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Policies and Guidelines

Contents

Call for Submissions

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee is accepting submissions for 2024-2025 (Volume 13, Issue 1). To be included in Volume 13 of the journal, the priority deadline to submit a manuscript is November 22nd, 2024. However, we accept rolling-submissions throughout the school year

Pursuit accepts advanced, original, research-based submissions from undergraduate students in all academic disciplines. Graduates may submit their work within one year of their graduation date. If you have questions about your potential submission, please .

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General Submission Rules and Information

Submitted articles cannot have been previously published, nor be forthcoming in an archival journal or book (print or electronic). Please note: "publication" in a working-paper series does not constitute prior publication. In addition, by submitting material to Pursuit, the author is stipulating that the material is not currently under review at another journal (electronic or print) or other publication and that he or she will not submit the material to another journal (electronic or print) until the completion of the editorial decision process at Pursuit. If you have concerns about the submission terms for Pursuit, please .

Cover Letter Information: In the Cover Letter section of the submission form, authors should include the name and contact information of their advisor.

Pursuit may contact your faculty advisor for information and for permission to publish your submission. Be certain to include your advisor's name and contact information in your cover letter.

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Formatting Requirements

All submissions must be double-spaced and must be no longer than 30 pages (for Humanities and Social Sciences papers) or 15 pages (for Science and Engineering papers). Please use endnotes instead of footnotes.

The author should use the recommended style of his or her discipline. Prior to submitting an article to Pursuit, please be sure to check the paper for consistency with the research style guidelines. Additionally, Pursuit asks that submissions adhere to the following guidelines:

  • Submissions should use 12 pt. Times New Roman font, double-spaced with 1-inch margins.
  • Remove all author names from the submitted file. Be certain to add all authors to the VOL Journal system and indicate the name of the advisor in the cover letter.
  • Submissions must be in a .doc (1997-2003 Word format) file, .docx (Word format), or comparable (RTF) file format. PDFs will not be reviewed.
  • Authors should include an abstract, biography, and the name(s) of his or her advisor in the cover letter section. Please also include your abstract in your submission.
  • Please use endnotes instead of footnotes.
  • Headings should be numbered 1.1, 1.2, 1.2.1 etc. These will be removed later but are helpful to the typesetter to assign heading styles.
  • Please do not include any content in your submission which you do not have rights to use, and always give proper attribution. Pursuit takes plagiarism very seriously.

Editors reserve the right to request additional information from authors and make changes as necessary.

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Plagiarism

Submissions to Pursuit must be the undergraduate author's own work. Pursuit takes plagiarism very seriously. Plagiarism is not acceptable in submissions to Pursuit, and plagiarized content will not be considered for publication. Submissions to Pursuit will be screened for originality using iThenticate software.

If plagiarism is detected during the review process, the submission may be rejected. If plagiarism is detected after publication, Pursuit may issue a correction or retract the paper, as appropriate. Pursuit reserves the right to inform authors' institutions about plagiarism detected either before or after publication. In addition, any authors from the University of Tennessee whose work is found to contain plagiarized content may be reported for academic dishonesty.

Consider looking at the "Research Misconduct and Plagiarism" guide on UT Library's Scholarly Publishing Toolkit.

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License and Copyright

As the University of Tennessee is a public university and land grant institution, the license that Pursuit publishes authors’ works under should make their works available for public inspection and use. In addition, as Pursuit publishes academic works, authors’ works should contribute in a meaningful way to academic discourse. In keeping with the spirit of academic enterprise, it is important for Pursuit to publish works in a way that permits and maximizes the circulation of articles and allows others to interact with and reference published works with relative ease and speed. Pursuit also wishes to employ a license which is readily understandable to its authors in order to alleviate confusion.

For these reasons, Pursuit publishes articles under a Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC-BY license). If you submit your paper for publication by Pursuit, you agree to have the CC-BY license applied to your work. Under this Open Access license, you as the author agree that anyone can reuse your article in whole or part for any purpose, for free, even for commercial purposes. Anyone may copy, distribute, or reuse the content as long as the author and original source are properly cited. Pursuit adds two stipulations to this license: that if a work is selected for publication, then Pursuit has the right to first publication, and that any subsequent references to or publications of the work give credit not only to the author, but also to Pursuit as the journal where the publication first appeared, including a link to the to the final version of the article on the journal’s website, where possible. Note that neither Pursuit nor the UT Libraries VOL Journals owns the copyrights to works it publishes; the copyright is retained by the author.

Removal of Content Used Without Clear Rights

Pursuit takes plagiarism very seriously. Pursuit reserves the right to remove any photos, captures, images, figures, tables, illustrations, audio and video files, and the like, from any paper, whether before or after publication, if we have reason to believe that the content was included in your paper without permission from the owner of the content. It is the author’s responsibility to secure the appropriate rights for their use of photos, images, figures, and any other material in their submission and/or final publication.

VOL Journals: General Terms and Conditions of Use

The publisher of this journal is in a partnership with UT VOL Journals, the Volunteer Open-Access, Library-hosted Journals of the University of Tennessee Libraries. Users of the website, services, and/or software(s) affiliated with VOL Journals agree not to misuse the website, services, or software(s) in any way. Users also agree to abide by The University of Tennessee System Acceptable Use of Information Technology Resources policy.

To seek an exception to the above terms, or if you have questions on rights or re-use, please contact the journal editors.

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