Article Submission
Submission Guidelines for Authors
Who is the audience?
The Young Scientist is a peer-reviewed journal focused on communicating scientific work performed by high school students. The Abstract and Introduction (which includes Background and Significance) will be written for a more general audience such that anyone with or without a science background can understand the purpose and overall goal of the work subsequently described. These sections will be followed by more technical Methods, Results, and Discussion sections which should be readable to a person familiar with scientific research (but not necessarily in the field of expertise).
Review Process
Articles that are submitted will be distributed to two scientific reviewers. The approximate response time frame is 6 to 8 weeks. At this time, you will receive an email with the decision concerning your manuscript. Typical decisions will fall into one of the following categories: "accept with minor corrections," "accepted with major corrections," and "not recommended for print."
If you receive an acceptance with corrections, you will have 2 weeks to make corrections (seeking advisement and approval from your PI is highly recommended!). In addition to a revised manuscript, a letter to the reviewers addressing each comment must also be submitted (an example of this Rebuttal Letter is available on the website).
Acceptance
The criteria for acceptance will be based on significance, originality, clarity, and quality of the reported work. As a peer-reviewed journal, not all submissions may be accepted. Plagiarism of any form is grounds of immediate rejection of submission.
Formatting
Manuscript
Each submission has a 3,000 word maximum (this includes all article sections - Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion - as well as Acknowledgments, References and Supporting Information list). Up to three figures and one table can be included as well. No more than 30 citations are requested. This is approximately 3 pages using the downloadable template provided on the website.
Figures
Figures should be the highest resolution available (a minimum of 300 pixels per inch).
What does this mean?
If you are creating graphs, figures, etc. during your research, save the ORIGINAL image or the ORIGINAL Excel file containing your graph. If you modify the image to include arrows, labels, etc. (in PowerPoint, for example), save the PowerPoint file where you made the modifications. Remember that copying and pasting an image into Word or into PowerPoint does not always preserve the original file resolution.
See the Figure Support page for detailed information.
Supplemental Data
Please note that there will be a place for supplemental figures, tables, and text available for online publication. High resolution figure files should be submitted online for this section as well. Additional text (such as Supplemental Methods) or tables, should be submitted in an additional Word document.
An abbreviated list of Supplemental Information should be included in the printed version (see template for more detail).
Table of Contents Thumbnail
Authors are required to submit a graphic entry for the Table of Contents that, in conjunction with the manuscript title, should give the reader a representative idea of one of the following: a key structure, reaction, equation, concept, or theorem, etc. that is discussed in the manuscript. The preferred thumbnail size is 3.5cm square. However, for thumbnails that cannot be square, an image no wider than 7.0 cm and no taller than 3.5 cm may be submitted. The graphic will be reproduced at 100% of the submission size. A surrounding margin will be added to this width and height during journal production. Please follow the high resolution figure guidelines described above.
Template
The initial submission will follow the Journal of the American Chemical Society template. This template will provide a Word document formatted to the Young Scientist requirements. Instructions for using the template are provide on the Template Download page.