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The Voice and Speech Review (VSR) publishes three issues per year, two of which are typically general issues and one of which is typically a themed issue. The journal solicits articles and essays that focus on voice and speech topics and training, particularly for the performing arts. The VSR welcomes peer reviewed articles from a broad array of voice-oriented subjects. The journal also welcomes scholarly essays and interviews based on personal experience that are often practical notes from the field, as well as book and other resource reviews.


Submissions

Send book and media reviews to Reviews Editor, Karen Kopryanski (vsr.reviews@vasta.org).
Send all other article submissions to Co-Editor, Rockford Sansom (vsr.editor@vasta.org). 

Be aware that the publication process may take several months. The VSR will respond to all email submissions and inquiries within two weeks.

Journal Selections

Each issue generally includes three kinds of articles:

Original Articles

These articles are often cross-disciplinary, using theories or research methodologies to explore an element of the voice field or voice pedagogy. All articles must cite primary academic sources to back up assertions. The VSR is one of the few academic journals that welcomes authors and articles from the humanities, the performing arts, the social sciences, and the natural sciences. The VSR uses a double-blind peer review.

Forum Articles

Forum articles provide relevant commentary on current topics in voice. Forum pieces are often based on personal experience and use anecdotes and quotations as evidence to back up assertions. Writing for this section is often pragmatic, focused on solving problems, and is typically inspired by a coaching or teaching experience. Interviews are published in this section. Forum articles are not peer reviewed generally.

Reviews

Reviews are short, analytical responses to a book, piece of software, or app. VSR reviews focus on the usefulness or relevance of the material to the voice and speech community as a whole. Reviews are not peer reviewed.

VSR Book & Media
Review Information

VSR General Guidelines

  • See the following for the VSR submission guidelines.
  • The VSR submission template also shows a formatted example article with helpful formatting details. Click here for the VSR Author Resources.
  • Submit your article as a Microsoft Word document using the VSR template. Include a 100-word biography. Original articles should include a 200-word abstract and up to seven search keywords. Forum articles generally do not have abstracts or search keywords. 
  • Submit a professional, high-quality photo (headshot) as a jpg, png, or pdf.
  • Fit within word count limits. Original articles tend to be 3,000 to 8,000 words. Forum articles tend to be 2,000 to 6,000 words. Review articles tend to be 1,000 to 1,500 words. A maximum of 10,000 words is allowed. Word count includes references and any endnotes.
  • Use American English spelling and punctuation.
  • Submit illustrations and media mentioned in the text. Photos, figures, and media are encouraged, but it is the author’s responsibility to secure the images and the permissions to use them and, if relevant, to cover the cost of using the images or media. Illustrations are printed in greyscale but appear in color online. All other media will be available online but not in print.
  • Use the Chicago Author-Date Style from The Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.). See below for more detail.
  • Use the first person if applicable. Scholarly articles may include first-person narrative, but the use is not required. 

Formatting of Submissions

Font, Spacing, Indenting

  • Use Times New Roman 12-point, single spaced.
  • Do not indent the first paragraph of a new section. All other paragraphs are indented.
  • Indent (or block) quotations that are forty (40) words or longer.
  • Type one space only after periods, questions marks, or other terminal punctuation marks.
  • Format articles as simply as possible. Do not use graphically complicated or colored borders in headers or footers.

Headings

Heading 1: Create the Heading in Bold
Heading 2: Create the Heading in Bold and Italics
Heading 3: Create the Heading in Italics
Heading 4: Create the Heading in Italics.
Start the text on the same line.

 


Miscellaneous Style Rules 

Hyphens

  • Do not use hyphenation at the ends of lines.
  • Use regular hyphens where required as in “noise-canceling headphones”; two consecutive hyphens for em dashes as in “Sally—the unluckiest person alive—won the lottery.”

Italics

  • Use italics for titles of books, periodicals, and plays.
  • Use italics for emphasis and foreign words. Every instance of a foreign word should be italicized.
  • Do not use underline, bold, or any other style for emphasis.
  • Use “quotation marks” for special terms and jargon words that require definition or for words being used in a non-standard way. Use quotation marks for special terms in the first instance only. 

Ellipsis

  • Do not start or end a quotation with an ellipsis.
  • Use three periods inside a bracket for an ellipsis inside a quote: for example, “The theatre […] explores life.” Having an ellipsis without the brackets shows that the original quote had an ellipsis. 

Numbers & Dates

  • Do not use an apostrophe in a date. Use 1990s, not 1990’s.
  • Spell out one to nine, then 10; 1,000; 10,000; 10%.
  • Follow American conventions: “October 4, 2005” and “in the twenty-first century in the 1970s.”
  • Spell out numbers beginning a sentence: Forty-seven thousand people are going. The year 2012 is over. Ten percent is small.

Punctuation & Spelling

  • Consult the Merriam-Webster Dictionary for spelling questions.
  • Do not use conversational contractions, e.g. “can’t,” “don’t,” in original articles. Contractions are allowed in some forum articles, specifically more personally written articles.
  • Do not use ampersands (&).
  • Use the serial (or Oxford) comma as in the following: apples, oranges, and pears.
  • Use “theatre,” except in proper nouns that use “Theater”; for example, New York City’s Public Theater.
  • Use the following spellings: monologue and aesthetic.
  • Use apostrophe “s” after proper names ending in “s” (for example, Dr. Williams’s lecture), except for classical or religious names ending with a “z” sound (for example, Sophocles’).
  • Place a period after abbreviated titles such as Mr. Smith, Ms. Smith, and Dr. Smith.
  • Spell out countries as in the United States and the United Kingdom. For country abbreviations in a table or a common phrase like “the US dollar,” do not use periods.
  • Place periods and commas before closing quotation marks. Colons, semicolons, question marks and exclamation points follow closing quotation marks (unless a question mark or exclamation point are part of the quoted material). 
Examples:
I heard them say, "I'm not listening." Did you hear them say, "I'm not listening"?

Endnotes

  • Use Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3…), not Roman numerals (i, ii, iii…).
  • Use endnotes only for editorial statements that comment on or clarify information in the text, but all such notes will be endnotes, not footnotes. Endnotes may contain citations, but endnotes are not meant to be bibliographic entries. Use the Reference section for bibliographic information. 

IPA Fonts

  • Use a Unicode IPA font. Most authors use Charis SIL. The various cut-and-paste, web-based IPA character inserters do not always work with the publisher’s production editing software. The VASTA website has information on how to install and use Unicode fonts: http://www.vasta.org/fonts/.
  • Include a pdf of your draft to insure there is an accurate depiction of your IPA characters.
  • Use slash brackets as in /i/ for a broad or phonemic transcription. Use square brackets as in [i] for a narrow or phonetic transcription. Use angle brackets for words or letters as they are commonly spelled as in .

Author Biography Guidelines

  • Write an author biography under 100 words.
  • Use third-person and use a simple, business-like tone. See a current volume of the VSR for examples.
  • Use the acknowledgments section to thank others. Do not include a thank you note in the biography.
  • Abbreviate degrees without periods (for example, PhD, DMA, MFA, MA, BFA, and BM).
  • Do not capitalize degree subjects unless the degree is in a language (for example, MFA in theatre, BA in French, BFA in acting, MA in linguistics, PhD in English, EdD in music education).
  • Capitalize formal titles. Informal descriptions are NOT capitalized. 


Examples:
Jane Smith is an Associate Professor of Theatre at State University.
Jane Smith is a theatre professor and a voice coach. 

 



Most Commonly Needed Citation and Reference Information

  • Use the Chicago Author-Date Style from The Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.).

Citations

  • Use citations inside the paragraph. A citation after a quote looks like this: (Last Name Year, Page number) Example: “This is a quotation” (Smith 2018, 32).
  • Do not use endnotes or footnotes to cite and reference sources.
  • Do not use Ibid in any way or form in referencing sources.
  • Do use an indented (or block) quotation for quotations over 40 words.

Reference Examples

 

Book references look like this:

Doe, Jane. 2018. Book Title: The Subtitle. Location: Publisher

Journal references look like this: 

Smith, John. 2018. “Article Title: The Subtitle.” Journal Title in Full 10 (1): 30–40. doi:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. 

Online article references look like this:

Baker, Michael. 2018. “Title of Article.” Newspaper, March 12. http://xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

Websites without an author references look like this:

Title of Organization. 2018. “About Organization.” Accessed March 12. http://xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

Conference references look like this:

Lopez, Elizabeth. 2018. “Title of Paper.” Presented at the annual meeting for the Society of XXXX, Location, February 21–24.

Workshop references look like this:

Jones, Mary. 2018. "Title of Lesson." Presented at the Organization XXXX workshop Title of Workshop, Location, January 3-4.


For a detailed overview of the most frequently used citation and reference examples for the Chicago Author-Date referencing style

Click Here!