Instructions for Authors
Submission Process
Please note that the URNCST Journal only publishes select full articles resulting from 1) designated abstracts presented at an undergraduate research conference that has partnered with the journal, or 2) accepted abstracts from the URNCST Journal Mentored Paper or the URNCST Journal Artificial Intelligence-Assisted Encyclopedia Entry Initiative. Unsolicited manuscripts are considered, but on a case-by-case basis to ensure quality submissions; if you wish to submit an unsolicited manuscript, please contact the editor at editor@urncst.com to discuss the suitability of your article submission before making a submission. Unsolicited manuscript submissions that have not been approved by the editor will be subject to immediate rejection. All manuscripts must be submitted online by one of the authors of the manuscript, and should not be submitted by anyone on their behalf. The submitting author (likely the undergraduate student) takes full responsibility for the article during submission and peer-review.
To minimize the time taken from submission to decision to publish, please ensure that you read these submission instructions very carefully to ensure that your manuscript adheres to the URNCST Journal formatting guidelines. Furthermore, the URNCST Journal has a zero-tolerance policy regarding academic misconduct; it is the responsibility of each and every author who submits a manuscript to the journal to ensure that their work is free of plagiarism and improper citation practices. Purdue University has created the Purdue Online Writing Lab, which serves as an excellent resource for learning about good writing practices, and all authors are encouraged to visit this site before writing/submitting a manuscript to the URNCST Journal.
As part of the submission process, you will be asked to provide a cover letter. Please use this to explain why your manuscript should be published in the URNCST Journal, elaborate on any issues relating to our editorial policies, declare any potential conflicts of interest, and state whether you or any of your co-authors intend on publishing your work, in whole or as part as a larger study, in the future. At the URNCST Journal, we understand that many undergraduate research projects are sometimes a portion of a graduate student or professor’s larger study, and publishing your work in the URNCST Journal does not prevent you from publishing overlapping work in another journal the future. Authors, however, may not publish their work in the URNCST Journal if it has already been published elsewhere, and authors should be aware that other research journals may not allow for overlapping publication.
File Formats:
Please submit your manuscript in Microsoft Word format only (DOC, DOCX).
Preparing Manuscript Text:
The URNCST Journal currently accepts three types of submissions: 1) primary research article, 2) review, 3) research protocol, 4) research methods primer, and 5) conference abstract book. Articles resulting from the participation in the URNCST Journal Mentored Paper belong to one of the "review" or "research protocol" categories. In each section below, please be sure to click on and read the instructions pertinent to the article type that you are submitting.
