recognizes a long-term preservation plan. If you are uncertain about where to deposit your data, please see this information regarding repositories.
Authors are further encouraged to cite any data sets referenced in the article and provide a Data Availability Statement.
At the point of submission, you will be asked if there is a data set associated with the paper. If you reply yes, you will be asked to provide the DOI, pre-registered DOI, hyperlink, or other persistent identifier associated with the data set(s). If you have selected to provide a pre-registered DOI, please be prepared to share the reviewer URL associated with your data deposit, upon request by reviewers.
Where one or multiple data sets are associated with a manuscript, these are not formally peer reviewed as a part of the journal submission process. It is the author’s responsibility to ensure the soundness of data. Any errors in the data rest solely with the producers of the data set(s).
Publication charges
There are no submission fees, publication fees or page charges for this journal.
Colour figures will be reproduced in colour in your online article free of charge. If it is necessary for the figures to be reproduced in colour in the print version, a charge will apply.
Copyright options
Copyright allows you to protect your original material, and stop others from using your work without your permission. Taylor & Francis offers a number of different license options. Read more on publishing agreements.
Complying with funding agencies
We will deposit all National Institutes of Health or Wellcome Trust-funded papers into PubMedCentral on behalf of authors, meeting the requirements of their respective open access (OA) policies. If this applies to you, please tell our production team when you receive your article proofs, so we can do this for you. Check funders' OA policy mandates here. Find out more about sharing your work.
My Authored Works
On publication, you will be able to view, download and check your article's metrics (downloads, citations and Altmetric data) via My Authored Works on Taylor & Francis Online. This is where you can access every article you have published with us, as well as your free eprints link, so you can quickly and easily share your work with friends and colleagues.
We are committed to promoting and increasing the visibility of your article. Here are some tips and ideas on how you can work with us to promote your research.
Article reprints
For enquiries about reprints, please contact the Taylor & Francis Author Services team at reprints@tandf.co.uk. To order a copy of the issue containing your article, please contact our Customer Services team at OrderSupport@TandF.co.uk.
Queries
Should you have any queries, please visit our Author Services website or contact us here
Updated 23-05-2018
