Theological Education Submission Guidelines

Theological Education Mission Statement

Theological Education, the journal of The Association of Theological Schools and The Commission on Accrediting of ATS, is devoted to the distinctive concerns of graduate theological education in North America. The journal supports the mission of the Association and the Commission (below) by providing those concerned with theological education—including administrators, faculty, and independent researchers—with scholarly discourse and reports on issues and trends, research findings and resources, and models of critical analysis and effective practices in graduate theological education.

Mission Statement

The mission of The Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada is to promote the improvement and enhancement of theological schools to the benefit of communities of faith and the broader public. The purpose of The Commission on Accrediting of the Association of Theological Schools is to contribute to the improvement and enhancement of theological education through the accreditation of schools that are members of ATS.

Format of the Journal: Theme Focus and Open Forum

The format of the journal includes a theme focus section and an open forum section.

Unsolicited submissions are generally considered for publication in the open forum section. These articles may focus on any of a variety of subjects related to graduate, professional theological education in North America. The open forum may also include articles drawn from presentations at ATS leadership education events and other Association venues in order to make them more widely available.

The theme focus section of the journal contains articles that have been solicited by the editors or the Editorial Board. These articles address current topics and issues in theological education, identified areas of the Association’s work, and/or reports of work undertaken by ATS projects in order to present learnings, cases, models, and effective practices that have resulted from attention to the issues by ATS member schools.

Submission Guidelines

The ATS journal, Theological Education, invites submissions of articles that are consistent with the journal’s purposes as enumerated in its mission statement. Unsolicited submissions are reviewed by members of the journal’s editorial board, who make recommendations to the editors regarding their publication. The editorial board will not consider articles that are being submitted simultaneously to other publications.

1.     Recommended length of articles is 5,000 words (approximately 18 double-spaced pages).

2.     Follow Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed., using endnotes.

3.     Convert footnotes to endnotes, if necessary, using author’s given name and then the surname with no intervening comma.

4.     Use one-inch margins; do not double space between paragraphs; indent paragraphs.

5.     The American Heritage Dictionary and the Canadian Oxford Dictionary are the references for preferred spellings.

6.     Provide a paragraph abstract at the beginning of the article in approximately 80 words.

7.     Add a short (2–3 sentence) paragraph at the end of the article identifying the author(s), institution or relationship to the project/topic, position held, and/or other information relevant to the experience of the writer(s).

8.     Submissions should be emailed to the managing editor, merrill@ats.edu, followed by a hard copy sent by conventional mail to: Nancy Merrill, Managing Editor, Theological Education, The Association of Theological Schools, 10 Summit Park Drive, Pittsburgh, PA 15275-1103.

Responses to prior articles are encouraged and are published at the discretion of the editors. The suggested length for a reader response is 1,500 words; responses may be edited for length.

Copyright Notice

[The journal, Theological Education, carries the following copyright notice, which grants permission for reproduction and distribution of articles for educational purposes among ATS member schools. Authors whose articles are accepted for publication must agree to this policy. Requests for other uses must be sought from the author(s) themselves.]

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by means of any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act, or in writing from the publisher.

Permission is hereby granted without charge for the reproduction and distribution of this work, or any of its parts, for educational purposes by the faculty or administration of member institutions of The Association of Theological Schools, provided that no fee or compensation is charged for copies, use of, or access to such information beyond the actual cost of reproduction or access, and that the copyright notice is included intact.

Requests for permission for all other uses of any part of this work should be made to the author(s).

The journal is indexed in the ATLA Religion Database, published by the American Theological Library Association, 250 S. Wacker Drive, 16th Floor, Chicago, IL 60606; Email: atla@atla.com; Website: www.atla.com/.