Submissions

Submissions

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Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The submission file is in Microsoft Word file format. The text is double-spaced and in 12-point font. All tables are included in the text near where they are mentioned, and all photos and figures are included at the end of the text and also submitted as separate supplementary files in JPEG (preferred) or PDF format.
  • When available, the URLs to access references online are provided, including those for open access versions of the reference. The URLs are ready to click (e.g., http://pkp.sfu.ca).
  • All authors are entered in the metadata with full first name, middle initial, and last name, email address, affiliation, and bio statement (e.g., department and rank) for each author.
  • The text adheres to the Texas Water Journal style guidelines outlined in the Style section of the Author Guidelines.
  • A note stating which of the Texas Water Journal's four accepted style guides you are using should be included in the Comments for the Editor section below the Submission Requirements section on the submission page.

Author Guidelines

Articles submitted to the Texas Water Journal should be well written, well organized, factual, adequately referenced, and of a topic germane to the journal. The Texas Water Journal accepts the following types of articles:

  1. General Research or Issue Articles
  2. Research, Policy or Legal Reviews
  3. Research, Policy or Program Notes
  4. Book Reviews
  5. Commentaries (by invitation only)

The Texas Water Journal is amenable to longer articles. Please contact the editor-in-chief to discuss. The Texas Water Journal also occasionally publishes commentaries on a range of Texas water issues. Potential commentaries are requested by the editor-in-chief on behalf of the Texas Water Journal.

Style Guidelines and References

The Texas Water Journal's preferred style guide is The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th Edition. The Texas Water Journal also accepts The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th Edition, and Suggestions to Authors of the Reports of the U.S. Geological Survey, 8th Edition. For legal articles, the preferred style guide is The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, 21st Edition.

Some exceptions have been made to these styles, and some of these styles do not have guidance for all common issues. The Texas Water Journal therefore maintains its own style guidelines, which authors should use in conjunction with their selected style. Please see the Texas Water Journal's detailed style guidelines and exceptions for more information about style and word usage, including punctuation, use of numbers and units of measure, the formatting and spelling of commonly used words, and more.

References

The Texas Water Journal accepts references formatted in any of the four accepted style guides, with a preference for The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th Edition. Note that the style guide used for the references should be the same one used for the rest of the paper. Generally speaking, the Texas Water Journal uses the author-date in-text reference system, meaning that the in-text reference will include the authors' last names and the year of publication in parentheses. Legal papers using Bluebook are an exception; such papers should use Bluebook's footnote-style reference system.

Formatting Guidelines

  1. General article formatting: Submissions should be in Microsoft Word document file format. Text should use a 12-point font, be double-spaced, and have 1-inch margins. Do not indent paragraphs. Where relevant, text should employ italics rather than underlining (except with URL addresses).
  2. Abstracts: All manuscripts should include an abstract of no more than 200 words. Abstracts should not include abbreviations, diagrams, or references to the text within the abstract.
  3. Keywords: Authors should provide three to five keywords for each article. These should be included between the abstract and the table of terms used in the paper.
  4. Authors: All articles should include the authors' full names, titles, professional affiliations, and contact information. If there are multiple authors, identify the primary author to whom all electronic correspondence should be sent.
  5. Terms used in the paper: A two-column table of terms used in the paper should be inserted after the abstract and keywords. The column headings should be 1) short name or acronym and 2) descriptive name.
  6. Tables and figures: Tables should be included in the text soon after their first mention in the text. Figures should be included at the end of the text and also be submitted as separate supplementary files in JPEG (preferred) or PDF format. Tables and figures should be mentioned in sequential order in the text.
  7. Headings: Headings should be written in sentence case and left justified with a single space between the heading and subsequent text. Headings should be numbered and formatted as follows:
    I. HEADING
    A. Heading
    1. Heading
    a. Heading

Copyright Notice

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

    1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
    2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
    3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

Open Access Policy

The Texas Water Journal is an open access journal, based on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. This means that all Texas Water Journal content is freely available, without charge to users or their institutions. Users are therefore permitted to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, or use them for any other lawful purposes. This may be done without asking for prior permission from the publisher or the author. This open access policy is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.

No Fees

The Texas Water Journal does not charge any fees (often referred to as article processing charges or APCs) to publish in the Journal. The Journal also does not charge any subscription fees to our readers.

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.