Journal Policies and Best Practices

Goal of Publication Deaf Studies Digital Journal (DSDJ) aims to advance the cultural, creative, and critical work in and about sign languages and their communities. The primary goal as a sign-centric journal is to provide a platform to foster content in Deaf Studies and encompass Deaf-related fields of studies such as Critical Theory, Sign Language, Pedagogy, Literature, Linguistics, Interpreting and Translation, Human Rights, History, Sociology, and among other. Unlike other academic and cultural publications, the DSDJ is a bilingual and bimodal publication primarily presented in both American Sign Language and English. The digital journal supports academic work in other sign languages and international sign. DSDJ is a dedicated space for the advancement of the Deaf people and geared toward both signing and non-signing communities. The primary language of publication will be in Sign Language while the accompanying written text is to support the primary form of visual communication. Open Access Statement DSDJ is peer-reviewed, open access journal digital journal that is accessible to a wide audience without charge to the user or their institution. ​ Funding ​From 2006 to 2013, Gallaudet University and Sorenson Foundation funded DSDJ and saw four issues published. Currently, the journal is being funded by National Endowment for the Humanities: Digital Humanities Advancement Grants (#HAA-258756-8) in January 2018 for 30 months with an amount of $325,000. ​ Team Roles DSDJ Executive Editor: Will finalize the approval of the proposal and the submission of the final draft before publication. The executive editor will work with the managing editor to select a team of peer reviewers. ​ DSDJ Managing Editor: The point of contact between the executive editor and the person of Interest for inquiries they may have prior and throughout the submission process. The managing editor will present the submitted proposal to the executive editor for review and assign the submission to peer-reviewers through a single-blind selection process. Experts: A team of experts in the field of Deaf Studies, Human and Computer Interaction, Accessibility, Library Science, and Publications are part of the journal team. Advisory Board: DSDJ consists of an international Advisory Board from a variety of scholarly work with extensive experience in the field of academic publication. Peer Reviewers: Reviews and provides feedback to the presented submission. The submitters will be in dialogue with the reviewers throughout the review process, and they will determine whether the submission can be published unedited, needs alteration, or is rejected. See DSDJ’s “Team” and “Advisory Board” pages for a complete list of the current team composition. ​ Style Guide DSDJ follows the current academic standards for publishing. As of October 2018, DSDJ will only accept submissions formatted in APA 6th style. Further, all submissions must include an abstract, keywords, an English transcript of the signed version with time codes, and references. All written text must be submitted in word format. All video files must be MP4 at least 1080p; other related supplemental videos must be open captioned and follow best practice for an accessible content to all. See publication requirements page for more details. ​ Copyright The intellectual copyright for papers published in DSDJ is retained by the authors. Published articles are distributed open-access under the terms of Creative Commons License allowing users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, link to the full texts of the articles without asking permission as long as proper attribution is provided. All other uses not specified by the license are managed by the authors. Authors are not permitted to re-publish the same content to other journals unless it will be translated in other languages with permission from DSDJ. The video re-post to other platform is not allowed; there will be a direct link of the journal page available to everyone to access at no cost with a digital object identifier. ​ Review Process DSDJ is a peer-reviewed journal. The Executive and Managing Editor will review all submissions to determine if they fall within the scope of the journal’s interest. Then, the submission will be reviewed by professional colleagues of their respective area of expertise. Submissions that are determined to not be within the journal’s scope are declined. As of October 2018, the journal will be a single-blind review in which the author will be unaware of the multiple reviewers assigned to their article. Since the article will be presented in a video format and sign language, it will be nearly impossible to have a double-blind review. There are two possible venues for the reviewers to respond: in written English, and in ASL using a translator by shadowing the reviewer’s signs. If the reviewer only submitted in written English, an executive summary in ASL will be made by DSDJ team. ​ Plagiarism Policy DSDJ checks each submitted manuscript for plagiarism before publication. If plagiarism is detected by either the editorial staff or peer reviewers at any stage in the editorial process, one of two approaches will be utilized. If plagiarism is minor and may be an oversight in the citation process, the author(s) will be contacted and asked to revise the text or quote the original text precisely, while citing the original source. If plagiarism is extensive, the article will be rejected. Self-plagiarism or duplicate publication is not permitted and will result in the rejection of a submitted manuscript. Please review COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors. ​ Article Processing Charges and Submission Fees DSDJ is a ‘pure gratis’ Open Access Journal since Issue No.1. As of January 2018, DSDJ has received substantial federal funding from National Endowment for the Humanities to cover all related publication costs for five subsequent issues (No.5 to No.9). DSDJ may implement a minimal publication charge after ninth issue is published. Authors will pay submission fees or processing charges to publish in the journal. Authors are responsible for covering their own publication costs such as videography and translation of textual contents. There is a donation option that is voluntary and much appreciated to help mitigate the costs of running the journal and ensure that the journal can remain operational longer. Please contact the journal managing editor for further inquiries. ​ Archiving and Preservation DSDJ is preserved as part of the University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Michigan Publishing, a division of the University of Michigan Library, is committed to preserving content indefinitely and will continue to migrate content even after a journal has ceased to publish. Dissemination and Search Engine DSDJ pages will be searchable and discoverable through library databases with DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), and Google Scholar. Other tools that DSDJ use to promote the content with Altmetric, which works behind the scenes, collecting and collating all of the disparate information to provide a single visually engaging and informative view of the online activity surrounding the submitted manuscript’s scholarly content. This includes cited work in other journals to take account of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF). The benefit of Altmetric is that the activity is immediately tracked and updated to gauge the article interest online instead of waiting for more than one or two years to get the Impact Factor score. All articles will have their own digital object identifier (doi) which will allow for the immediate re-direction of articles, and the links are permanent. The author will distinguish themselves with ORCID with specific and permanent identifier where it collates all their scholarly published work online. DSDJ aim to continue to work to ensure the visibility of the published work to be available to the world. ​ How to Submit Visit the DSDJ website at deafstudiesdigitaljournal.org and click on Submissions. There is more information about the submissions accepted by DSDJ and on how to submit scholarly work. DSDJ is using submittable platform for all journal submission and communication. ​ Contact Email Address Please contact DSDJ’s Managing Editor at dsdj.managining.editor@gallaudet.edu with any questions or concerns. ​ Additional Resources DOAJ Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors