How To Write a Journal Article Submission Cover Letter

How To Write a Journal Article Submission Cover Letter

Key Points Summary

• Always submit an accompanying cover letter with every manuscript.
• Some journals have very specific requirements for information to provide in the cover letter, and these are usually stated in the journal’s instructions to authors. Make sure your cover letter includes any journal-required elements.
• Strong cover letters tell journal editors why they should publish your manuscript in their journals.
• Cover letters should be succinct and focus on the importance and novelty of your findings, as well as how they relate to the scope of your target journal.

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After the hard work of perfecting your manuscript and selecting a target journal, one more task remains before submission: writing a cover letter. The cover letter is an important document that must do more than tell the editor that you are submitting your manuscript for consideration. It should capture the editor’s attention, provide information about the novelty and importance of your findings, and indicate that all authors have approved of the submission and the manuscript has not been submitted to more than one journal concurrently.

Strong cover letters not only introduce your manuscript – they offer an important opportunity to convince journal editors to consider your manuscript for publication.

Determine Your Target Journal’s Requirements

Before you begin, check your target journal’s author instructions for any cover letter requirements, such as certain specifically worded statements. No matter what else you decide to include, always make sure that your cover letter contains any required information and statements described in your target journal’s author instructions.

Develop an Outline for the Cover Letter

In addition to any information and statements required by your target journal, every cover letter should contain the following elements:

1. An introduction stating the title of the manuscript and the journal to which you are submitting.
2. The reason why your study is important and relevant to the journal’s readership or field.
3. The question your research answers.
4. Your major experimental results and overall findings.
5. The most important conclusions that can be drawn from your research.
6. A statement that the manuscript has not been published and is not under consideration for publication in any other journal
7. A statement that all authors approved the manuscript and its submission to the journal.
8. Any other details that will encourage the editor to send your manuscript for review.

Write one or more sentences to address each of these points. You will revise and polish these sentences to complete your cover letter.

Write the Body of the Cover Letter

Open your cover letter with a sentence or two explaining why you are writing, the title of your manuscript, and the title of the journal.

• Example: “I am writing to submit our manuscript entitled, “Taking antioxidants plus zinc reduces the risk of advanced age-related macular degeneration for high-risk patients,” for consideration for publication in Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation.”

Briefly state the background for the problem or question your research answers. The focus of the paragraph is to explain why your research was needed and clearly state the question your research answers. Clearly and concisely explain your results, findings, and conclusions.

To keep your cover letter concise, limit this explanation to one or two brief paragraphs. You can also include a sentence or two that links your findings to the interests of the journal’s readership, if appropriate. It may be helpful to review your abstract to stay focused on your most important results and conclusions.

• Example: “Because our findings could be applied in the clinic right away, they are likely to be of great interest to the vision scientists, researchers, clinicians, and trainees who read your journal.”

As you write this explanation, think in terms of “how will my manuscript benefit the journal?” The journal editor’s goal is to publish important, novel findings that are within the journal’s scope and of interest to its readership. Your goal is to show the editor how your manuscript meets these criteria. Such manuscripts will be highly referenced, which will increase the impact factor of the journal. Without exaggerating, explain the novelty, relevance, and interest of your findings to researchers who read that journal.

After describing your research and findings, include a paragraph with any journal-required statements. If the findings in the manuscript have been presented at a scientific meeting, include that information in this paragraph. This paragraph should also include statements about exclusivity and author approval for submission.

• Example: “This manuscript describes original work and is not under consideration by any other journal. All authors approved the manuscript and this submission.”

In your last paragraph, thank the editor for his or her consideration.

• Example: “Thank you for receiving our manuscript and considering it for review. We appreciate your time and look forward to your response.”

Add Basic Letter Elements

Cover letters follow the same simple format as all letters. Make sure your cover letter includes the following basic letter elements:

• Date.
• Addressee name and mailing address.
• Salutation (such as “Dear Dr. Smith:” or “Dear Editor:”).
• Body of the letter.
• Closing (such as “Kind regards,” or “Thank you,”).
• Signature block (author’s signature, typed name and highest degree, institution, and mailing address).
• Enclosure designation (“Enclosure” to indicate your manuscript is included with the cover letter).

Cover letters are often submitted electronically in an e-mail message. E-mail cover letters may not contain more formal letter elements like the date and address block.

Revise the Cover Letter

Read through your cover letter several times to proofread and revise the text for clarity and brevity. Remove any stray points or sentences that do not directly relate to the purpose, major results, and most important findings and conclusions of your study. As you revise the cover letter, ask yourself if the impact, novelty, and relevance of your findings are clear. Rewrite any sentences that are very long, do not make your point clearly, or are cluttered with too many details.

Cover letters should not exceed one page unless absolutely necessary. If you write a cover letter that is longer than one page, think carefully about how it can be shortened.

As you revise the cover letter, proofread for the same basic grammar and construction issues you would look for when revising your manuscript.

• Eliminate unnecessary or redundant phrases like “in order to” and “may have the potential to.”
• Make sure the letter is written in plain English. Remove any jargon and define all abbreviations at first use.
• Proofread for spelling and grammar errors.

During your review, read the cover letter at least once to ensure you avoid the following:

• Statements that exaggerate or overstate results
• Conclusions that are not supported by the data reported in the manuscript.
• Sentences repeated word-for-word from the manuscript text.
• Too many technical details.

Always complete a final check to confirm that your cover letter includes all elements required by your target journal.

 
EXAMPLE

Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences, Department of Inclusive Education and Rehаbilitation

University of Zagreb
Zagreb, 10000

Croatia

18.02.2015.

Prof. Dr. Vladimir Trajkovski

Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation

Faculty of Philosophy
University "Ss. Cyril and Methodius"
Goce Delchev 9A
1000 Skopje, Republic of Macedonia

Dear Dr. Trajkovski

Please find enclosed a manuscript entitled: " The Experience of Bullying in Schools in Children with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): A Correlation Between Victimization and Bullying" . The paper demonstrates significant finding about victimisation and bullying in children with ADHD disorder. As such this paper should be of interest to a broad readership including those interested in socioemotional competencies as well as those interested in ADHD disorder.

Thank you for your consideration of my work! Please address all correspondence concerning this manuscript to me and feel free to correspond with me by e-mail (cvitkovic.daniela@gmail.com).

Sincerely, 

Daniela Cvitković

Usage of Statistics in JSER

Respected Colleagues,

I want to stress few words about usage of statistics in JSER papers.

Numerical data should be analyzed using appropriate statistical tests. Define all statistical measures and models unambiguously and include a relevant analysis of the statistical probabilities and software or statistical packages used. Identify the number of independent replications of experimental treatments and the number of times individual experiments were duplicated. Provide detailed information for each statistical test applied including: the type of test; degrees of freedom; population size; definition of population (e.g., number of individual measurements, number of animals, number of slices, number of times treatment was applied, etc.); and what correction, if any, was used to adjust for multiple pairwise comparisons. Probability values should be denoted as p. Do not report p-values to more than two places after the decimal. Actual p-values are preferred to the use of the terms “significant” and “highly significant”, for p < 0.05 and p< 0.01, respectively. Avoid the ambiguous use of p > 0.05 to declare non-significance.

JSER Editor-in-chief

Writing Style in JSER

1. Articles should be written in English (spellings as in the Oxford English Dictionary), and Macedonian language, 1.5 lines spaced, using proper alignment, Times New Roman font, and 12-pt. type. An abstract should not consist of no more than 250 words, include the title of the paper, and 3 to 5 keywords. Cyrillic names should be transliterated for in Latin see: (Table 1).

2. Set all margins to 2 cm.

3. Format for A4 paper.

4. Subtitles should be in Times New Roman 12 pt, bold with left alignment, each part to be separated with a subtitle (introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, reference and other).

5. The text should not be written with same font-all capital or lowercase.

6. All figures and tables should be put in a separate file. The location of tables and figures in the text is emphasized in bold, enclosed in angle brackets, on a separate line.

Example:

7. General alignment, paragraph indents is made by using the tab-button and the functions for centering etc. DO NOT USE THE SPACE BUTTON

8. Endnotes should be used less. They can be numbered with Arabic numerals starting with 1 and continuing through the article; for example:

“(See Note 1).” Do not use footnotes.

JSER Experimental ethics

Informed Consennt 

Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation requires that all appropriate steps be taken in obtaining written informed consent of any and all human subjects participating in the research comprising the manuscript submitted for review and possible publication, and a statement to this effect must be included in the Materials and Methods section of the manuscript. Identifying information should not be included in the manuscript unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the study participants or patients (or parents or guardians) give written informed consent with the manuscript.

Protection of human subjects and animals in research 

If clinical trials were used, a statement of registration is required; also, for all investigations involving humans or animals, a statement of protocol approval from an Institutional Review Board (IRB) or Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), or an equivalent statement, must be included in the Materials and Methods section of the manuscript. The Editorial Board endorses the ARRIVE Guidelines for reporting in vivo experiments.

When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed. For research involving recombinant DNA, containment facilities and guidelines should conform to those of the National Institutes of Health or corresponding institutions. For those investigators who do not have formal ethics review committees, the principles outlined in the Helsinki Declaration should be followed. If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study.

 

Patient Photographs

Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation encourage all prospective authors to work with families prior to submission to address the issue of permission for review and possible publication of patient images. If your submission contains any identifiable patient images or other protected health information, you must provide documented permission from the patient (or the patient’s parent, guardian, or legal representative) before the specific material will be circulated among Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation editors, reviewers and staff for the purpose of possible publication in Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation. The documented permission may be supplied as supporting information uploaded with the submission. While the manuscript will be processed upon submission, anything considered protected health information will be restricted from access prior to the receipt of documented permission and will not be sent for review until received. The submission of masked photos without sufficient de-identification (i.e., facial photographs with small dark geometric shapes over the eyes) is strongly discouraged.

The above policies are in accordance with the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals produced by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.

Sponsorship policy

Respected readers,

Companies, individuals and other organizations are invited to support the development of Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation by becoming a journal sponsor.

Sponsorships provide unrestricted funds that will help Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation advance its service to authors and readers and fulfill its mission. Sponsors will be highlighted on a Sponsors page.

The mission of Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation is to facilitate the equitable global dissemination of high-quality health research within the health community; to promote international dialogue and collaboration on health issues; to improve clinical practice; and to expand and deepen the understanding of health and health care.

Our open-access publishing platform is key to accomplishing our goals. To ensure their commitment to the integrity of debate within the pages of Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation, and to the independence of our editors, sponsors of Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation will be asked to endorse the following sponsorship statement: We support the mission and principles of Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation and recognize the potential for competing interests while providing financial support to the Journal. We hereby state that we will not attempt to influence any editorial decisions made by the editors of Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation, in return for our support.

Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation reserves the right to refuse sponsorship from any business or organization. In keeping with our policy on advertising, Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation does not accept sponsorships from pharmaceutical or medical device companies.

Please contact jser@fzf.ukim.edu.mk if you are interested in becoming an Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation sponsor, inserting "Sponsorship" in the subject line. 

JSER Editor-in-chief

New citations of JSER papers in JAACAP

Dear readers,
I want to announce that on of our papers is cited in JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF CHILD AND ADOLESCENT PSYCHIATRY (journal included in TR with IF = 7.260 for 2014). It is following paper: Memishevikj H, Hodzhikj S. The effects of equine-assisted therapy in improving the psychosocial functioning of children with autism. J Spec Educ Rehabil. 2010;11:57-67. The paper is cited in: Randomized Controlled Trial of Therapeutic Horseback Riding in Children and Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder by Robin L. Gabriels, Zhaoxing Pan, Briar Dechant, John A. Agnew, Natalie Brim,Gary Mesibov. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescents Psychiatry July 2015, Volume 54, Issue 7, Pages 541–549. Congratulations to the authors.
JSER Editor-in-chief

New citations to JSER articles

Dear readers,
We received alert for new citation of JSER article. I am talking about this article.

[PDF] Animal-Assisted Intervention for Autism Spectrum Disorder

ME O'Haire, NA Guérin, AC Kirkham, CL Daigle

... doi: 10.1177/019394502320555403 Memishevikj, H., & Hodzhikj, S. (2010). The effects of
equine-assisted therapy in improving the psychosocial functioning of children with autism. Journal
of Special Education and Rehabilitation, 11(3-4), 57-67.

JSER editor-in-chief

Invitation to Submit an Article

Dear colleagues,

Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation, which is a peer-reviewed, open access journal that publishes original research articles as well as review articles in all areas of special education and rehabilitation.
Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation is published using an open access publication model, meaning that all interested readers are able to freely access the journal online without the need for a subscription, and authors retain the copyright of their work.All manuscripts that are submitted to Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation will not be subject to any Article Processing Charges. The journal has a distinguished Editorial Board with extensive academic qualifications, ensuring that the journal maintains high scientific standards and has a broad international coverage.

A current list of the journal's reviewers can be found at the following link. Moreover, all published articles will be made available on Scopus and indexed in EBSCO at the time of publication.

Manuscripts should be submitted online to the journal at this link, after previous registration on the journal web site.Once a manuscript has been accepted for publication, it will undergo language copyediting, typesetting, and reference validation in order to provide the highest publication quality possible.

JSER editor-in-chief 

New citations to articles in Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation's profile

Dear readers,
Here is one more citation in some Indian paper. This JSER article was cited:
Memisevic, H., Hadzic, S. (2013) . Development Of Fine Motor Coordination And Visual Motor Integration In Preschool Children. Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation. 14 (1-2). 45 – 53.

Penerapan Kegiatan Menjiplak (Tracing) untuk Meningkatkan Perkembangan Fisik Motorik Halus pada Kelompok Dahlia TK Arrohmah Josroyo Jaten Karanganyar …

S Prathiwi, S Wahyuningsih, S Istiyati - KUMARA CENDEKIA, 2015

Abstract ABSTRAK Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk meningkatkan perkembangan ranah
fisik motorik halus dalam kemampuan membentuk dan meniru huruf kelas A kelompok
Dahlia dengan menggunakan kegiatan menjiplak. Pemberian tindakan pada kelompok ...

JSER editor-in-chief

JSER's IPP value increased twice

Dear colleagues,

JSER's IPP value has increased in last year twice from 0.07 to 0.14. Some people think that IPP is calculated very similar like TR impact factor.

So, we can concluded that JSER has metrics for getting an impact factor. It is Thomson Reuters turn in following years.  

JSEE editor-in-chief

IPP (Impact per Publication):
IPP measures the ratio of citations in the reference year to the scholarly papers published in the 3-year citation period divided by the number of scholarly papers published in those 3 years.

The calculation is similar to JCR Impact Factor. However, when counting the citations to "documents published", only articles, reviews and conference papers are included (but not citations to other materials such as editorials). Taking into account the same types of documents in both the numerator and denominator of the equation provides a fair impact measurement of the journal and diminishes the chance of manipulation.
Unlike SJR, IPP does not consider the quality of citing journals. Unlike SNIP, IPP is not normalized for the subject field.
Source: http://libguides.library.cityu.edu.hk

JSER Scopus metrics for 2014

Dear colleagues and readers,
JSER has new Scopus metrics for 2014. SNIP 2014  = 0.115; IPP 2014 = 0.14; SJR 2014 = 0.109.

SNIP is Source Normalized Impact per Paper measures contextual citation impact by weighting citations based on the total number of citations in a subject field. As a field-normalized metric SNIP offers researchers, authors, and librarians the ability to benchmark and compare journals from different subject areas. This is especially helpful to researchers publishing in multidisciplinary fields.

SJR is SCImago Journal Rank is a prestige metric based on the idea that 'all citations are not created equal'. With SJR, the subject field, quality and reputation of the journal have a direct effect on the value of a citation. It is a size-independent indicator and it ranks journals by their 'average prestige per article' and can be used for journal comparisons in the scientific evaluation process.

IPP is The Impact per Publication measures the ratio of citations per article published in the journal.
The Impact per Publication measures the ratio of citations in a year (Y) to scholarly papers published in the three previous years (Y-1, Y-2, Y-3) divided by the number of scholarly papers published in those same years (Y-1, Y-2, Y-3).
The Impact per Publication metric is using a citation window of three years which is considered to be the optimal time period to accurately measure citations in most subject fields.
Taking into account the same peer-reviewed scholarly papers only in both the numerator and denominator of the equation provides a fair impact measurement of the journal and diminishes the chance of manipulation.

JSER editor-in-chief

JSER Global Impact Factor for 2014

Dear colleagues and readers,
We want to announce that Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation has increased its global impact factor (GIF) from 0.610 (2013) to 0.714 in 2014. We are working hard to improve JSER bibliometrics.
Cheers
JSER Editor-in-chief