Submissions

This page is designed to help you ensure your submission is ready for and fits the scope of the journal.

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Focus and Scope

The journal welcomes previously unpublished articles, reports and other contributions which will further the understanding of digital learning in all phases of education. Submissions will be peer reviewed by two members of the peer review board and one member of the International Advisory Board and/or the Editors-in-Chief. These contributions are normally expected to fall into one of the following categories although contributions of different lengths will also be considered:
  1. Articles or reports of about 3000 to 5000 words.  (Longer pieces may be considered subject to prior consultation with the Editor)
  2. Shorter pieces of up to 1000 words that might include items of information, notes on innovative digital learning practice and discussion points (including those arising from previous articles).
  3. Reviews of between 500 and 1000 words on a range of digital learning tools, publications, research, resources, etc

Additional categories (please contact the Editors for further information and how to submit your proposal)

  1. Audiovisual and other multimodal submissions, subject to prior consultation with the Editor.
  2. Podcasts in the form of individual or panel interviews. 

Author Guidelines

Formatting your submission

All manuscript text should be Times New Roman 12-point and double spaced. Please submit as a Word file (.docx please, not .doc); if you cannot produce .docx files, we will accept rich text format (.rtf).

Please use Word's built-in Heading 1, Heading 2 and Heading 3 styles for your section headings rather than making text bold by hand. This takes a moment and lets us publish your article with a proper structure — headings that are only bolded cannot be recognised as sections.

Versions for peer review

The journal operates double-blind peer review, in which authors and reviewers are anonymised to keep their identity hidden from each other. Authors should submit two versions of the manuscript:

  1. The complete manuscript, not blinded, as a Word file. Please include the following biographical information: full names of contributing authors including their institutions/affiliation and address, their institutional email address, and their ORCiDs. The corresponding author should be identified.
  2. An anonymous PDF version of the manuscript, stripped of all identifying references to the author(s) for peer review (anonymisation includes biographical information, acknowledgements, self references, electronic author identification and all publication references). If you cannot produce PDF files, we will accept Word or rich text files. Manuscripts will be returned before peer review if they are not blinded.

If you do not have an ORCiD, it takes two minutes to create one at orcid.org. It is how readers and indexing services connect this article to the rest of your work.

Article content

Please prepare your manuscript under the following headings, in the order given.

1. Title
Your title should succinctly reflect the article's content, using key words most likely to draw interested readers through a search engine. Titles that accurately communicate article content in a few careful words are more effective than catchy phrases requiring a subtitle to explain them. You may be asked to rework a title that does not follow this guidance.

  • Titles should be accessible for all: be direct and transparent, and use keywords so your work is more likely to be found and read.
  • Titles should fill less than two lines of the manuscript.
  • Use a single-sentence title where possible: a clear, succinct description that needs no explanatory subtitle is best.
  • Where "Title: subtitle" is unavoidable, note that the main title (before the colon) is used as the running head throughout the paper. Consider its length and whether it can be understood alone.
  • Avoid a quotation in the main heading: these always need explanation in the subtitle and will not be understood in the running head.

2. Biographical information (Word document only) — see point 1 under "Versions for peer review" above.

3. Abstract
Present an abstract of 150 to 200 words reflecting the entire content of the submission. It should cover the key steps in your article: the genesis of your project, research questions or hypotheses, research design and methods, findings and outcomes, a discussion including limitations, and any indications for future action or research. Your abstract forms part of the metadata seen first by people searching for your article.

4. Keywords
List up to 10 keyword terms that accurately reflect the article.

5. Article text
Please refer to the article type descriptions above when preparing the main body of your text.

6. Abbreviations
If you have used abbreviations, define and list them under this heading.

7. Funding
Declare any sources of funding for the research reported, including project codes. If there was none, say so.

8. Acknowledgements
Mention everyone whose contribution you wish to recognise. Those who contributed but are not listed as authors can be acknowledged here.

9. Declarations and conflicts of interest
Include the statement appropriate to your work:

  • The author(s) declare(s) no conflict of interest with this work; or
  • The author(s) declare(s) the following interests: ______________; or
  • All efforts to sufficiently blind the author during peer review of this article have been made. The author declares no further conflicts with this article.

10. Research ethics statement (for articles reporting original research with human participants)
Choose the appropriate statement and supply the information required:

  • The author(s) declare(s) that research ethics approval for this article was provided by ______________ ethics board; or
  • The author(s) declare(s) that research ethics approval for this article was waived by ______________ ethics board; or
  • The author(s) conducted the research reported in this article in accordance with ______________ standards.

11. Consent for publication statement (for articles reporting original research or any activity involving human participants)
The author declares that research participants' informed consent to publication of findings, including photos, videos and any personal or identifiable information, was secured prior to publication.

12. References
A full reference list should contain all the sources cited in the text, and nothing that is not cited. The journal uses APA (author, date) style.

In APA style the journal title and volume number are italicised, and the article title is not, such as:

Chi, M.T.H., Siler, S.A. and Jeong, H. (2001). Learning from human tutoring. Cognitive Science, 25(4), 471–533. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15516709cog2504_1

For books and chapters, the book title is italicised. Please also:

  • give each reference its own paragraph;
  • include a DOI wherever one exists, written in full as https://doi.org/10.… rather than as a bare 10.…, so it becomes a working link for readers;
  • check that every citation in your text appears in the reference list, and every reference is cited in the text.

Note on appendices

Please do not include appendices, footnotes or endnotes. This material should be worked into the body of the text, or presented as a table or figure.

Preparing tables and figures

Authors are responsible for determining the copyright status of illustrations or other material they wish to reproduce, and for obtaining permission where necessary. This applies both to direct reproduction and to derivative reproduction, where authors create a new figure or table deriving substantially from a copyrighted source. By including such material, authors warrant that it may be reproduced or adapted under the terms of the CC BY licence in the same way as their own work. Short extracts of copyright text (excluding poetry and song lyrics) for the purposes of criticism, discussion or review may be reproduced without formal permission, provided the quotation is accurate and fully attributed.

Number all tables and figures sequentially (Table 1, Table 2, and so on) and give each a short, clear caption. Place each table and figure at the position where it should appear, with its caption immediately above the table or below the figure. Please do not use placeholder markers such as "Insert Table 1 here".

All tables and figures should cite a source. Where the source is you, add "Source: Author" at the end of the caption.

Tables and author-generated line diagrams
Place these in the text at their final position. Please supply tables as real Word tables, not as images or tab-aligned text.

Charts and graphs
Please supply each chart as a picture file (PNG, at least 1500 pixels wide), and place the same picture in the manuscript at its final position. If you built the chart in Excel or Word, do not paste the live chart into your manuscript: right-click it and choose Copy, then Paste Special → Picture. Live charts cannot be converted for publication and we will have to ask you to replace them, which delays your article. You are welcome to send the underlying data (Excel or CSV) as well — we are glad to publish it as a supplementary file — but the picture is what appears in the article.

Illustrations and photographs
Please supply each image both in the article text at its final position and as a separate file, in PNG or JPEG format, at least 1500 pixels wide (or 300 dpi at printed size). Please avoid TIFF, EPS and PDF images: they cannot be displayed in the published online version.

Revisions

Should your manuscript need revision to meet the journal's requirements, or following peer review, please attend to the following when revising.

  • Provide your revisions, with a response letter to any reviewer reports, within the specified revision period, to the handling editor.
  • Clearly show the revisions you have made — use a different text colour, highlighting, or Word's Track Changes.
  • In your response letter, address all points raised by the editor and reviewers, sequentially and as a bullet list.
  • Outline the revisions you have made.
  • Where applicable, carry out any additional analyses the reviewers recommend. If you feel they would not improve the paper, explain why in your response letter.
  • Provide a polite, objective rebuttal to any points you disagree with.

Peer Review

Reflecting Digital Learning operates double blind peer review, where both the reviewers and authors are anonymised during review. Authors should submit an anonymous version of the manuscript, stripped of all identifying references to the author(s) for peer review.

Further information regarding peer review can be found on the UCL Open Access Student Journal Editorial Policy pages.

Licences

The following licences are allowed:

  • CC BY 4.0
    Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Publication Fees

All UCL Open Access Student Journals do not charge an Article-Processing Charge (APC) for submission or publication. UCL Open Access Student Journal authors of accepted papers will not be required to make an APC payment for submission or publication before publication of their article.

Publication Cycle

This journal publishes one issue per year.