Information for Authors
Contributions to the journal should take into account all the following:
- Aims and Scope
- Peer review process
- Ethical Research
- Publication Ethics
- Publishing Agreements and Charges
- How We Publish
- After Publication
- Preparing your manuscript
Please begin by reading about the Aims and Scope of the journal to ensure that your intended manuscript is suitable for this journal.
Aims and Scope
Teaching Mathematics and its Applications provides a forum for the exchange of ideas and experiences which contribute to the improvement of mathematics teaching and learning for students from upper secondary/high school level through to university first degree level.
A distinctive feature of the journal is its emphasis on the applications of mathematics and mathematical modelling within the context of mathematics education world-wide. The focus of the journal is on the teaching of mathematics and all articles should relate explicitly to the teaching and learning of mathematics and its applications.
The journal’s readership consists of mathematics teachers, lecturers, students, researchers and those concerned with curriculum development and assessment, indeed anyone concerned about the education of users of mathematics.
Contributions are invited in two forms:
Section A consists of research articles based on empirical investigation and/or theoretical argument whose conclusions inform the improvement of mathematics teaching and learning at the relevant level.
Section B consists of articles based on scholarly argument, informed by knowledge of research, such as innovative approaches to teaching with a justification for considering their wider use.
This is to encourage as wide as possible a range of authors, and the journal is keen to publish material contributed by both teachers and students. Both sections are peer-reviewed.
Articles should enable the readership to engage proactively with the content and be suitable for replication in a range of teaching, learning and applied situations.
Articles that concentrate on material usually found in textbooks or within specific teaching schemes will not normally be published unless they constitute an innovative approach within the scope of Section B. Similarly, articles will not be published if they contain only an interesting piece of mathematics, or relate to teaching and learning mathematics in primary or lower secondary / junior high school.
The Editors aim to dedicate one issue per year to a Special Issue associated with one of the major mathematics conferences or to a particular theme. The conference Guest Editors will announce submission details.
Peer review process
The Journal operates single-anonymized peer review, meaning that the identity of the authors is known to the editors and to the reviewers, but that the reviewers’ identities are known only to the editors and are hidden from the authors.
Once a submitted manuscript passes initial assessment by the Journal’s Editors, it will then be assigned to a handling editor, who will oversee peer review and make the final decision.
Editors and reviewers will not handle manuscripts if they have a conflict of interest with an author or the content. The Editors make every effort to avoid potential conflicts of interest in the assignment of handling editors and peer reviewers. For more information, please see the section on Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest.
During the peer review phase, your manuscript is typically sent to two reviewers. You may suggest potential reviewers at submission. However, there is no guarantee the suggested reviewers will be selected by the Journal. Recommended reviewers should be experts in their field and able to provide an objective assessment of your manuscript without financial or interpersonal conflicts of interest with any authors. We encourage you to consider reviewers from a diverse range of backgrounds, including those from under-represented communities.
If your manuscript is accepted for publication, the reviewer comments will not be published alongside the paper.
For full details about the peer review process, see Fair editing and peer review or OUP author FAQs.
Appeals and complaints
Authors may appeal an editorial decision. To do so, please contact the editorial office at [email protected], providing as much specific detail as possible about why the original decision should be reconsidered. Every appeal will receive a response within a reasonable timeframe. Please do not resubmit your manuscript in the interim.
Screening for plagiarism and redundant publication
Manuscripts may be screened (e.g. using iThenticate) to help detect publication misconduct including plagiarism and redundant publication. Any manuscript may be screened, especially if there is reason to suppose that part or all the of the manuscript has been previously published.
Ethical Research
The Journal follows Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines on ethical oversight. We take research integrity seriously, and all research published in the Journal must have been conducted in a fair and ethical manner. Wherever appropriate, the Journal requires that all research be done according to international and local guidelines.
Manuscripts must include a brief description of how their work meets contemporary ethical standards (e.g. BERA, 2018). This may be that the research was performed after approval by a local ethics committee, institutional review board and/or local licensing committee, with the name of the authorizing body and any reference/permit numbers (where available), or that such approval was not required. If no such institutional body is available, authors should include a description of how they considered ethical issues. Please be prepared to provide further information to the editorial office upon request.
Inclusive language and images
As defined by the Linguistic Society of America, “Inclusive language acknowledges diversity, conveys respect to all people, is sensitive to differences, and promotes equal opportunities”. We encourage you to consider using inclusive language and images when preparing your manuscript.
Publication Ethics
Authorship
Authorship is limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the design and execution of the work described. Any contributors whose participation does not meet the criteria for authorship should be acknowledged but not listed as an author. The Journal will contact all listed authors at the point of submission to confirm their role.
The Journal does not allow ghost authorship, where an unnamed author prepares the article with no credit, or guest/gift authorship, where an author who made little or no contribution is listed as an author. The Journal follows Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidance on investigating and resolving these cases. For more information, please see the OUP Publication Ethics page.
Natural language processing tools driven by artificial intelligence (AI) do not qualify as authors, and the Journal will screen for them in author lists. The use of AI (for example, to help generate content or images, write code, process data, or for translation) should be disclosed both in cover letters to editors and in the Methods or Acknowledgements section of manuscripts. Please see the COPE position statement on Authorship and AI for more details.
After manuscript submission, no authorship changes (including the authorship list, author order, and who is designated as the corresponding author) should be made unless there is a substantive reason to do so. The editor and all co-authors must agree on the change(s), and neither the Journal nor the publisher mediates authorship disputes. If individuals cannot agree on the authorship of a submitted manuscript, contact the editorial office at [email protected]. The dispute must be resolved among the individuals and their institution(s) before the manuscript can be accepted for publication. If an authorship dispute or change arises after a paper is accepted, contact OUP’s Author Support team. COPE provides guidance for authors on resolving authorship disputes.
For the avoidance of doubt, changing the corresponding author in order to access Read and Publish funding is not permissible. For more information on Read and Publish funding, see the Open access charges section.
ORCID
Submitting authors are required to provide an ORCID iD (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) at submission. If you do not already have an ORCID iD, you can register for free via the ORCID website. As ORCID identifiers are collected, they are included in papers and displayed online, both in the HTML and PDF versions of the publication, in compliance with recommended practice issued by ORCID. ORCID functionality online allows users to link to the ORCID website to view an author’s profile and list of publications. ORCID iDs are displayed on web pages and are sent downstream to third parties in data feeds, where supported. If you have registered with ORCID, you can associate your ORCID iD with your submission system account by going to your account details, entering your ORCID iD, and validating your details. Learn more about ORCID and how to link it to your account.
Previously published material
You should only submit your manuscript(s) to the Journal if:
- It is original work by you and your co-author(s).
- It is not under consideration, in peer review, or accepted for publication in any other publication.
- It has not been published in any other publication.
- It contains nothing abusive, defamatory, derogatory, obscene, fraudulent, or illegal.
The submitting author must disclose in their cover letter all related or similar preprints, dissertations, manuscripts, published papers, and reports by the same authors (i.e., those containing substantially similar content or using the same, similar, or a subset of data) that have been previously published or posted electronically or are under consideration elsewhere at the time of manuscript submission. You must also provide access to these and a concise explanation of how the submitted manuscript differs from these related manuscripts and papers. All related previously published papers should be cited as references and described in the submitted manuscript.
The Journal does not discourage you from presenting your findings at conferences or scientific meetings but recommends that you refrain from distributing complete copies of your manuscripts, which might later be published elsewhere without your knowledge.
For previously published materials including tables and figures, please see the section.
Preprints
As an author, you retain the right to make an Author’s Original Version (preprint) available through various channels and this does not prevent submission to the Journal. If accepted, the authors are required to update the status of any preprint, including adding your published paper’s DOI. For full details on allowed channels and updating your preprint, please see our Author self-archiving policy.
Reusing copyrighted material
As an author, you must obtain permission for any material used within your manuscript for which you are not the rightsholder, including quotations, tables, figures, or images. In seeking permissions for published materials, first contact the publisher rather than the author. For unpublished materials, start by contacting the creator. Copies of each grant of permission should be provided to the editorial office of the Journal. The permissions agreement must include the following:
- Nonexclusive rights to reproduce the material in your paper in Teaching Mathematics and its Applications
- Rights for use in electronic format at a minimum, and preferably for use in any form or medium
- Lifetime rights to use the material
- Worldwide English-language rights
If you have chosen to publish under an open access licence but have not obtained open access re-use permissions for third-party material contained within the manuscript, this must be stated clearly by supplying a credit line alongside the material with the following information:
- Title of content
- Author, Original publication, year of original publication, by permission of [rightsholder]
- This image/content is not covered by the terms of the Creative Commons licence of this publication. For permission to reuse, please contact the rights holder.
Our publisher, Oxford University Press, provides detailed Copyright and Permissions Guidelines, and a summary of the fundamental information
Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest
The Journal requires all authors to disclose any potential conflict of interest at the point of submission. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure that conflicts of interest of all authors are declared to the Journal.
A conflict of interest exists when the position, activities, or relationships of an individual, whether direct or indirect, financial or non-financial, could influence or be seen to influence the opinions or activities of the individual. For more information, refer to OUP’s definition of conflict of interest. The Journal follows the COPE guidance for any undisclosed conflict of interest that emerges during peer review, production, or after publication.
At initial submission, the corresponding author must declare if an Editor or an Editorial Board Member of the Journal is an author of or contributor to the manuscript. Another editor without a conflict of interest will oversee the peer review and decision-making process.
Peer reviewers are asked to recuse themselves if they have a conflict of interest relating to a submitted manuscript and will not be assigned the manuscript. If during peer review an editor, reviewer, or author becomes aware of a conflict of interest that was not previously known or disclosed they are asked to inform the Editors immediately.
Misconduct
Authors should observe high standards with respect to research integrity and publication ethics as set out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Falsification or fabrication of data including inappropriate image manipulation, plagiarism, including duplicate publication of the author's own work without proper citation, and misappropriation of work are all unacceptable practices. Allegations of ethical misconduct, both directly and through social media, are treated seriously and will be investigated in accordance with the relevant COPE guidance.
If misconduct has been established beyond reasonable doubt, this may result in one or more of the following outcomes, among others:
- If a submitted manuscript is still under consideration, it may be rejected and returned to the author.
- If a paper has already been published online, depending on the nature and severity of the infraction, either a correction notice will be published and linked to the paper, or retraction of the paper will occur, following the COPE Retraction Guidelines.
- The Journal editor and editorial office staff may inform OUP and/or the author’s affiliated institution(s).
COPE defines plagiarism as “when somebody presents the work of others (data, words or theories) as if they were their own and without proper acknowledgment.” COPE defines redundant/overlapping publication as “when a published work (or substantial sections from a published work) is/are published more than once (in the same or another language) without adequate acknowledgment of the source/cross-referencing/justification, or when the same (or substantially overlapping) data is presented in more than one publication without adequate cross-referencing/justification, particularly when this is done in such a way that reviewers/readers are unlikely to realise that most or all the findings have been published before.” COPE defines citation manipulation as “behaviours intended to inflate citation counts for personal gain, such as: excessive self-citation of an authors’ own work, excessive citation to the journal publishing the citing article, and excessive citation between journals in a coordinated manner.” Data fabrication is defined as intentionally creating fake data or misrepresenting research results. An example includes making up data sets. Data falsification is defined as manipulating research data with the purpose of intentionally giving a false representation. This can apply to images, research materials, equipment, or processes. Examples include cropping of images to change context and omission of selected data.
If notified of a potential breach of research misconduct or publication ethics, the Journal editor and editorial office staff may inform OUP and/or the author’s institutional affiliation(s).
Availability of Data and Materials
Where ethically feasible, Teaching Mathematics and Its Applications strongly encourages authors to make available to readers all data and software code on which the conclusions of the paper rely. We suggest that data be presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files or deposited in a public repository whenever possible. Visit OUP's Research data page for information on general repositories for all data types, and a list of recommended repositories by subject area.
Data and Software Citation
Teaching Mathematics and its Applications supports the FORCE 11 Data Citation Principles and the recommendations of the FORCE11 Software Citation Implementation Group. When data and software underlying the research article are available in an online source, authors should include a full citation in their reference list.
For details of the minimum information to be included in data and software citations see the guidance on Citing research data and software.
Digital preservation
Content published in the Journal will automatically be deposited into digital preservation services, including CLOCKSS, the Global LOCKSS Network, and Portico. This ensures the long-term preservation of your work. Through LOCKSS, participating institutions can sustain access to content if the Journal were to otherwise be unavailable, even for a short period of time. Should the Journal ever cease to publish, or content otherwise become permanently unavailable, long-term access to the archives of CLOCKSS and Portico would be triggered. Until such a trigger event were to occur, this content is not available to the public through CLOCKSS and Portico.
Self-archiving policy
Self-archiving refers to posting a copy of your work on a publicly accessible website or repository. Under certain circumstances, you may self-archive versions of your work on your own webpages, on institutional webpages, and in other repositories. For information about the Journal's policy, and to learn which version(s) of your paper are acceptable for self-archiving, please see our Author self-archiving policy.
Publishing Agreements and Charges
Publishing agreements
After your manuscript is accepted, you will be asked to sign a licence to publish through the Journals Licencing and Online Payments portal. The Journal offers the option of publishing under either a non-open access (standard) licence or an open access (Creative Commons) licence. There is a charge to publish under an open access licence, which allows your paper to be freely accessible to all readers immediately upon online publication. Editorial decisions occur prior to this step and are not influenced by payment or ability to pay. The standard licence makes your paper available only to Journal subscribers and there is no licence charge. This licence grants OUP an exclusive licence to publish and distribute the content. There is no transfer of ownership of the copyright. You, the author, retain copyright for the content.
Please note that some funders require open access publication as a condition of funding. If you are unsure whether you are required to publish open access, please check with your funder or institution before selecting your licence.
Papers can be published under the following:
- Standard licence to publish (Oxford University Press (OUP) Journals, Standard Publication Model)
- Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY)
- Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial licence (CC BY-NC)
- Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives licence (CC BY-NC-ND)
- United States Government Licence
- Crown Copyright Licence
Please see the OUP guidance on Licences, copyright, and re-use rights for more information regarding these publishing agreement options.
Charges
Open Access Charges
Please see the details of open access licences and charges. If you select an open access licence, you must pay the open access charge or request to use an institutional agreement to pay the open access charge through the Journals Licencing and Online Payments portal.
Read and Publish
OUP has a growing number of open access agreements with institutions and consortia, which provide funding for open access publishing (also known as Read and Publish agreements). This means corresponding authors from participating institutions can publish open access, and the institution may pay the charge. Find out if your institution has an open access agreement.
To be eligible for one of OUP’s Read and Publish agreements, the corresponding author must provide their qualifying institution as their primary affiliation when they submit their manuscript. After submission, changing the corresponding author in order to access Read and Publish funding is not permissible.
How We Publish
Teaching Mathematics and its Applications is a peer reviewed journal publishing four issues per year online. After copyediting and review of the final proof, papers are published on the Advance Access page. This is considered the Version of Record of the paper. The Version of Record requires a correction notice for any changes after it is published, even if it is not yet placed in an issue. See the definitions of the Version of Record and other versions of the paper for more details. The Version of Record will be removed from Advance Access after it is published into an issue.
After Publication
Changes to published papers
The Journal will only make changes to published papers if the publication record is seriously affected by the academic accuracy of the published information. Changes to a published paper will be accompanied by a formal correction notice linking to and from the original paper.
As needed, we follow the COPE guidelines on retractions.
For more information and details of how to request changes, including for authors who wish to update their name and/or pronouns, please see OUP’s policy on changes to published papers.
Author Toll Free Link
All corresponding authors will be provided with a free access link to their article upon publication. The link will be sent via email to the article’s corresponding author who is free to share the link with any co-authors. Please see OUP’s Author Self-Archiving policy for more information regarding how this link may be publicly shared depending on the type of license under which the article has published.
Promoting your work
As the author, you are the best advocate for your work, and we encourage you to be involved in promoting your publication. Sharing your ideas and news about your publication with your colleagues and friends could take as little as 15 minutes and will make a real difference in raising the profile of your research.
You can promote your work by:
- Sharing your paper with colleagues and friends. If your paper is published open access, it will always be freely available to all readers, and you can share it without any limitations. Otherwise, use the toll-free link that is emailed to you after publication. It provides permanent, free access to your paper, even if your paper is updated. ·
- Create an online profile showcasing all your publications, and increase the visibility of your work.
- Using social media to promote your work. To learn more about self-promotion on social media, see our social media guide for authors.
Find out how Oxford University Press promotes your content.
Preparing your manuscript
- The journal does not wish to prescribe specific software for preparing contributions. We welcome submissions that have been prepared in MSWord or in LaTeX.
- Manuscripts submitted will be expected to contain original work and should not have been published in abridged or other form elsewhere. It is a condition of publication in the Journal that authors grant to The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications an exclusive licence to publish.
- The editors do not wish to prescribe a maximum word limit. Normally, authors should be able to communicate their key ideas within 10,000 words for Section A and 8,000 words for Section B (including figures, tables and diagrams, but excluding references).
- All submissions should be written in good English. You may wish to use a language-editing service before submitting to ensure that editors and reviewers understand your manuscript. Our publisher, Oxford University Press, partners with Enago, a leading provider of author services. Through the OUP-Enago partner page, prospective authors are entitled to a discount for language editing, abstract and layperson summary writing, rejected manuscript editing, and creation of graphical abstracts, illustrations, and videos.
Enago is an independent service provider, which will handle all aspects of this service, including payment. As an author you are under no obligation to take up this offer. Language editing and other services from Enago are optional and do not guarantee that your manuscript will be accepted. Edited manuscripts will undergo the regular review process of the Journal. For more details and a list of additional resources, please see OUP’s page on language services. - Please follow the IMA style guide which specifies the appropriate style for text, headings, tables and figures
- Articles should normally begin with an introduction that adequately covers the literature and scope of the paper (ensuring that the scope of the paper aligns with the scope of the journal). Ideally, articles will reference other articles previously published in the journal.
- Authors must give an educational rationale for their work within the article. Contributions are welcomed that use the mathematical techniques covered in upper secondary/high school and undergraduate mathematics courses.
- The article should include all materials for readers to engage with the content. In particular, authors should take due note of the international readership to ensure sufficient clarity of ideas proposed.
- Manuscripts must include a statement about research ethics as part of the description of methods. See Information for Authors for details.
- Each article should have a conclusion or discussion section.
- Every manuscript should contain an abstract of no more than 300 words which should be intelligible to general readers without recourse to the main text.
- Figures and tables should be inserted appropriately in the text at submission but should be supplied separately from the manuscript once accepted to avoid loss of quality. Images are required as high-resolution .tif files (1200 d.p.i. for line drawings and 300 d.p.i. for colour and half-tone artwork). Figures can be submitted in lower resolution initially but will need to be replaced with higher resolution figures once the paper is accepted for publication. When preparing figures, please make sure that any characters or numbers included in the figures are large enough to read on-screen. Tables should be included in the main manuscript file in an editable format.
- Use the Harvard system of references, giving the surname of the author(s) and year of publication in the text. Details are provided in the IMA style guide . The IMA journals’ style is available for EndNote, Zotero, Reference Manager, LaTeX and BibTeX.
- You must fully declare all funding information relevant to the study, including specific grant numbers, in your Acknowledgments section. If the funder is listed in the Crossref funder registry, the funder name should appear exactly as it appears in that database. Where grants were received by specific members of the author group, they should be identified by initial.
- Concise biographies for all authors should be given in a separate section at the end of the manuscript.
- Manuscripts should be submitted in electronic form via the online submission site.
- When naming your files, please use simple filenames and avoid special characters and spaces. If you are a Macintosh user, you must also type the three-letter extension at the end of the file name you choose (e.g. .doc, .rtf, .jpg, .gif, .tif, .ppt, .xls, .pdf, .eps, .mov).
- Authors using LaTeX will be required to upload the original editable .tex file. Please create a single file containing the bibliography environment. If you have any questions about the use of the class files, please contact the production editor at [email protected]. Please carefully follow all of the usual instructions to authors as detailed above and ensure that your references follow the correct referencing system.
- Our class files are available online at Overleaf and also as a downloadable package via the links below.
Overleaf is a free, collaborative online LaTeX editor that allows you to write your manuscript in a TeX or rich text environment, to generate PDF outputs as you write, and to share your manuscript with co-authors and collaborators. When ready for submission, the manuscript files can be downloaded from Overleaf and submitted to the journal’s online submission system. Please note that there is one template for all IMA journals, so this template produces a header that does not say Teaching Mathematics and Its Applications. Do not worry about this, if your manuscript is accepted for publication this will be corrected by the Production Team ahead of proofing.
Overleaf template
Direct download
