General Guidelines

1. Only original manuscripts that are not published or accepted for publication elsewhere can be submitted. If you intend to publish your work elsewhere, it is the author’s responsibility to prevent possible copyright conflicts. 
2. The Keystone Journal of Undergraduate Research (KJUR) seeks articles written by undergraduate students who have had the opportunity to conduct research outside of their formal classroom experience and within their major field of study with close faculty supervision. 
   • While class assignments such as term papers or research projects can yield meaningful experiences, they can only serve as a starting point for independent research of the insight and depth of understanding that the KJUR Managing Editors feel is appropriate for publication in this journal.
3. Manuscripts are limited to 3000 words of text, not including references or titles associated with tables, graphs, diagrams, equations, or photographs. In addition, all manuscripts must be formatted according to the Instructions to Authors guidelines.
4. If human subjects or living animals were used in the research, the research protocol must have been approved by the Internal Review Board (IRB) or Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) at your respective institution.
5. Faculty mentors will be listed as either an author or as a mentor on all published articles. Please designate which on the Submission Form. 
6. The Submission Form and manuscript must be emailed to KJUR@ship.edu in order for the review process to begin. 

 Who is Eligible to Submit an Article?

To be eligible to submit a manuscript to KJUR, student author(s) must have attended a PASSHE school and completed their project under the direction of PASSHE faculty mentor when the authors were undergraduates. A student may still submit a manuscript if they recently graduated.

A paper may have more than one undergraduate author only if the additional authors made significant contributions to the research effort. 

Grammar, Spelling and use of Scientific Terms and Jargon

Manuscripts with multiple spelling and grammatical errors will be returned without further review. You must have your faculty mentor read and edit your paper before it can be submitted. The use of jargon is strongly discouraged. If it is used, the terms must be clearly defined in the text. You may use abbreviations but they must be written out on their first use.

Copyright

This journal is published under a Creative Commons-Attribution-Noncommercial license and the authors retain the copyright. Manuscripts that have been previously published in another journal or papers that you intend to submit to another journal are not eligible for publication here. The author is responsible for ensuring that no duplication of papers exists.