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Submission Guidelines

Version 4 — 31 March 2012

The guidelines below take effect on 1 April 2012.

The IQ Journal is a publication of the International Association for Information and Data Quality.

Newsletter issues are released quarterly.

TYPES OF CONTRIBUTIONS

  1. The Journal is accepting contributions for:
    • IQ Articles — 800 to 1200 words
    • IQ Stories — 600 to 850 words
    • Tips / Best Practices — 400 to 650 words
    • News from Members — 50 to 80 words
  2. Contributed material must deal with Information Quality or Data Quality, and may address IQ topics and concerns from organizational, process, technical, and technological perspectives.
  3. Contributors are encouraged to provide a short (one paragraph) "About the Author" write-up and a headshot or photo. The contributor acknowledges that the Editorial Board may edit the write-up at its discretion.
  4. The Editorial Board reserves the right to review, revise, and request revisions to all contributed material.

FORMATS

  1. Contributions are accepted in editable electronic medium (preferably MS Word .doc format, although plain text files are also accepted).
  2. Images, photos, and graphs can be submitted in *.jpg and *.png formats, or embedded in the MS Word document.

STYLE

  1. Date and time
    • Date must be expressed either as:
      • ISO format yyyy-mm-dd, e.g. 2006-07-11 for 11 July 2006 or
      • Using words or three letter abbreviation for month, e.g. July or Jul. Acceptable variants are: 11 July 2006, July 11, 2006, 11-Jul-2006
      • Never use digits for month unless using ISO format. 11/07/2006 means 11 July in the UK, Ireland, Europe and Australia, while it means November 7 in the USA.
    • Time: Express time in 24 hour clock, e.g. 10:30 (10:30 am) or 22:30 (10:30pm). Avoid am and pm
    • Time zones: Refer to www.timeanddate.com for information about time zones, current time in cities around the world, and the world meeting planner
  2. English usage and style
    • Words & Phrases: In contemporary English ‘less is more’. That means that hyphenation and punctuation is kept to the bare minimum. For instance:
      • on a bulleted list you would not use full stops (periods) at the end of the line;
      • Email is never written e-mail;
      • Always leave one space after a full stop (period). Classic typing training would tell you to leave two spaces but computers automatically compensate.
      Where possible use direct language and active voice rather than indirect language and passive voice. For example:
      • Preferred: Keep font size as close as possible to the template standard.
      • Avoid: Font size should be kept as close to standard in template as possible.
      • Preferred: Include a references and credits slide if necessary.
      • Avoid: If necessary a references and credits slide should be included.
    • Spelling: Normally, use the variant of English spelling used in the author's country. Where an author comes from a country where English is not commonly spoken, use international English spelling. For example:
International English American English variation
harbour harbor
banker’s cheque banker’s check
licence (noun) license (noun)
license (verb) licence (verb)
  • Documenting software commands: Where describing how to access software commands with menus, write all commands in bold typeface. When describing a sequence of commands, use a greater than (>) sign to separate commands.
    For example, "click on File > Properties to view and change the properties of a document in Word, Excel or PowerPoint".

OWNERSHIP and RIGHT TO DISTRIBUTE

  1. Copyright of contributed material remains with the original author. The author is requested to specify the appropriate copyright clause that will be printed together with the material. For example: "Copyright © 2008 IAIDQ".
    We recommend that you add

    Creative Commons Licence
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
  2. By submitting or contributing material to the Journal, the author grants IAIDQ the right to reproduce and distribute the material in all forms of printed and electronic media, including but not limited to locked PDF files and html pages on the IAIDQ website, without royalties or fees payable to the contributor.

TIMELINES

  1. Submissions that are received on or before the 10th of the month preceding the scheduled release of a Journal issue will be considered for the next issue (e.g. submissions received on March 10 will be considered for the Q2 issue).
  2. As a courtesy, the editorial team will send contributors a copy of the edited work, in the Journal's format / layout prior to publication.