Guidelines for Materials Posted in the Teachpsych.org Domain

Interim

Note: These guidelines are under active consideration and revision. Nonetheless, these are posted for the convenience of authors until a definitive version emerges since they represent a reasonable (if incomplete) approximation of what those standards will be. Thank you for your patience while we arrive at final guidelines.

In its service to teachers and students, the Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP) established teachpsych.org as the unified domain within which all Internet-based activities, resources, and information would be offered to its members and the public. In order to facilitate the function of teachpsych.org , this page provides a set of general and specific guidelines for the format and presentation of materials offered through this domain. Authors of documents, web pages, and any other resource offered on the STP Homepage, OTRP Online, or otherwise within this domain should be familiar with these guidelines in preparing their materials for posting or distribution via teachpsych.org .

The phrase "editor" below refers to the person from STP with whom you are communicating, e.g., OTRP Director or Associate Director, etc.

General Guidelines

1. Teachpsych.org and its various components serve a diverse audience of teachers, students, and the general public. We seek to make the materials offered via this domain as accessible as possible to the members of STP and our pages' other visitors. In order to accomplish this central goal, we urge authors to adopt the simplest and most reliable formats and technologies consistent with accurate presentation. Thus, we ask authors to refrain from the use of what might be called "bells and whistles" that contribute little to the fundamental usefulness of the document or resource, e.g., Java-scripted materials for web-based documents.
   
2. Authors should consider explicitly how to make their materials accessible to persons with disabilities (that is, to individuals who are blind, have limited sight, experience limitations of mobility in the use of their hands, or may be deaf or hard-of-hearing). In general, STP is committed to making teachpsych.org resources accessible to persons with disabilities.
   
3. All postings within teachpsych.org must respect the copyright and other intellectual propety rights of others. Authors should be careful that any materials be their own creation or, if not, be licensed or otherwise authorized in writing for posting and distribution by the copyright owners. If an author has any question about intellectual property rights, the respective editor or program director should be consulted. Note that the national and international reach of the Internet renders null most "fair use" exceptions which teachers may legitimately use for classroom or instructional purposes. Authors will be asked in all cases to certify that the materials they submit for publication via teachpsych.org are legally cleared for publication and will assume legal responsibility for that certification.
   
4. Teachpsych.org is offered by STP which also serves as Division 2 of the American Psychological Association (APA). As a responsible professional organization, STP insists that all materials posted in this domain should be free of bias as well as defamatory or inflammatory content.
   
5. Teachpsych.org functions on the mostly voluntary efforts of its editors, program directors, and associates. While these volunteers will perform final editorial work on materials offered for distribution, authors must assume the preëminent role in preparing their works for display. Hence, authors should complete a careful review of grammar, spelling, and overall writing quality before submitting any materials for review by STP. Authors should be careful to follow the specific formatting guidelines noted below and not expect that major deviations from these standards will be corrected by STP editors. Manuscripts with serious editorial deficiencies will be returned to authors for further work.
   
6. Teachpsych.org does not normally distribute nor advertise any materials, announcements, or products of a commercial nature. The non-profit status of STP precludes most commercial activities and editors for teachpsych.org pages will return manuscripts which violate this guideline.
   
7. Authors of web-based materials can use the logo of STP (a red apple, green leaves, and superimposed Greek letter PSI) or other associated graphics (e.g., teachpsych.org or OTRP Online icons) only with the explicit permission of STP and only upon the final publication agreement for the manuscript by the appropriate STP editor. Authors should be careful not to use any STP icon or designation in association with any manuscript in preparation until that manuscript has been cleared for publication.

Specific Publishing Guidelines

Style Guide

1. Manuscripts should generally follow the usage and reference formatting guidelines of the 5th edition of the APA's Publication Manual. However, the nature of publication at teachpsych.org requires some adaptations which depart from the manuscript preparation guidelines of that manual (as described below).
   
2. Unless an editor at teachpsych.org directs otherwise, materials which will be distributed as textual documents (with or without graphical elements) should be prepared by their authors "in camera ready" format.
   
3. Web pages employ html (hypertext markup language) and do not always permit the display of a document in the same way as a printed page would. For example, italicized text in html is possible, but is very difficult to read on a computer display screen and should normally be avoided. Whereever italics might appear in a text on a webpage, we would prefer authors to use an underline or boldface. The principle for this and other deviations from formal APA-style is readability combined with accuracy within a webpage environment. Consider, then, that a book and a journal article reference might look like these examples:
   
   • Holton, S. A. (1995). Conflict management in higher education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
   • Holton, S. A. (1995). Conflict management in higher education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
     
   • Hardy, M. S. (2002). Extra credit: Gifts for the gifted? Teaching of Psychology, 29, 233-234.
   • Hardy, M. S. (2002). Extra credit: Gifts for the gifted? Teaching of Psychology, 29, 233-234.
     

Textual Materials

1. Manuscripts should employ 8 1/2 x 11 inch formats with a minimum margin on all four sides of 0.75 inch (preferably 1.0 inch). Please consult your editor if you must use smaller margin sizes. Authors should be careful that all materials in headers and footers fall within these same limits. Please alert your editor if your document requires printing size reduction, i.e., printing at < 100% of its original size in order to print properly.
   
2. Manuscripts should be be submitted in Microsoft Word "rich text format" (preferably) or Microsoft Word 98 (or Word 2000 for Mac) Document [.doc] format. Note that teachpsych.org publications are normally distributed digitally in at least two formats: (1) rich text format and (2) Adobe® portable document format. Authors normally submit only the rich text formatted version to STP and STP editors will render that version into parallel alternate versions.
   
3. Manuscripts should avoid changes in overall document printing orientation across separate sections, that is, the use of both "portrait" (vertical) and "landscape" (horizontal) printing orientations in the same document. Such changes are almost impossible to format properly in a single .pdf (portable document format) file. Authors should consider submitting such documents as wholly separate parts -- one for the "portrait"- and one for the "landscape"-orientated sections.
   
4. In longer manuscripts (> 9 pages) that include a paginated table of contents, margins should be 1.0 inch on all four sides and follow the instructions for forced page breaks below. Otherwise, maintenance of proper pagination across multiple document formats becomes very difficult.
   
5. Do not use spaces to format text (e.g., to indent or to separate text elements). Tabs should be used instead.
   
6. Forced page breaks should only be used in manuscripts where the break occurs with at least 2 inches of blank space before the end of the page. Page breaks within 1 inch of the bottom margin often do not create proper pagination across multiple document formats (e.g., the same document on a PC vs. a Mac or in portable document format).
   
7. Use standard typefaces, e.g., Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, Times, New York, Courier, and Symbol. Do not use non-standard or rare typefaces. All type should normally be 9, 10, 11, or 12 points in size (8 pt. should be used in the rare case only). Use larger type sizes (e.g., 16, 18, 24 point) very sparingly.

Graphical/Web-based Materials

1. Authors should aim to achieve a consistency and simplicity of visual effect by minimizing the number of different typefaces and colors used on web pages and, particularly, by avoiding superfluous graphical decorations (what the designer Edward G. Tufte immortalized under the label "chart junk"). In general, avoid horizontal rules or tables in which there are borders. Within tables, it is preferable to use space (in the form of cell spacing and cell padding values) rather than actual borders in order to separate materials visually.
   
2. All web-based documents must include a chronology of creation and revision, i.e., it should include a date indicating when it was created (uploaded for the first time) as well as the latest revision date (when it has been changed since it was first uploaded). See the bottom of this page for an example of this practice. If a document is a second or subsequent major version of a previously published work, authors should indicate this point and provide a reference to or short description of the earlier or original version.
   
3. All web-based documents must provide in some fashion a clear and accurate identification of the document's author and institutional/professional affiliation as well as a method of contact by which users/readers can reach the author, e.g., via an email address. This identification may be on the first or "home" page of the online materials. If the author is a corporate entity or collaborative effort of multiple authors, some person should be designated to serve as the contact person for the questions, comments, or other inquiries by users/readers.
   
4. Subpages of a web-based document should have a mechanism for browsers/readers to escape the page to an earlier index page and, directly or in stages, to the "home" page of the document.
   
5. Webpages or sites sponsored by STP (such as OTRP Online web resource sites) should normally

   (a) avoid the use of frames into which materials from other sites are displayed. If such frames must be used, the disclaimer described below in (c) must be prominent on the initial page of the website;
   (b) identify or annotate links to external sites with some indication of the linked site's author or affiliation rather than use only a description of the material found at the link (Example: "Students might wish to examine reference materials on narrative theorists in the social sciences (Narrative Psychology: Internet & Resource Guide)" );
   (c) include a formal disclaimer of any relationship between the site and external links and resources if none, in fact, exists. STP-sponsored webpages portray accurately their relationship with linked materials found within these sites and take steps not to imply endorsement or collaborative arrangments when these are not present; and,

   (d) consult with an STP editor if "deep links" (those which bypass an external site's main or home page) are made at commercial sites outside of North America. Some recent legal decisions in the European Union raise questions about deep links at sites within the EU. (You may wish to consult materials on deep linking at the American Library Association).

6. Authors should be careful to use graphic images which are their own, demonstrably in the public domain, or those for which they have obtained written copyright clearance.
   
7. The three image formats used in teachpsych.org are GIF, PNG, and JPEG/JPG.
   
8. Prior to sending us materials for posting, web authors should be careful from the start when they work with graphic images. Because JPEG/JPG images are "lossy" and degrade across every iteration of editing, authors are advised to work first with images in TIFF (or PICT) format until they have achieved a final and satisfactory rendition of the image they wish to display in JPEG/JPG format. At that last stage, images should be converted into their final JPEG/JPG format. If at all possible, JPEG/JPG-formatted images should never be opened for editing & subsequent saving. Note that images should not be sent to us in TIFF or BMP format.
   
9. Images posted online as visible parts of a webpage must use one of three formats: GIF, PNG, or JPEG/JPG. However, authors should consider the following guidelines and suggestions:
   
   • GIF (Graphical Interchange Format)®. GIF is an older loss-less format limited to a palatte of 256 colors, but allowing a single "transparency" color. GIF should be employed for visual materials which do NOT show the natural world or do NOT contain shadows, irregular contours. or a complicated color palatte, e.g., GIF should be used for diagrams, angular scenes with few colors, decorative elements on a webpage, etc.
     
   • Note that GIF employs the patented LZW compression formula owned by Unisys Corp. and can only be created or viewed legally on software which is licensed by Unisys. Occasionally Unisys demands that websites prove that GIF materials on the site were created by licensed software or that the site pay a license of $5000-7500. Hence, authors should consider employing PNG formatted images in their presentations instead of GIF.
     
   • PNG (Portable Network Graphics; pronounced "ping"). PNG is a newer loss-less format which permits image size compression at levels equal to or even smaller than equivalent GIF images. PNG allows a broader range of palatte colors and automatically corrects for gamma differences across systems (e.g., Mac vs. PC). PNG also permits a broader ability to create transparent graphics via an Alpha channel, but Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows still (2002) does not properly display Alpha channel data. Hence, authors who use PNG should consider not employing more than a single color transparency effect in PNG. PNG is suitable for display of materials which show the natural world (see JPEG below).
     
   • JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group; pronounced "jay-peg"). JPEG is a "lossy" image format which permits significant compression of file size while retaining a broad color palatte; it does not permit any transparency effect. JPEG (or PNG) should be employed for visual materials which show the natural world, e.g., faces, landscapes, scientific equipment in a laboratory, etc. Any images which portray scenes of irregular contours, variegated shadows, or multiple colors/hues ought to employ JPEG or PNG rather than GIF. Images which are cartoon-like or line drawings (using black/white color schemes) do not show up well in JPEG and are better rendered by GIF or PNG.