As part of the WAC Clearinghouse family of open-access publications, we use the Clearinghouse submissions portal to review and provide feedback on submissions. You can find the portal at https://submissions.colostate.edu.
The editors have compiled the list of considerations below in order to help you prepare your manuscript for submission.
Is your essay appropriate for WLN?
Successful essays will demonstrate some level of writing center experience, as opposed to theoretical programs, policies, or solutions that have been thought about but never tested in real writing center settings. On the other hand, essays that are predominantly focused on classroom theory and practice or other non-writing center topics may be more successful if sent to more appropriate journals.
Our readers turn to the WLN for insights and strategies they can consider in their scholarship and in their own centers, which can include highly varied programs at universities, colleges, high schools, and middle schools in the U.S. and writing centers in other countries.
Does your essay offer new insights, experience, or research?
Essays that are primarily repeating what is already known are not appropriate for publication. WLN does not publish literature reviews at this time.
Does your essay offer some context or background of previous scholarship and what is known about the subject?
Just as there can be too much context, essays are not suitable for publication when they offer no clear awareness of the existing scholarship. If your essay acknowledges what others have written about a subject, please ensure that your citations are up-to-date with recent sources.
Does your essay avoid jargon that assumes readers are familiar with this specialized terminology?
Readers of WLN range from those new to the field to experienced directors. The goal of an author of an important article is to educate newcomers and add to the knowledge of experienced directors. As a general rule, WLN considers good ideas expressed in clear, straightforward language to be preferable to good ideas hidden under a layer of jargon that only a limited number of readers are familiar with.
Does your Works Cited conform to the 9th edition (2021) of the MLA Handbook?
Fixing errors, missing information in citations, and other problems are not the responsibility of the editors or reviewers. Authors who include careless errors or wrong or out-dated formatting that does not conform to the most recent MLA handbook diminish their own credibility as scholarly authors.
What kinds of submissions will NOT be considered?
Is your essay less than 3,000 words or your Tutors' Column less than 1,500 words, including Works Cited and Notes?
Reviewers do not consider essays that are over the word limit. And please be aware that when you do a word count, many versions of Word's word-counting tool do not include notes in the total. If that applies to your word processing program, please count any notes separately and add them to the total. If you include graphics such as figures or tables, your word count should be lower to account for the space needed for graphics.
Tutors sending essays for the Tutors' Column are encouraged to discuss how to write successful essays for publication--not successful class papers--with their directors. These are two very different genres.
WLN invites submissions from newcomers, experienced scholars, and tutors from all over the globe. All voices are important in our collaborative world.
While WLN does not accept unsolicited book reviews, we invite suggestions for books you are interested in reviewing. We also welcome queries in advance about possible articles.
Before submitting a manuscript, be sure that your manuscript complies with the requirements below.
The editors assume that authors whose research involves human subjects have obtained the approval of the IRB at their institution before submitting an essay to this journal reporting on that research.
Please submit your manuscript on our submissions portal at https://submissions.colostate.edu.
WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship is an open-access, peer-review scholarly journal, published on the WAC Clearinghouse and supported by Colorado State University. Copyright © for the journal is held by its editorial staff. Articles are published under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs).