Notice: Children Australia not accepting publications at this time.

Submission

This journal uses ScholarOne Manuscripts for online submission and peer reviews.

Complete guidelines for preparing and submitting your manuscript to this journal are provided below.

Scope and Audience

Children Australia publishes only original and scholarly articles, with a preference for research, including literature reviews on questions of significance, and practice-based papers. The journal specifically encourages papers from academics and researchers, higher degree students and early career academics, and practitioners.

Contributions to Children Australia concerning the welfare, wellbeing and development of children, young people and their families are encouraged. The journal is designed to reflect a broad cross-discipline approach that ensures the many fields of practice and research relevant across service sectors is represented.

The journal is published continuously as four issues per volume per year. The journal is published in print and online.

This journal is compliant with Open Access policies.

Publishing Ethics

Children Australia considers all manuscripts on the strict condition that

1. The manuscript is your own original work, and does not duplicate any other previously published work, including your own previously published work;
2. The manuscript has been submitted only to the journal - it is not under consideration or peer review or accepted for publication or in press or published elsewhere;
3. All listed authors know of and agree to the manuscript being submitted to the journal; and
4. The manuscript contains nothing that is abusive, defamatory, fraudulent, illegal, libellous, or obscene.

During manuscript submission, authors are required to disclose the nature of any competing and/or relevant financial interest. The statement should describe all potential sources of bias, including affiliations, funding sources, and financial or management relationships, that may constitute conflicts of interest.

The submitting author must provide contact information for all co-authors. The author who submits the manuscript for publication accepts the responsibility of notifying all co-authors that the manuscript is being submitted. If any of the named co-authors moves affiliation during the peer review process, the new affiliation can be given as a footnote. Deletion of an author during the peer-review process requires a confirming letter to the Editor-in-Chief from the author whose name is being deleted. Please note that no changes to affiliation can be made after the manuscript is accepted.

By submitting your paper to Children Australia you are agreeing to any necessary originality checks your paper may have to undergo during the peer review and production processes.

The Editors will collaborate with Cambridge University Press using the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics in cases of allegations of research errors; authorship complaints; multiple or concurrent (simultaneous) submission; plagiarism complaints; research results misappropriation; reviewer bias; and undisclosed conflicts of interest.

Review Style and Process

Children Australia uses a double-blind review process.

The fitness of a manuscript for publication is based on

1. Significance/relevance to scope of the journal
2. Conceptual framework (connections to relevant constructs in literature)
3. Methods (if manuscript is an empirical study)
4. Appropriateness to questions
5. Adequate description of methods (including data collection and analysis)
6. Rigorous and appropriate methods
7. Findings/conclusions are literature or data-based
8. Overall contribution to the field
9. Writing style/composition/clarity

The Review Process

Manuscripts initially are assigned to the Editors and screened as above. If these criteria are met, manuscripts are reviewed by at least two qualified referees with documented expertise. Editorial policy is to strive for one review from Australia and one internationally based referee to ensure widest possible relevance. When reviews are returned, the Editors considers reviewers' comments, independently evaluates the manuscript, and makes an editorial decision to reject, request a revision with the stipulation of further peer review, request a revision subject to review by the editors, or accept as is. Authors receive copies of (anonymous) referees' comments. Referees may be informed of the final disposition of the article. Although feedback will usually be provided to authors, the editor reserves the right to reject a manuscript for publication without providing a rationale for the decision. Final decisions regarding acceptance of a manuscript will be made by the Editors.

Editorial Team

The full Editorial group is listed here.

Further guidance for authors can be provided on request. It is often an advantage for prospective contributors to discuss the length, content, and emphasis of a proposed article with the Editors prior to submission. Queries should be addressed to the Editors: Jennifer Lehmann or Rachael Sanders.

Detailed Instructions to Contributors

Corresponding Author

This journal uses a contributor agreement that allows for just one author (the Corresponding Author) to sign on behalf of all authors. Please identify the Corresponding Author for your work when submitting your manuscript for review.

The Corresponding Author will be responsible for the following:

1. ensuring that all authors are identified on the contributor agreement, and notifying the editorial office of any changes to the authorship;
2. securing written permission (via letter or email) from each co-author to sign the contributor agreement on the co-author's behalf;
3. completing the licence to publish forms on behalf of all co-authors.

Although very rare, should a co-author have included content in his or her portion of the article that infringes the copyright of another or is otherwise in violation of any other warranty listed in the agreement, you will be the sole author indemnifying the publisher and the editor of the journal against such violation. Please contact the editorial office if you have any questions.

Authorship

All persons who have a reasonable claim to authorship must be named in the manuscript as co-authors; the corresponding author must be authorized by all co-authors to act as an agent on their behalf in all matters pertaining to publication of the manuscript, and the order of names should be agreed by all authors. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.

Authorship credit should be based on

1. substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data;
2. drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and
3. final approval of the version to be published.

Authors should meet all conditions. Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship.

Manuscript Language and Length

All manuscripts must be in English.Cambridge recommends that authors have their manuscripts checked by an English language native speaker before submission; this will ensure that submissions are judged at peer review exclusively on academic merit. We list a number of third-party services specialising in language editing and / or translation, and suggest that authors contact as appropriate. Use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense.

Contributions should follow the format and style described in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Spelling and punctuation should conform to The Macquarie Dictionary (4th ed.). For matters of style not covered in these two publications the Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers (6th ed.) should be consulted.

The preferred length of paper submitted is 3500–7000 words. However, flexibility on length is exercised and longer papers on topics of particular significance may be accepted in consultation with the editors. In addition to the above, Children Australia welcomes brief practice-focussed reports (500–2000 words) on research, program development and evaluation, practice, and policy development, change and debates. Acceptance for publication will be on the basis of review by the editorial team.

Prospective authors should avoid language that can be seen as discriminating against people on account of disability, race or gender.

Uncommon abbreviations and acronyms should be explained. Full stops should not be used in abbreviations or acronyms (e.g., NSW). Use single quotation marks to introduce a word or phrase used as an ironic comment, as slang, or which has been coined. Use quotation marks the first time the word or phrase is used; do not use them again. Do not use quotation marks to introduce a technical or key term. Instead, italicise the term.

Please use single quotation marks, except where 'a quotation is "within" a quotation'. Long quotations of 40 words or more should be indented with quotation marks.

When technical terms prove essential, the writer should provide brief explanations supported by contextual descriptions or examples. Do not use quotation marks to introduce a technical or key term. Instead, italicise the term.

Do not use any footnotes. Endnotes should be kept to a minimum and listed at the end of the text under the centred heading 'Endnotes'.

Authors should keep Tables and Figures to a reasonable minimum and avoid repeating tabulated data in a graphic.

For the convenience of the peer-reviewers, please use a generous margin and line spacing.

Manuscript Style

At least two separate files need to be submitted online.

• Title page: Please provide a title page for the Editors. The title page is not shared with the referees. The title page must state the following:
  • the title of the document, keywords, and suggested running head of no more than 50 characters
  • the name, affiliation, address, telephone number, fax number, and e-mail address of the corresponding author;
  • the name and affiliations of all authors;
  • any acknowledgements, financial support, or competing interest statements that may identify the authors;
  • that this manuscript is an original work that has not been submitted to nor published anywhere else;
• Article document: The Article document should include the complete article without any identifiable author details but including the title, abstract, body of the article, tables if any, figure captions if any, and references.
• Any graphic documents. A list of figure captions should follow the tables in the article document. Captions must include sources and permissions for copyright material.

Abstract: All manuscripts must include an abstract. Abstracts describing the essence of the manuscript, must be 200 words or less, and provide a brief overview of the aims, method and major findings without any citations.

Headings: Headings should be used to help organize the manuscript. Typical headings for research articles include review of literature, method, results, discussion, and references. For theoretical manuscripts, authors are encouraged to use headings that clarify the flow of the manuscript as well as assist the reader in understanding the content of the paper. Section headings should be concise.

Tables and Figures

Both Tables and Figures should be titled with a short and concise description, numbered separately but consecutively (Table 1, … ; Figure 1, … ), and referenced in the text. Tables should be clear, concise, and able to stand alone. with footnotes included to clarify entries. Figures should be provided as a high quality format. For imported scanned material a minimum resolution is 300 dpi. In multi-part Figures, each part should be labelled (Figure 1a, Figure 1b, …).

A list of figure captions should follow the tables in the manuscript.

Figures, graphs, illustrations and photographs (but not Tables) should be prepared to the correct size and each one supplied as an individual file as outlined above. Include placement instructions in the Article document, such as "[Insert fig 1 here]". Figures created in Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint need to be saved as PDFs. Figures created in a drawing program should be saved as EPS (encapsulated postscript) files. Figures created in Photoshop or with other photographic software should be saved with a minimum resolution of 600 dpi and in TIF format. Minimum resolution for scanned graphics is 300 dpi for halftone work (e.g., photographs) and 600 dpi for line art, and these should also be in TIF format. All figures and graphs should be in black and white line art (artwork that has only text and lines, no shades of grey or blocks of colour). All photographs should be supplied as separate files in JPEG or TIFF formats for a minimum 300 dpi resolution. (As a rough guide, the file size of each photograph should be above 200KB).

More detail on artwork is here

Acknowledgements

Acknowledge individuals or organizations who provided advice or non-financial support. If there are no acknowledgements, include the heading 'Acknowledgements' followed by the text 'None.'

Financial Support

Provide details of the sources of financial and in-kind support for all authors, including grant numbers. Grants held by different authors should be identified as belonging to individual authors by the author's initials. Where no specific funding has been provided for research, please provide the following statement: 'This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.'

Conflicts of Interest

Conflict of interest exists when an author has interests that might influence his or her judgement, even if that judgement is not influenced. Authors must disclose potentially conflicting. Non-financial interests that could be relevant in this context should also be disclosed. If no relevant interests exist, this should be stated. This requirement applies to all the authors of a paper and to all categories of papers If there are no conflicts of interest, include the heading 'Conflicts of Interest' followed by the text 'None.'

References

All citations and references must be complete and accurate on submission and follow the format and style described in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Papers will be declined for publication if they have references that are found to be incomplete or inaccurate. References should be selective, appropriate, and easily accessible.

Examples of citations are:

• The theory was first propounded in 1970 (Larsen, 1971).
• Larsen (1971) was the first to propound the theory.

Examples of references are:

• Larson, P.J., & Maag, J.W. (1998). Applying functional assessment in general education classrooms. Issues and recommendations. Remedial and Special Education, 19, 338–349.
• Sheridan, S.M. (1998). Social skills training for ADHD children. In S. Goldstein & M. Goldstein, (Eds.), Managing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children (pp. 592–612). New York: John Wiley.

Professional Editing Services

Cambridge University Press recommends that authors have their manuscripts checked by an English language native speaker before submission; this will ensure that submissions are judged at peer review exclusively on academic merit. We list a number of third-party services specialising in language editing and / or translation, and suggest that authors contact as appropriate.

Their inclusion should not be taken to imply an endorsement of the service.

Permissions

The corresponding author is responsible for providing copies of permission for lengthy quotations or reprinted or adapted tables or figures. It is the responsibility of the author to check with the publisher or copyright owner regarding specific requirements for permission to adapt or quote from copyrighted material. Appropriate acknowledgement must be given in your manuscript.

Manuscript Submission

Children Australia accepts submissions only through ScholarOne Manuscripts for online submission and peer reviews.

There is no submission fee or page charges.

Double-Blind Review: Authors must submit a title page as described above with article title; authors' names, titles and highest academic qualification, and emails; authors' affiliated institutions; and any acknowledgments, financial disclosure information, author notes, and/or other text that could identify the authors to reviewers. This document is separate from the article and not shared with the referees.

The main document that you upload must be blinded and include an abstract of no more than 200 words.

To find the status of any manuscript that you've submitted through ScholarOne Manuscripts, visit the journal's site, log in, select 'Author Center', look at the step-wise list under My Manuscripts, and click on the items until you find your manuscript's description and status.

Prior to sending artwork, the separate files of figures, graphs, illustrations, and so on, should be printed by the author to test that the fonts have been embedded correctly and there is no distortion in the artwork (e.g., lines and fonts reproduce cleanly with no jagged lines or fuzzy edges), as any such faults cannot be corrected by the publisher.

Our editorial board evaluates each manuscript in a blinded peer-review process, which takes approximately 3 to 4 months, not including any times of revision by the author.

Accepted Manuscripts

To assure the integrity, dissemination, and protection against copyright infringement of published articles, you will be asked to sign a License to Publish with Cambridge University Press.

Under the conditions detailed on the Journal's standard license to publish, when an article is accepted, its authors are free to post their version of the accepted manuscript on a website or repository.

Minor amendments may be made by editorial staff following review to ensure that reasonable standards of content, presentation and readability are maintained.

Colour figures will be reproduced in colour in the online edition of the journal free of charge. If you request colour figures in the printed version, you will be contacted by CCC-Rightslink who are acting on our behalf to collect Author Charges. Please follow their instructions in order to avoid any delay in the publication of your article.

ORCID

Children Australia now requires that all corresponding authors identify themselves using their ORCID iD when submitting a manuscript to the journal. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript submission and grant applications, provides the following benefits:

• Discoverability: ORCID increases the discoverability of your publications, by enabling smarter publisher systems and by helping readers to reliably find work that you’ve authored.
• Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your iD or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID record, and will enable you to share this information with other systems and platforms you use, saving you re-keying information multiple times.
• Keeping track: Your ORCID record is a neat place to store and (if you choose) share validated information about your research activities and affiliations.

If you don’t already have an iD, you’ll need to create one if you decide to submit a manuscript to Children Australia. You can register for one directly from your user account on Scholar One or via https://ORCID.org/register.

If you already have an iD, please use this when submitting, either by linking it to your Scholar One account or supplying it during submission by using the “Associate your existing ORCID ID” button.

Last updated 2 January 2020