Submission process

We encourage authors with expertise in intensive longitudinal methodology to contribute to MATILDA. If you have an article idea, please let us know before you start writing so we can streamline the process. Our submission process summarized in the flowchart and the steps are explained in detail below.

Flowchart

Step-by-step process

  1. When seeking to submit a page to MATILDA, prospective contributors should contact our editorial office (matilda@uu.nl) before the writing process. Please submit a brief proposal in your inquiry (not more than 150 words). The proposal should answer the question: “Why is it important to consider [page title] in the context of an ILD study?” and outline the scope of the intended page (see the author guidelines). Upon submission of the proposal, the editorial office will review the proposal and make an initial decision. The editorial office may suggest modifications to the proposal to ensure fit with other MATILDA content. Please note that the submission of a proposal is not required if you have been invited to submit a MATILDA article by the editorial office.
  2. The editorial office may invite authors to write an article based on their expertise or after approving a submitted abstract.
  3. After you received an invitation to write an article for MATILDA, we ask you to read the author guidelines. It is important that all MATILDA articles follow the same structure and scope. It may also be useful to have a look at the editorial checklist (as mentioned in step 7).
  4. Please download the template and write your article in this document to make sure that the format of a submitted article is correct. We provide two document formats: .doc and .qmd (Quarto markdown). You can choose which format you prefer.
  5. Authors may choose to submit an outline of their article to the editorial office (matilda@uu.nl) for feedback. Please let us know beforehand if you plan on submitting an outline, so we can plan accordingly. It is not required to submit an outline.
  6. Once you have read the author guidelines and downloaded the template you can start writing the article.
  7. To submit an article to MATILDA, please use the form provided in the invitation email. We do not accept submissions by email. If your article is in .qmd format, please compress all files to a .zip folder (e.g., the rendered .html file and figures).
  8. After an article is submitted, the assigned editor will go through the editorial checklist to determine whether the article meets MATILDA’s standards.
  9. The editor will determine whether the article is ready to be published as a preprint on MATILDA. The editor may decide to wait until the content review of the next step and base their decision on this review for publishing a preprint.
  10. If the submission passes the editorial checklist, the editor will invite two reviewers: a content and an accessibility reviewer (see the reviewer guidelines). Additionally, the editor will ask the corresponding author to sign the publication agreement.
  11. Based on the reviews, the editor will decide whether the article is ready for publication or if revisions are necessary.
  12. If the editor decides a major revision is necessary, the authors are asked to revise their manuscript and resubmit it to MATILDA, where it will go through the peer review process again.
  13. If the editor decides a minor revision is necessary, the authors are asked to revise their manuscript and resubmit it to MATILDA. There will not be new peer reviews, and the editor determines whether the article can be accepted for publication after the minor revision.
  14. When the editor accepts the article for publication, it will be published on MATILDA. If a preprint was published before, this will be overwritten by the accepted version. Note that we will also publish all communication of the peer reviews on our OSF page.
  15. To keep the articles up to date, there may be post-publication edits.