The submission form must be completed by the corresponding author (typically the first author for submissions with multiple authors). It can be found at the Keystone Journal Submissions Portal.
While we strongly encourage undergraduate and graduate students to submit their research, the Keystone Journal (KJ) will publish work from scholars at all stages of their careers.
Manuscripts that do not follow the instructions on this page will not be considered.
The manuscript must be submitted electronically in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) format. No other formats will be accepted.
An email will be sent to the corresponding author upon receipt of their submission. This email will contain a manuscript review number that must be used for all future correspondence.
The Managing Editors will send a second email within 45 days of submission to provide the decision regarding the suitability of the manuscript for publication in KJ. Submissions can be accepted without revisions, invited to revise and resubmit, or rejected.
If revisions are necessary these must be completed within 30 days of receipt of KJ’s decision and a letter accompanying the revised manuscript must address the revisions made.
We publish original manuscripts as well as material that has been published elsewhere first. If a manuscript has already been published elsewhere, however, the author must state this at the time of submission, have already taken all necessary steps to avoid copyright violations, and provide all of the appropriate permissions and proof to KJ. Keystone Journal is not responsible for any copyright violations—it is solely the author’s responsibility to prevent possible copyright conflicts.
If human subjects or living animals were used in the research, the research protocol must have been approved by the Institutional Review Board or Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee at your respective institution.
KJ is published under a Creative Commons-Attribution-Noncommercial license and the authors retain the copyright. Authors do not need to seek KJ’s permission to reprint their own KJ articles elsewhere since they own the copyright.
Manuscript Formatting
Manuscripts are limited to 3000 words of text, not including references or titles associated with tables, graphs, diagrams, equations, or photographs.
Documents should be completed using MS Word (.doc or .docx).
One-inch margins, 12 pt Times New Roman font, double-spaced, left justified.
Consecutive paragraphs should not have empty lines between them.
Write out the complete name of an acronym the first time it is used. The acronym may be used in text after the meaning has been defined.
Only the following Latin terms should be italicized: in vivo, in vitro, in utero, in situ, ad libitum, a priori, and a posteriori. All other Latin terms (except scientific names) should be left unitalicized.
Numbers: Write out one to nine unless a measurement, but use numerals for larger numbers (e.g., three mice, 6 mm, 12 days, 2 min). If number is in a series with at least one number being 10 or more, then use all numerals (e.g., 6 males and 13 females). Use 1,000 not 1000, 0.01 not .01, and 50% instead of 50 percent.
Papers should have a title, list of authors, abstract, keywords, body, and references. For scientific papers, the body should contain an introduction, methods section, results section, and discussion section.
The abstract should be no more than 250 words. An abstract is not an introduction; it summarizes the nature and importance of the work and is not merely a listing of topics that are discussed in the paper. For scientific papers, abstracts must include sufficient information for readers to judge the nature and significance of the topic, the research design/methodology, the nature of the results, and the conclusions.
On a separate line at end of the abstract, provide up to seven keywords that describe the research. All keywords should be in alphabetical order, separated by semicolons; proper pronouns should be capitalized.
Tables and figures should be numbered sequentially as they are first referenced in the text. Table and figure numbering are not related to each other in any manner: there is a Table 1 and Figure 1, for example.
Prevention of copyright violations in the entire manuscript, including tables and figures, is solely the responsibility of authors. References to each figure should be made from the body text (see Figure 1, see Table 1, etc.).
Captions must NOT be embedded within the graphic itself. Figure captions should be placed BELOW the figure.
Quotes less than forty words should be put in quotation marks in text. Any quote exceeding forty words should be indented in a free-standing block of text with quotation marks.
