ACTC
The Association for Core Texts and Courses

"Supporting Liberal Arts Core Text Curricula Around the World"

Criteria for Publications and Published Papers from ACTC Conferences

ACTC publishes selected, peer-reviewed proceedings from papers that have been submitted after the conference. Generally, ACTC looks for the following qualities in determining which papers will be published:

• A real concern with liberal, often general, education, including the liberal arts;
• Discussion of a core text for, at least, ¾ of a page of the manuscript;
• Plausible, coherent argument - in essay, dialogue, or poetic form;
• A beginning, middle, and end to a paper;
• Brevity; (5 pages double-spaced is standard; no more than 10, including the bibliographic apparatus);
• Clarity of thought and prose; and,
• Attention to the theme of the conference.

ACTC is a truly interdisciplinary organization and we have accepted papers from all branches of higher learning.

We publish volumes which attempt to achieve the following:

• A breadth of texts from the West and other cultures;
  
• A breadth of papers concerning
  o texts,
  o ideas, interpretations, ideological positions, and theories,
  o problems in liberal education,
  o courses,
  o programs, their intellectual and pedagogical achievements and principles, their process of adoption or defense,
  o administration of programs,
  o teaching,
  o students,
  o faculty support,
  o technical support,
  o assessment,
  o programs, institutions and activities which are connected to these concerns (e.g., learning communities and learning teams, secondary and adult education efforts, higher education abroad, majors and honors programs based in core texts, and graduate programs similarly based.)
  
• Other topics, in so far as they attend to core text liberal education, are welcome.

ACTC now receives over 75 papers submitted for publication from each conference. We regret that we cannot publish all papers. For intellectual and financial reasons, ACTC strives to produce volumes which have a coherence within a volume of a limited number of pages, usually less than 200. We also strive to print ACTC-unpublished authors, and, because ACTC seeks to publish essays that allow many authors to air their sound arguments, we strongly value clarity and brevity over length.

Those who are planning on submitting manuscripts for consideration should keep the following points in mind.

1. Follow MLA format for references, bibliography, and other matters of form and punctuation.
2. Make sure that the manuscript is complete, i.e., that there are no gaps in the manuscript, that all references are supplied, that the bibliography and each entry is complete.
3. Wording that would mark the manuscript as an oral presentation should be used carefully.
4. Avoid headings. The papers published are usually short and such signposting is not really necessary.
5. Only ENDNOTES, no footnotes; discursive endnotes will be eliminated or very severely cut back.
6. The editors reserve the privilege to cut or rewrite an author's prose to achieve brevity or clarity.

All of the bulleted and numbered points above affect editorial decisions.