Author Guidelines

Article Types

The European Journal of Applied Linguistics and TEFL welcomes high-quality submissions in forms including, but not necessarily limited to:

• Original research articles;
• Systematic literature reviews;
• Scoping reviews;
• Meta-analyses;
• Bibliometric studies;
• Conceptual and theoretical articles;
• Methodological studies;
• Classroom-based and pedagogical research;
• Corpus-based studies;
• Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods studies;
• Critical reviews and scholarly discussions relevant to applied linguistics and TEFL.

Originality of Submissions

Submitted manuscripts must represent original work that has not been published previously and is not simultaneously under consideration by another journal.

Authors must disclose any substantial overlap with previously published articles, conference papers, working papers, dissertations, theses, preprints, or other publicly available materials. Appropriate citation and explanation should be provided where related material exists.

Language of Submission

Manuscripts should be submitted in clear, grammatically correct academic English. Authors are responsible for ensuring that the language is sufficiently clear for reviewers and readers to evaluate the scholarly content. Either British or American English may be used, provided that usage is consistent throughout the manuscript.

Manuscript Preparation

Manuscripts should normally contain the following elements, where applicable:

• Title;
• Author names and affiliations;
• Corresponding author details;
• Abstract;
• Keywords;
• Introduction;
• Literature review or theoretical background, where appropriate;
• Research objectives, questions, or hypotheses;
• Methodology or Materials and Methods;
• Results or Findings;
• Discussion;
• Conclusion;
• Limitations and future research, where appropriate;
• Author contributions;
• Funding statement;
• Conflict or competing interests statement;
• Ethics statement, where applicable;
• Data availability statement;
• Disclosure regarding the use of generative artificial intelligence, where applicable;
• References.

The exact structure may vary according to the research design and article type. Review articles, theoretical articles, and qualitative studies need not follow a rigid empirical structure where another organization is more appropriate to the scholarly argument.

Title

The title should be concise, informative, and accurately reflect the principal subject, population, methodology, or conceptual focus of the manuscript. Avoid unnecessarily long titles, unexplained abbreviations, vague wording, and claims that exceed the evidence presented in the study.

Author Names and Affiliations

Each author's full name, institutional affiliation, city, country, and email address should be supplied during submission. Authors are encouraged to provide an ORCID iD where available.

The author order should be agreed upon by all contributors before submission. Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors after submission must be justified and may require written agreement from all authors.

Corresponding Author

One author should be designated as the corresponding author. The corresponding author is responsible for communication with the journal during submission, peer review, revision, proofreading, and publication and must ensure that all co-authors approve the submitted and final versions of the manuscript.

Abstract

The abstract should provide a clear and self-contained summary of the article. For empirical research, it should normally identify the research problem or purpose, methodology, principal findings, and main conclusion or implications. Authors should avoid citations, undefined abbreviations, exaggerated claims, and information that is not reported in the manuscript.

Keywords

Authors should provide appropriate keywords that accurately describe the manuscript and improve its discoverability in bibliographic databases. Keywords should not merely repeat all the words already used in the title.

Introduction

The Introduction should clearly identify the research problem, establish its significance, position the study within relevant scholarship, identify the research gap, and state the objectives, research questions, or hypotheses where applicable. The literature should be used critically rather than as a simple list of previous studies.

Literature Review

Where included as a separate section, the Literature Review should provide a critical synthesis of relevant scholarship and establish the conceptual or theoretical foundation of the study. Authors should include both foundational and current research where appropriate and ensure that all cited sources genuinely support the claims for which they are used.

Methodology

The methodology should be described in sufficient detail to permit readers to understand how the study was conducted and, where appropriate, to reproduce or evaluate the procedures.

Depending on the research design, authors should report:

• Research design;
• Research setting or context;
• Participants, corpus, documents, or other data sources;
• Sampling method and sample size;
• Inclusion and exclusion criteria where applicable;
• Research instruments;
• Data-collection procedures;
• Validity, reliability, or trustworthiness procedures;
• Data-analysis methods;
• Software used for analysis where relevant;
• Ethical approval and informed-consent procedures where applicable.

Quantitative Studies

Quantitative studies should clearly describe variables, measurement procedures, sample characteristics, statistical analyses, assumptions, and significance criteria. Authors are encouraged to report effect sizes, confidence intervals, and other relevant measures in addition to p-values where appropriate.

Qualitative Studies

Qualitative studies should clearly describe participant or data selection, data generation, coding or interpretive procedures, researcher reflexivity where relevant, and methods used to support credibility, dependability, confirmability, or other appropriate standards of qualitative rigour.

Mixed-Methods Studies

Mixed-methods studies should explain the rationale for integrating qualitative and quantitative components, the sequence or priority of the components, and how the different forms of evidence are combined in the interpretation of the research questions.

Systematic Reviews and Related Review Articles

Systematic reviews, scoping reviews, bibliometric studies, and meta-analyses should report their search strategy, databases, search dates, search terms, eligibility criteria, screening process, final study selection, extraction procedures, and synthesis methods with sufficient transparency. Where an established reporting guideline such as PRISMA is applicable, authors are encouraged to follow it.

Results and Findings

Results should be presented clearly, accurately, and in a logical order. Authors should distinguish observed findings from interpretation. Numerical values must be consistent across the text, tables, figures, abstract, and supplementary material.

Discussion

The Discussion should interpret the findings in relation to the study objectives, theoretical framework, and existing literature. Authors should explain the significance of the findings without overstating their implications. Alternative interpretations, unexpected results, and relevant limitations should be discussed where appropriate.

Conclusion

The Conclusion should summarize the main contribution of the study and should be supported by the evidence reported in the manuscript. Authors should avoid introducing new results, unsupported generalizations, or recommendations that are not justified by the research.

Tables

Tables should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the manuscript. Each table should have a clear and informative title and should be understandable without unnecessary duplication of information already presented in the text.

Every table must be explicitly referred to in the main text. Authors should verify that table numbers, titles, values, notes, abbreviations, and statistical information are consistent with the surrounding discussion.

Figures

Figures should be numbered consecutively in the order of first citation. Each figure should have a concise but sufficiently descriptive caption. Labels, legends, axis titles, units, and text should remain readable in the final published format.

Every figure must be explicitly referred to in the manuscript text. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission for copyrighted figures or images reproduced from third-party sources.

Placement of Tables and Figures

Tables and figures should be placed within the manuscript close to the paragraph in which they are first discussed, rather than being collected exclusively at the end of the manuscript, unless otherwise required by the editorial office during production.

Equations, Symbols, and Abbreviations

Equations and statistical notation should be presented consistently and clearly. Abbreviations should be defined at first use unless they are universally recognized in the relevant field. Avoid unnecessary abbreviations that reduce readability.

Reference Style

The European Journal of Applied Linguistics and TEFL uses APA style for in-text citations and references.

Authors are responsible for carefully checking every reference before submission. All sources cited in the text must appear in the reference list, and every entry in the reference list must be cited in the manuscript.

Authors should ensure that:

• Author names are correct;
• Publication years are correct;
• Article, book, and journal titles are accurate;
• Volume, issue, and page information are correct where applicable;
• DOIs are included where available;
• References are traceable to genuine scholarly or authoritative sources;
• Each citation genuinely supports the claim to which it is attached.

APA In-Text Citations

Examples:

• One author: (Smith, 2024)
• Two authors: (Smith & Jones, 2024)
• Three or more authors: (Smith et al., 2024)
• Narrative citation: Smith and Jones (2024)

Reference Examples

Journal article:

Smith, J. A., & Brown, T. R. (2024). Language teacher development in multilingual classrooms. Journal of Applied Linguistics, 18(2), 115–132. https://doi.org/xxxxx

Book:

Brown, H. D. (2023). Principles of language learning and teaching. Publisher.

Chapter in an edited book:

Smith, J. A. (2024). Language assessment in multilingual contexts. In T. Brown & R. Jones (Eds.), Contemporary perspectives on applied linguistics (pp. 120–141). Publisher.

Research Ethics

Research involving human participants must comply with relevant institutional, national, and international ethical standards. Where required, authors should obtain approval from an institutional review board, research ethics committee, or equivalent authority before data collection.

Details of ethical approval and informed consent should be included in the manuscript where applicable. Authors must protect participant confidentiality and should not publish identifiable information without appropriate consent.

Research Involving Students or Minors

Particular attention should be given to research involving students, children, minors, or vulnerable populations. Appropriate ethical approval, informed consent, parental or guardian consent, and participant assent should be obtained where required.

Author Contributions

Manuscripts should include an Author Contributions statement specifying the contributions of each author where there is more than one author. For a single-author article, the author may state that they are solely responsible for the conception, methodology, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, and approval of the final version, as applicable.

Funding

All sources of financial support should be disclosed. If the research received no external funding, authors should state:

This research received no external funding.

Competing Interests

Authors must disclose any financial, professional, institutional, or personal relationships that could reasonably be perceived as influencing the research. If no competing interests exist, authors should state:

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Data Availability

Authors should include a Data Availability statement describing whether and how the data supporting the findings can be accessed.

Where data cannot be shared because of ethical, privacy, legal, contractual, or confidentiality restrictions, the reason should be stated clearly.

Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence

Generative artificial intelligence tools cannot be listed as authors. Authors remain fully responsible for the originality, accuracy, integrity, references, interpretations, and conclusions contained in their work.

If generative AI or AI-assisted tools have been used in preparing the manuscript, their use should be disclosed where appropriate. Authors who use such tools solely for language editing, grammar correction, or improvement of readability remain responsible for reviewing and verifying the final text.

AI-generated references, fabricated citations, unverifiable sources, or unverified factual statements are not acceptable.

Plagiarism and Similarity Checking

Submitted manuscripts may be screened using similarity-detection software. Plagiarism, inappropriate paraphrasing, duplicate publication, unattributed translation, fabricated references, and substantial undisclosed reuse of previously published material are not acceptable. Similarity percentages are not interpreted mechanically; the editorial team assesses similarity reports in context.

Submission Process

Manuscripts should be submitted through the journal's online submission system. Authors should ensure that all required metadata, declarations, author information, manuscript files, tables, figures, and supplementary materials are complete before finalizing the submission.

Initial Editorial Assessment

Submitted manuscripts normally undergo an initial editorial assessment within approximately 7 days. During this stage, the editorial team considers the manuscript's relevance to the journal's scope, originality, academic quality, presentation, ethical compliance, and general suitability for external peer review.

Peer Review

Manuscripts that successfully pass the initial assessment are normally sent for single-blind peer review. The journal aims to complete the peer-review process within approximately 3 months. The actual timeframe may vary depending on reviewer availability, manuscript complexity, revision requirements, and the number of review rounds required.

Revision

When revision is requested, authors should respond carefully to each reviewer and editor comment. A revised manuscript should normally be accompanied by a point-by-point response explaining how each concern has been addressed or, where a suggested change has not been made, providing a scholarly justification.

Revision does not guarantee acceptance. Revised manuscripts may be returned to the original reviewers or evaluated further by the editors.

Acceptance and Publication

Once a manuscript is accepted and has completed editorial processing, typesetting, and proofreading, it is published in the current running issue of The European Journal of Applied Linguistics and TEFL. Authors therefore do not need to wait for an entire issue to be completed before their accepted article is made available online.

Publication Frequency

The European Journal of Applied Linguistics and TEFL publishes two issues per year, with accepted papers appearing in the current running issue after completion of production requirements.

Open Access and Publication Charges

The European Journal of Applied Linguistics and TEFL is a diamond open access journal. Readers can access published articles freely and permanently without subscription charges.

Authors are not required to pay article processing charges (APCs), submission fees, peer-review fees, or standard publication fees.

Copyright and License

Authors retain copyright in their published work.

Articles published in The European Journal of Applied Linguistics and TEFL are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License . The license permits sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, including commercial use, provided that appropriate credit is given to the original author(s) and source, a link to the license is provided, and any changes are indicated.

Proofreading

Corresponding authors may receive proofs before publication. Proofs should be checked carefully for typographical, formatting, factual, author-name, affiliation, table, figure, and reference errors. Proof correction is intended primarily for production errors and minor necessary corrections rather than substantial rewriting of the accepted manuscript.

Post-Publication Corrections

Authors should notify the editorial office promptly if they discover a significant error in a published article. Where necessary, the journal may issue a correction, amendment, expression of concern, or retraction in accordance with its publication ethics policy.

Author Responsibility

Authors are ultimately responsible for ensuring that their manuscript is accurate, original, ethically compliant, appropriately referenced, and consistent with these guidelines before submission to The European Journal of Applied Linguistics and TEFL.