Submissions | Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

I certify that this manuscript is my own work, based on my personal study and/or research and that I have acknowledged all material and sources used in its preparation.
I have signed and uploaded the VURJ License form and VURJ Mentor Consent form (linked in the Author Guidelines section) along with my manuscript.
I have included DOI information, if available, in citations.
I have ensured that my manuscript is formatted according to the APA 7th edition style guide, including in-text citations and references.
I have ensured that my manuscript does not exceed 5000 words (excluding figures/figure captions, references, and abstract).
I have discussed the submission of this article and underlying data with my research advisor or course professor, as applicable, and have had them sign the mentor consent form. I understand that my research advisor/course professor may be contacted directly by the VURJ executive board if my manuscript is accepted for publication
I have removed all identifying personal information, such as names, dates, and year at Vanderbilt, from the uploaded manuscript document to ensure a blind review.
If my work contains human experimentation, human interviewing, animal test subjects, or involves sentient organisms in any other way, I have attached an IRB approval verification (or appropriate approval from another board) and made explicit mention of the protocols followed in my manuscript.

Author Guidelines

Authors, to submit a manuscript, please click on "Register" in the top navigation panel and create an account through which you will be able to upload your manuscript and track its progress in the review process. Please be sure to check the box for the role of "author" when you register. When you log in, you should be able to begin the submission process by clicking "new submission." Please remember to submit a signed copy of the license form (linked here), and signed mentor consent (linked here) along with your manuscript.

If the work was done under a faculty member or research mentor, permission must be obtained from them to submit (you must complete and submit the form posted above).

The VURJ does not accept submissions from undergraduates outside Vanderbilt. Furthermore, the manuscript should only contain research done while the author is attending Vanderbilt.
- This excludes research done during high school or after graduation. However, recently graduated students (students enrolled in Fall 2021 and graduated early) may still publish work they did while they attended Vanderbilt.
- This does not exclude research done at an external institution, as long as the institution signs off on the publication of data collected under their supervision.
A maximum of two articles will be accepted per author. Please do not submit more than two manuscripts.
Manuscripts that have been published in other journals or any other periodicals cannot be re-published in the VURJ.
Manuscripts must not exceed 5000 words (excluding figures/figure captions, references, and abstract).
Manuscripts must include an abstract, which must not exceed 250 words.
Manuscripts should be submitted in "docx" (Word document) format.
Manuscripts must be formatted according to the APA 7th edition style guide (including in-text citations and references).
If the work contains human experimentation, human interviews, animal test subjects, or involves sentient organisms in any other way, you must attach IRB approval verification or verification of appropriate approval from another board.
- You must also explicitly mention the protocol followed to conduct the research in the methods section.
- Research ethics is extremely important to us. If there is any ambiguity about the ethics of your study we cannot publish your work.

If you have any questions, please email vurj@vanderbilt.edu.

Copyright Notice

Copyright for articles published in this journal is retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (linked here). By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles are available for wide dissemination at no cost to readers, with proper attribution (acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal), in educational and other non-commercial settings. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process.

Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository, in a journal or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal. However, for undergraduates authoring a manuscript under the guidance of a faculty member or research mentor, we strongly encourage the student to discuss with the faculty mentor and the Editor if prior publication in the Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal will constrain future publication efforts in professional journals.

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