Submissions

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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.

  • The submission is compliant with the IJDL Policy on Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and Large Language Models (LLMs)-Based Tools (see below).
  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it being considered by another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The submission file is in Microsoft Word or similar format. A template, provided here in Microsoft Word 2007 format, should be used to submit your manuscript for review. Styles and formatting suggestions are provided, but the document will be formatted by the assistant editor prior to publication if accepted.  Authors' names and affiliations, as well as any reference to authors'names throughout the manuscript, need to be removed, to ensure an anonymous review process.  When proposing the publication of a multimedia article, submissions are reviewed in storyboard form in Microsoft Word. This allows reviewers to comment directly to the author about possible revisions and improvements to the design case. An example of a storyboard submission is available here.
  • Where available, URLs or DOI markers for the references have been provided.
  • The text is single-spaced; uses a 10-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end. Multimedia assets can be described, however screen captures and a description of what the asset will include are helpful. All text uses the styles built into the Microsoft Word template.
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.
  • IJDL is a peer-reviewed journal. Because of the descriptive nature of design cases, an anonymous review cannot be guaranteed, and no anonymizing of manuscripts is required prior to review. Author names or affiliations should not be included explicitly in the manuscript, but references and bibliographic information can be maintained without being anonymized.

Author Guidelines

The International Journal of Designs for Learning is a multidisciplinary, peer-reviewed online journal dedicated to publishing descriptions of artifacts, environments, and experiences created to promote and support learning in all contexts by designers in any field. Additionally, IJDL welcomes design cases on systems of teaching and learning (e.g., Morrow & Lee, 2019; Roman et al., 2020; Racek & Smith, 2013; C.L.A.S.S. System)

The journal provides a venue for designers to share their knowledge-in-practice through rich representations of their designs and detailed discussions of decision-making. The aim of the journal is to support the production of high-quality precedent materials and to promote and demonstrate the value of doing so. Audiences for the journal include designers, teachers, students of design, and scholars studying the practice of design. The journal does not charge authors submission or publication fees.

 

Policy on Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and Large Language Models (LLMs)-Based Tools

 

General Guiding Principle

The International Journal of Designs for Learning (IJDL) does not prevent the use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and Large Language Models (LLMs)-based tools for authoring/developing design cases, nor does it encourage/permit the unlimited use of these tools. IJDL calls on authors/designers to hold themselves ethically responsible/accountable for all what they do with GenAI and LLMs-based tools, including experimentation. 

Specific Requirements

IJDL has the following requirements in place that authors must follow and adhere to. 

Please keep in mind that these requirements are subject to change at anytime without prior notice when new policies and legal ruling emerge from AECT—the sponsoring organization of IJDL—and other legal authorities in the U.S.:

  • GenAI tools cannot be listed as an author of a design case, as they do not meet the requirements for authorship (COPE).
  • Authors are discouraged from using AI tools to generate any text for their submissions. However, this does not include the use of tools specifically designed to assist with correcting or improving spelling, grammar, clarity, etc. 
  • Any use of an AI tool in the production of a submission’s text and creating artifacts that support learning experiences must be disclosed to the Editors and in the manuscript. If AI assistance is used, authors must include in the body or appendix of their submission a description of the relevant tools, prompts, and methods.
  • Any use of an AI tool in the production of charts, graphs, tables, images, or other visual content for the design cases must be disclosed to the Editors and in the manuscript. If AI assistance is used, authors must include in the body or appendix of their submission a description of the relevant tools, prompts, and methods.
  • Authors may use AI tools for experimental processes relevant to the unique focus of their design cases. However, any use of an AI tool for experimental processes must be disclosed to the Editors and in the manuscript. If AI assistance is used for experimental processes, authors must include in the body or appendix of their submission a description of the relevant tools, prompts, and methods.
  • Authors must validate any content generated by an AI tool. They are ethically and legally responsible for any bias, errors, plagiarism, misinformation, or research misconduct that results from the use of an AI tool.
  • IJDL editors and peer reviewers are not permitted to use AI tools in the evaluation of submitted manuscripts.

This policy was adapted from and created with reference to the policies of COPE, WAME, JAMA, SAGE, PNAS, Science, and Elsevier, and by taking into consideration the unique aspects of IJDL—the premiere international scholarly venue for learning design cases.

 

Call for Submissions

 

Authors are invited to submit design cases documenting interventions (artifacts, environments, or experiences) created to promote learning. Design cases from every field of practice are accepted. While a case may include documentation of the effectiveness of a design, the focus of the case should be descriptive, detailing how the designed artifact came to be. IJDL also publishes descriptions of closely related designs or detailed discussions of specific design genres for learning where multiple designs of one type are addressed in a single article.

Full-length design cases should include a detailed description of the intervention as the central focus. In addition, the case should address:

  • The critical and/or interesting decisions made during the design process and their results in the intervention;
  • Key aspects of the design process as they are relevant to the form of the intervention;
  • Transparent discussion of problems and/or failure analysis relevant to the intervention and its design.

Authors should make clear the relationship of the author to the project being described, the context and conditions under which the project was carried out, and the features of the project that prompted the authors to make it the subject of a case.

Collaborative articles which include multiple related design cases, or condensed cases, must have one, and only one, corresponding author. Condensed design cases should include selected representations of the intervention together with a short description of the context and goals of the intervention. The presentations of multiple related and condensed designs can be proposed to be either text or multimedia cases.

 

Unique Aspects of IJDL Submissions

 

IJDL publishes text and hybrid text/multimedia scholarly cases. All submissions to IJDL are reviewed in text format before they are accepted for publication.

Cases typically include primarily text, but the image and multimedia assets embedded in the document (which will later be stored in archival form by IU Libraries, if the article is accepted) are permitted. The layout of the manuscript will be indicated by the author in the initial reviewed document. After the article is accepted for publication, the assistant editor will work with the author to format the document into the required layout for publication, including the journal logo, article abstract, and author bios. Text articles are generally between 5000 and 9000 words and contain a number of illustrations or other multimedia assets.

All assets or components of any article published in IJDL must be stored in the IJDL online journal system. IJDL does not permit external links beyond those used in standard APA references. IJDL articles include an American Psychology Association (APA) 7th Edition reference list and include an abstract in both the Text and Multimedia formats. A Submission Preparation Checklist is provided below this section.

 

Review Process and Publication

 

Design cases are reviewed by two consecutive peer reviewers. Please allow a minimum of six weeks for the completion of the first review. After the first review, you will be notified, and a decision will be made about either immediate revisions, withdrawal of the submission, or advancing the article to a subsequent reviewer. The second reviewer will see both the manuscript and the first anonymous review. If the author has chosen to make revisions prior to the second review, a summary of revisions should be provided. The review process is the same for both text and hybrid text/multimedia articles. Once your article has been reviewed, revisions have been completed on the manuscript, and the article has been accepted by the editor, we will work with the corresponding author to prepare the article for publication. We estimate the average number of weeks between initial article submission and final publication to be about 40 weeks.

A template, provided here in Microsoft Word 2007 format, should be used to submit your manuscript for review. Styles and formatting suggestions are provided, but the document will be formatted by the assistant editor prior to publication if accepted. Please note that a text abstract of fewer than 250 words is required for all articles.  Authors' names and affiliations, as well as any reference to authors' names throughout the manuscript, need to be removed, to ensure an anonymous review process. 

Please note that this is an online journal with a significant amount of multimedia content, so publisher run-offs are not available.

Copyright Notice

Copyright © 2024 by the International Journal of Designs for Learning, a publication of the Association of Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) and Indiana University. Permission to make digital or hard copies of portions of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page in print or the first screen in digital media. Except as otherwise noted, the content published by IJDL is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA. A simpler version of this statement is available here. 

 

Repository Policy

 

Authors may deposit a copy of their published IJDL submission in their affiliated institutional repository immediately upon publication. While any version of your work (1. Submitted version, 2. Accepted version (Author Accepted Manuscript), or 3. Published version) may be deposited without embargo, we recommend using the final publication version (Version of Record). The repository version should link back to the original IJDL landing page for the submission.