Information for Authors

Is TACCESS the right place to publish your work?

TACCESS welcomes submissions of original, unpublished work that is not under consideration elsewhere. The topic of the paper should fall within the scope of TACCCESS' charter and topic areas described in the Call for Papers.

Widely disseminated conference proceedings and newsletters are a form of publication, although they may not be archival. Publication or republication of a (perhaps revised) paper which has been widely disseminated is permitted only if the Editors-in-Chief judge that (a) the revision contains significant amplification or clarification of the original material or (b) there is a significant additional benefit to be gained from journal publication. Any prior appearance of a substantial amount of a submission should be noted in a cover letter and on the title page. The authors should also either include or give a pointer to a copy of the earlier publication.

Literature reviews/survey papers will only be considered if they present a new perspective or clearly benefit the field. To be published, such papers must go beyond a review of the literature to define the field in a new way or highlight exciting new technologies or areas of research.

Submissions should be well-positioned within the accessibility literature, showing how the work reported fits in with existing work. References to relevant papers in the accessibility literature should be cited - if there are few of these then the paper may not be relevant for TACCESS.

Manuscript length of up to 11,000 words is common, although papers longer than this are also considered.

TACCESS will consider ideas for special issues.

Publishing expanded conference papers in TACCESS

TACCESS will consider manuscripts that describe work which has been previously published in the proceedings of a conference, but a number of conditions must be satisfied.

1. All manuscripts must adhere to ACM's minimum standards regarding prior publication (http://www.acm.org/pubs/sim_submissions.html).
2. We expect that the new material should be comprised primarily of new data or new analysis of existing data. Most importantly, if someone has previously read the conference paper, they should be able to learn something new and significant from the journal article. The journal article must represent a significant contribution to the field, above and beyond the conference paper.
3. We expect authors to substantially revise the portions of the manuscript which are derived from the previous conference publication. It is not acceptable to simply copy the material, making only a few cosmetic changes to the text. In this context, it is critical that the authors understand and adhere to the copyright policies of the publisher for the previously published conference paper. See ACM's policies regarding plagiarism and self plagiarism for more details (http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/plagiarism_policy/).
4. We expect all such manuscripts to include an explicit statement acknowledging that the journal article represents an expanded version of a conference paper. Ideally, this statement would appear near the end of the introduction, and should highlight the most significant new material in the article. It is not sufficient to simply reference the conference paper.

General writing guidelines for technology and people with disabilities

The following article provides some general recommendations regarding wording for use in articles being written for the academic accessibility community. While the wording recommendations provided in this article are not required, authors may find this information useful as it can help avoid words or phrases which are poorly received by individuals with disabilities as well as much of the academic accessibility community. This article was published in the September 2008 ACM SIGACCESS Newsletter and can be found online at: http://www.sigaccess.org/community/newsletter/september_2008/sep08_4.pdf.

Formatting and preparing your manuscript

TACCESS requires that articles be submitted electronically via Manuscript Central. While the use of the ACM format is not required for the initial submission, authors are encouraged to use the ACM format to facilitate the conversion that will be necessary upon acceptance.

To ensure proper indexing, classification, retrieval and dissemination, authors must include the following in the manuscript.

• Descriptive title
• Author names and affiliations
  Author names should be given without titles or degrees along with the name and address of the organization for which the work was carried out. The author's current address should be given in a footnote on the first page. Identify the contact author for co-authored work.
• Abstract
  The abstract should be 150 to 200 words and consist of short, direct, and complete sentences. It should be informative enough to serve in some cases as a substitute for reading the paper itself. It should state the objectives of the work, summarize the results, and give the principle conclusions, but omit future plans and citations. Try to avoid starting with the words "This paper ..."
• Content indicators (required once paper is accepted)
  Three types of content indicators must be assigned: (1) categories and subject descriptors, (2) general terms, (3) keywords and phrases. The first two items are selected from the Computing Reviews Classification Scheme most recently revised in 1998. Select as many as are applicable. The keywords and phrases are additional English language words that indicate the content of the submission.
• Citations to relevant literature
  Citations should be referenced within the text with the surnames of the authors and the year of publication, with examples as follows:
  [Nelson, 2004] for a single author
  [Cailliau and Ashman, 1999] for two authors
  [Iyengar et al., 2006] for more than two authors

NOTE: The ACM Digital Library will host ancillary material for a paper on its web site. This material, an online appendix that does not appear in the print journal, is linked to and accessed from the online table of contents. For example, authors could provide hypertext and/or XML versions of their papers, or animations, or any other appropriate technology. Authors that wish to use this option should attach such material as an appendix to their submission and indicate in their cover letter that this material is intended to be ancillary material included in the digital library, and how it is intended to be accessed. All ancillary material should be free from viruses.

Submitting your manuscript

TACCESS requires that manuscripts be submitted electronically via Manuscript Central. However, screen reader users, or others who find the Manuscript Central site difficult to use due to accessibility related concerns, are encouraged to email their submission to the Editors-in-Chief at Andrew.Sears@rit.edu and vlh@acm.org. Before submitting, please use a spelling checker and correct errors in English, grammar, punctuation, figure and table numbering, and so forth.

Please select two or more keywords that highlight the most important characteristics of your manuscript during the submission process.

The Review process

When you submit your manuscript via Manuscript Central, you will receive an acknowledgement that the paper has been successfully received.

If you fail to receive an acknowledgement by 1 week after submitting your paper, please contact the Editors-in-Chief at Andrew.Sears@rit.edu and vlh@acm.org to verify that the submission has been received.

When we receive your manuscript and verify that it can be read and is within the scope of the journal, an Editor-in-Chief will take responsibility for handling the review process. The Editor-in-Chief will assign the article to 3-4 reviewers and study the reviews that are returned. Final decisions to accept submissions will be made by both Editors-in-Chief.

A manuscript submitted for the first time might be accepted or rejected, but the first response is most often that the authors revise their manuscript to address issues identified by the reviewers. If this happens, it may be very worthwhile to persevere, revising the manuscript to fix problems and clarify misunderstandings. Resubmissions should be accompanied with a cover letter that explains responses to reviewers' comments in detail. If authors are preparing a minor revision, they may want to highlight the edits within the manuscript. For example, the track changes feature within Microsoft Word may prove useful in conveying exactly what has been changed, but this should only be used if the number and extent of the revisions is limited.

Please note: Manuscripts can undergo no more than two major revisions (this includes resubmissions resulting from a "revise and resubmit" outcome). If, after two rounds of revisions, the manuscript requires more than very minor changes, it will be rejected.