Note to Authors: Quality in Higher Education

Manuscripts should be emailed to the Editor, Professor Lee Harvey, at leecolinharvey@googlemail.com

Do not send hard copy unless specifically requested. Successful authors who include tables or diagrams will usually be asked to send a final hard copy version of the inserts to ensure that electronic versions match what was intended.

Content
Papers should be original. If there is an overlap with material published elsewhere, details should be given.

Quality in Higher Education is an international refereed journal aimed at those interested in the theory, practice and policies relating to the control, management, improvement and evaluation of Quality in Higher Education.

It is not a journal that publishes articles about quality in other contexts (such as quality control in manufacturing) nor does it publish articles about higher education in general.

Papers that have empirical research content are particularly welcome. The journal is receptive to critical, phenomenological as well as positivistic studies. The journal would like to publish more studies that use hermeneutic, semiotic, ethnographic or dialectical research as well as the more traditional studies based on quantitative surveys and in-depth interviews and focus groups.

Evaluations of the impact of quality procedures at institutional level or national level, backed up by research evidence, are welcome. The journal would also like to publish more studies that contain theoretical analyses of quality and of quality initiatives in higher education.

It is important that authors appreciate the international nature of the readership of Quality in Higher Education. This has three implications.

1. First, the paper has to be of interest to a broad readership, which means that (a) the paper draws on international examples, or (b) reports some international comparative research, or (c) if country specific, explains how developments in one country have been informed by international developments, or (d) how developments or research in one country has implications beyond its borders. The aim is to provide readers with information about and lessons from ideas and practices that are transportable from other contexts.
2. Second, the paper should avoid parochial references or assume that the readership will understand the processes used in a specific institution, or agency or be familiar with the higher education system in a given country. Localised abbreviations or taken-for-granted
   Notions should not be cited without explanation. Some words are ambiguous and should be used with care. ‘Faculty' in the UK, for example, is an organisational unit of a university, in the US it means, what in the UK would be called the academic staff. ‘School' rarely means a University in the UK, unlike in the US. So it is incumbent on authors to be clear about terminology.
3. Third, the journal rarely publishes case studies of programmes or single institutions or descriptions of the quality procedures in one country.

Writing style
Papers should be written in an easily accessible style, suitable for an international audience of academics, policy makers and practitioners.

All papers should use UK English spelling and punctuation.

The journal does not favour papers that take the traditional format, using the following headings: context, hypotheses, literature review, results, discussion, summary, conclusion. This tends to lead to a fragmented ‘story' and repetition especially in the results, discussion, summary and conclusion sections. Subheadings should be meaningful in that they identify the key idea of the text that follows. Subheadings should not be numbered.

A clear line of argument (or story) should flow through the paper. The paper needs to keep the reader interested: it should not be a trial to get to the end of the article.

The text should be self-contained so that the reader can understand the point being made without recourse to reading tables or diagrams. These should be included when the provide confirmation of the text, or are an appropriate way to summarise an argument spelled out in the text. However, authors should avoid the following:

'Table 1 shows the results for the sample….'

Instead, data in tables should be referred to in parentheses at the end of sentences or paragraphs that have already spelled out for the reader what the results show.

Certain phrases, including ‘in terms of' and ‘whereby' should be avoided. Avoid starting sentences with ‘and' and ‘but' and do not normally insert commas before conjunctions.

Make sparing use of bullet points or numbered lists, which should only contain short statements.

Methodological details
Research methodology should be included in the paper but in an economical way that provides maximum information in as few words as possible. The following should be provided where appropriate: methodological approach including epistemological underpinnings; data sources including sample and population details; sampling method; response rates/drop out rates; how data was collected; forms of analysis (not the name of software packages (e.g. SPSS) but what techniques were used (e.g. cross-tabulation)); any methodological concerns. If the methodology is complex and inhibits the ‘story' then it is acceptable to put detail in a methodological footnote.

Statistical data should be reported in an accessible way —especially where it is fundamental to the argument. Peripheral numerical details, such as significance levels, correlation coefficients, should normally be incorporated into tables or footnotes unless they can be integrated into the text without making it cumbersome and hard to read.

Length
Contributions should be 5000–6000 words, should include an abstract of 100–150 words. Papers for special editions linked to conferences should be 3000–4000 words.

Abstract
The first sentence or two of the abstract should sum up the core idea, argument or thesis of the paper. This should be followed by details of the evidence used to support the argument. The implications of the paper (for different stakeholders) should normally follow.

Keywords
From Volume 11, articles will appear with keywords. Please ensure you indicate appropriate keywords, otherwise these may be assigned.

Submissions
Submissions should be e-mailed as Word documents, formatted as standard A4 single line spaced. Indent new paragraphs by two spaces. Do not insert a blank line between paragraphs. Do not include any styles in the style sheet other than normal for all text (12 pt Times/Times New Roman, unjustified), use only three levels of headings (Level 1 — 14pt Times bold; Level 2 — 12pt Times bold; Level 3 — 12pt Times bold, italic). Please put a blank line between items in the references (see below). Please ensure all other non-default styles are deleted.

All pages should be numbered. Tables and diagrams should be appended at the end of the paper with a clear indication of where they should appear in the text.

A copy of material e-mailed to editors should be retained by the authors.

Acknowledgements and correspondence
All acknowledgements will be by e-mail. Referees comments will be communicated either electronically (in the main), by fax or by post depending on the nature of replies from referees. Therefore, the lead author for each article should supply an e-mail address, a fax number and a postal address.

In most cases, authors will receive feedback on their submission, even when rejected.

Footnotes/endnotes
Footnotes to the text should be avoided but where used, should be numbered consecutively and presented as endnotes. They should be indicated in the text by a number in square brackets, viz. [1], and then added to the end of the text. Do not use footnote/endnote facilities in Word.

Tables and figures
Tables must be on separate pages at the end of the document and not included as part of the text. Tables should be designated as 'Tables' and numbered sequentially by Arabic numerals. All other diagrams or illustrations should be designated as 'Figures' and numbered sequentially by Arabic numerals separately from Tables. Tables and Figures should have meaningful captions. Tables should be captioned above the table. Figures should be captioned below the figure. The approximate position of tables and figures should be indicated in the manuscript. Keys to any symbols used should be included under tables or figures.

Successful authors will be asked to provide artwork for figures in a finished form, suitable for reproduction. Figures will not normally be redrawn by the publisher.

Abbreviations
Avoid using abbreviations other than for established abbreviations of agencies, government departments or institutions where the abbreviation is used at least three times in the article or appears in references. Always put the name in full the first time it is used with the abbreviation in parentheses to follow. Do not abbreviate words such as higher education, quality assurance, higher education institution. Do not use, e.g., i.e., op.cit, or ibid. Do not end lists with ‘etc.'.

Citations
Citations of other work should be limited to those strictly necessary for the argument. Any quotations should be brief, and accompanied by precise references, including page numbers or numbered paragraphs depending on the nature of the source. The exception to this is the citing of excerpts from qualitative interviews, which may be longer and where an appropriate coding system is used to label interview excerpts. Do not italicise quotations. Any citation from a website must provide exact internet address and the date that it was accessed. Any web-based citation source not still accessible on the date of submission of the article should be removed.

References
References should be indicated in the typescript by giving the author's name, with the year of publication in parentheses (Harvard style convention). If several papers by the same author and from the same year are cited, a,b,c,… should be put after the year of publication. If the reference is a publication by an agency then this should appear in the text, usually indicated by the normal abbreviation by which the agency is known (for example, QAA for the UK Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education). The abbreviation et al. should be used to refer to sources used when there are more than two authors. Note that the abbreviation is italicised and is followed by a full stop.

The references should be listed in full at the end of the paper, in the following standard form:

For books:
Handy, C.B., 1985, Understanding Organisations: An example of good practice, 3rd edn. (Harmondsworth, Penguin).

Note: author names begin with an upper case letter and the remainder are small capitals, dates are not in parentheses, the subtitle following the colon begins with an upper case word and remaining words in the subtitle begin with lower case. There is no punctuation before the bracket containing the place of publication and publisher. The latter are separated by a comma not a colon.

For articles:
Borgmann, R. & Strauss, F.G., 2000, ‘A proposal for a teaching strategy based on the German experience', European Journal of Teacher Education, 23(2), pp. 101–56.

Note: the article title is between single quote marks and all in lower case after the initial upper case letter (except for proper nouns). There is a comma before the journal name, which is in italics. The volume number and bracketed issue number are not separated by a space. There is a dash (not a short hyphen) separating the page numbers. Page numbers should be shortest necessary to accurately convey the extent of the article, e.g. 104-45, not 104-145.

For chapters within books:
Little, A., 1990, ‘The role of assessment re-examined in international context', in Broadfoot, P., Murphy R. & Torrance, H. (Eds.) Changing Educational Assessment (London, Routledge).

Note: the article title is between single quote marks and all in lower case after the initial upper case letter (except for proper nouns). There is a comma before the 'in' and the editors/authors of the book, last name first followed by initial. Upper case first letter of (Eds.) followed by full stop. Title of book in italics.

For conference papers:
Cheong, D., 1993, ‘A system of quality assurance of courses at the Singapore Polytechnic', paper presented at the 1st Biennial Conference and General Conference of the International Network of Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education, Montréal, Canada, 24–28 May.

Note: the paper title is between single quote marks and all in lower case after the initial upper case letter (except for proper nouns). There is a comma before the paper details and the title of the Conference is in italics, followed by location and date of the event. There is a dash between the dates not a hyphen.

Titles of journals and names of publishers should not be abbreviated.

Acronyms for the names of organisations, institutions or agencies should be preceded by the title in full. For example:

Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), 2000, Quality Procedures (Bristol, HEFCE).

Copy editing
The editor reserves the right to copy edit submissions to fit journal style and approach. Where time permits, such copy editing will be communicated to authors prior to the proof stage.

Proofs
Proofs, usually in electronic form, will be sent to authors if there is sufficient time to do so. They should be corrected and returned to the Editor within three days. Major alterations to the text cannot be accepted.

Free Article Access
Corresponding authors will receive free online access to their article through our website (www.informaworld.com) and a complimentary copy of the issue containing their article. Reprints of articles published in this journal can be purchased through Rightslink® when proofs are received. If you have any queries, please contact our reprints department at reprints@tandf.co.uk