Author Guidelines

Video guide for the submission process

RLyLA considers only work that has not been published elsewhere. One reason for this is that the scientific literature can be skewed by redundant publication, with important consequences, for example, if results are inadvertently included more than once into meta-analyses.

Authors should list research funders on research papers. Funding for any type of publication, for example, by a commercial company, charity or government department, should be stated within the publication. Other sources of support for publications should be clearly identified in the manuscript, usually in an acknowledgment.

Authors have a right to appeal editorial decisions through communication channel established at Polipapers platform (OJS).

Charges: The journal Revista de Lingüística y Lenguas Aplicadas does not have either article submission charges or article processing charges (APCs).

Instructions for Manuscript Preparation

Articles can be written in Spanish, English, French, German and Catalan, with a minimum length of 6,000 words and a maximum of 8,000 words, including appendices, tables and references.

1. The article should be typed in Arial, with the following sizes throughout:

  • The body of the text: 11 pt, 1.5 spacing
  • Long quotations: Font 10, single spacing, indentation (2.5 on the left)
  • Notes: Font 10, single spacing, at the end of the text (although notes will appear in published version at the bottom of the page).

2. The title of the article should be capitalized, in bold letters, font 12 and center aligned. In the electronic version, the name(s) of the author(s) should be added in capitals, font size 11pt, followed by author affiliation in lower case. Two spaces should be left under the title, and the rest should be right aligned.

3. Below this there should be two 150-word abstracts with single spacing.

One abstract must be written in the language used in the article and the other in English with italics. If the language of the article is English, then only one abstract in English is necessary. The key words should be inserted below the abstract(s).

4. References cited in the article should have the following format:

  • Author(s) and, between brackets, year of publication followed by a colon and the page number(s):

e.g. […] once again when Chomsky (1959:3)

  • References made to different authors are shown in chronological order, between brackets, and separated by a semi-colon:

e.g. (Bump, 1990; Beauvois, 1992; Wüster, 1995; Sullivan & Pratt, 1996)

5. Quotations of less than three lines are placed between inverted commas, in the main body of the text, and they should be preceded by the name of the author(s), year of publication and the page number(s):

e.g. In the words of Wüster (1995:35): "es war einmal eine schöne Zeit für die Terminologie, da wir alle zum Einsatz bereit waren".

6. For longer quotations (more than three lines), authors should indent (2.5cm on the left), using font size 10pt with single spacing. There should be 1.5 spacing immediately before and after the quotation. The bibliographical reference should be included as shown below:

A genre comprises a class of communicative events, the members of which share a set of communicative purposes. These purposes are recognized by the expert members of the parent discourse community and thereby constitute the rationale for the genre. (Swales 1990:58)

7. If part of a quotation is to be omitted, three suspension points between square brackets will be used.

8. Use italics to highlight a word or words, or when a term is used in another language.

9. The text may be divided up into main sections and sub- sections, if required. In this case the following should be noted:

  • The main headings should be written in bold letters, capitalized with font size 12.

  • The sub-headings are also in bold letters, font size 12, but in lower case.

  • If further sub-sections are required, the headings should be written in small capitals (VERSAL) font size 12.

10. Bibliographical references, in APA citation format, are listed in alphabetical order and the second line is indented using the French-style indention of 1.5cm.

  • When referring to a book, the following format is required: surname, initials, year of publication in brackets, period. Name of book in italics, period. City/town, colon, publishers.

e.g. Chomsky, N. (1995). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

  • When referring to articles in journals, the name of the article is placed between inverted commas and the name of the journal in italics. The volume and issue number are followed by a comma and a space, and lastly the page numbers of the article are indicated.

e.g. Hamilton, R.P. (2001). “The insignificance of learners’ errors: a philosophical investigation of the interlanguage hypothesis”, Language & Communication 21/3, 73-88.

  • In the case of making reference to a chapter in a book or an article which has various authors, the surname is followed by the initials, the year of publication is in brackets, the title of the chapter between inverted commas followed by a comma and ‘in’ with the initials and surname of the editor or editors of the book, which should be indicated with (ed.) or (eds.) and the name of the book in italics. This precedes, as before, the town/city, colon, publishers, comma and lastly the page numbers of the article or chapter:

e.g. Hayes, J.R. & Flower, L.S. (1980). “Identifying the Organization of Writing Processes”, in L. Gregg & E.R. Steinberg (eds.) Cognitive Processes in Writing. Hillsdale, New York: Lawrence Erlbaum, 3-30.

  • If reference must be made to several publications by the same author, the abovementioned guidelines also apply. The author’s name and initials should be written for each reference, in chronological order.

  • Reference made to articles found on the Internet should include all information required for the abovementioned example. If it has been viewed or downloaded from an on- line journal, the name of the journal is written in italics, followed by its URL (no underlining or blue), and the date of access.

e.g. Herring, S. (1999). “Interactional coherence in CMC”, Journal of Computer Mediated Communication 4/4. http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol4/issue4/herring.html [retrieved: 1.3.2001]