Guidelines for Authors

Reviewers evaluate manuscripts according to the following criteria. These criteria relate to the appropriateness of the paper to the journal, the significance of its content, and the quality of the presentation. Manuscripts are expected to:

  1. have content that can be directly applied by classroom instructors or curriculum designers;
  2. appeal to a broad audience interested in computing education;
  3. address significant problem(s) of lasting value;
  4. build upon (and cite) relevant references;
  5. adequately evaluate any teaching intervention (e.g. tool, visualization, instructional method) in terms of its impact on learning in actual use
  6. use appropriate methodology, both for the teaching intervention and its evaluation;
  7. provide sufficient detail to replicate and evaluate;
  8. be clearly and carefully written; and
  9. adhere to accepted standards of style, usage, and composition.

Each submitted paper is initially reviewed by one of the Editors-in-chief, who makes an evaluation as to the suitability of the paper for this journal. If the paper fits the scope of the journal, the editor assigns the manuscript to an Associate Editor. The Associate Editor assigns the paper to at least three reviewers, and, based on these, makes a recommendation to the Editors-in-Chief. The Editors-in-chiefs' decision is based on these reviews and the Associate Editor's recommendation.

Submissions should follow the online guidelines for Electronically Submitting Articles to ACM Journals. All manuscripts and revisions are to be submitted electronically using ACM's Manuscript Central interface.

Papers are subject to the ACM copyright policy. If a paper is accepted, each author will be asked to sign an ACM copyright form.

No paper submitted to TOCE may be under review elsewhere. A paper that is based on previously-published work (a conference or workshop paper, e.g.) is expected to contain at least 30% new material, and the original paper should be cited as a footnote to the paper title. All papers are subject to the ACM policy on plagiarism.

It is expected that authors who have their papers published in TOCE will contribute to the futher development of by serving as reviewers of manuscripts within their area(s) of expertise.

We also invite authors to take advantage of the ACM Author-Izer Service. This new service extends ACM's support for self-archiving by enabling authors to generate and post links in their own bibliographies that they maintain on either their personal home page or institutional repository. For more information please see http://www.acm.org/publications/acm-author-izer-service