This journal uses ScholarOne Manuscripts (previously Manuscript Central) to peer review manuscript submissions. Please read the guide for ScholarOne authors before making a submission. Complete guidelines for preparing and submitting your manuscript to this journal are provided below.

The instructions below are specifically directed at authors who wish to submit a manuscript to British Journal of Guidance & Counselling. For general information, please visit the Author Services section of our website.

British Journal of Guidance & Counselling considers all manuscripts on the strict condition that they have been submitted only to British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, that they have not been published already, nor are they under consideration for publication or in press elsewhere. Authors who fail to adhere to this condition will be charged with all costs which British Journal of Guidance & Counselling incurs and their papers will not be published.

Contributions to British Journal of Guidance & Counselling must report original research and will be subjected to review by referees at the discretion of the Editorial Office.

Manuscript preparation

1. Important note

Care must be taken to disguise the identity of clients. Where case-study material is presented on a particular client which may enable the client's identity to be recognised by him/herself or by others, written consent must be requested from the client concerned; assurance that such consent has been obtained should be provided to the editor, and should also where appropriate be mentioned within the article as part of the description of the methodology used. Any liability to clients on the grounds of infringing confidentiality belongs to the author(s).

2. General guidelines

• References and text citations should follow APA style. British English spelling (e.g. organise, hypothesise) is preferred. See style guidelines below.
• A typical main article should be 3,000–6,000 words in length inclusive of references/notes/tables; short research reports and notes on practice should be 1,500–3,000 words. Authors should include a word count with their manuscript.
• All the authors of a paper should include their full names, affiliations, postal addresses and email addresses on the cover page of the manuscript. One author should be identified as the corresponding author. The affiliations of all named co-authors should be the affiliation where the research was conducted.
• Abstracts of 60–120 words are required for all papers submitted.
• Each paper should have 5 or 6 keywords.
• A short biographical note (around 50 words) should be supplied for each author.
• Detailed statistical evidence should in general be summarised in the text though a limited number of tables may be included if they are clear and comprehensible to lay readers.
• Manuscripts should be compiled in the following order: title page; abstract; keywords; main text; acknowledgments; biographical notes; references; tables with captions; figure captions.
• For all manuscripts non-discriminatory language is mandatory. Sexist or racist terms should not be used.
• Search engine optimization (SEO) is a means of making your article more visible to anyone who might be looking for it. Please consult our guidance here.

3. Style guidelines

• General guidance Quick guide 
• Description of the Journal's reference style, Quick guide

4. Figures

• It is in the author's interest to provide the highest quality figure format possible. Please be sure that all imported scanned material is scanned at the appropriate resolution: 1200 dpi for line art, 600 dpi for grayscale and 300 dpi for online colour.
• Figures must be saved separate to text. Please do not embed figures in the paper file.
• Files should be saved as one of the following formats: TIFF (tagged image file format), PostScript or EPS (encapsulated PostScript). All figures must be numbered in the order in which they appear in the paper (e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2).
• The Journal has no free colour pages within its annual page allowance. Figures that appear in black-and-white in the print edition of the Journal will appear in colour in the online edition, assuming colour originals are supplied

5. Reproduction of copyright material

As an author, you are required to secure permission to reproduce any proprietary text, illustration, table, or other material, including data, audio, video, film stills, and screenshots, and any supplementary material you propose to submit. This applies to direct reproduction as well as “derivative reproduction” (where you have created a new figure or table which derives substantially from a copyrighted source). The reproduction of short extracts of text, excluding poetry and song lyrics, for the purposes of criticism may be possible without formal permission on the basis that the quotation is reproduced accurately and full attribution is given.

For further information and FAQs, please see http://journalauthors.tandf.co.uk/preparation/permission.asp

Copies of permission letters should be sent with the manuscript upon submission to the editors.

• Copyright permission letter template

6. Supplementary online material

Authors are welcome to submit animations, movie files, sound files or any additional information for online publication.

• Information about supplementary online material

All submissions should be made online at the British Journal of Guidance & Counselling ScholarOne Manuscripts. New users should first create an account. Once logged on to the site, submissions should be made via the Author Centre. Online user guides and access to a helpdesk are available on this website.

Manuscripts may be submitted in any standard format, including Word, PostScript and PDF. These files will be automatically converted into a PDF file for the review process. LaTeX files should be converted to PDF prior to submission because ScholarOne Manuscripts is not able to convert LaTeX files into PDFs directly.

Click here for Information regarding anonymous peer review

Copyright and authors' rights

It is a condition of publication that all contributing authors grant to Taylor & Francis the necessary rights to the copyright in all articles submitted to the Journal. Authors are required sign an Article Publishing Agreement to facilitate this. This will ensure the widest dissemination and protection against copyright infringement of articles. The “article” is defined as comprising the final, definitive, and citable Version of Scholarly Record, and includes: (a) the accepted manuscript in its final and revised form, including the text, abstract, and all accompanying tables, illustrations, data; and (b) any supplementary material. Copyright policy is explained in detail at http://journalauthors.tandf.co.uk/preparation/copyright.asp.

Open access

Taylor & Francis Open Select provides authors or their research sponsors and funders with the option of paying a publishing fee and thereby making an article permanently available for free online access – open access – immediately on publication to anyone, anywhere, at any time. This option is made available once an article has been accepted in peer review.
Full details of our Open Access programme

Visit our Author Services website for further resources and guides to the complete publication process and beyond.