Review Process Changes Approved

Watch your inbox for an email alerting you to changes in the review process for master's projects and dissertations. As outlined below, the biggest change will be to provide more resources for you to evaluate your own work more carefully (with concomitant expectations that you will take responsibility for this aspect of your professional development).

Heads up for new procedures in 2008-09

For those of you preparing your dissertations and masters, there will be new procedures in place after July 15. Specifically, as part of the dissertation defense paperwork or the masters submission process, you will receive a detailed list of common style errors. This list is not exhaustive nor is it meant to replace the APA Publication Manual, but it is intended to help you avoid a very lengthy process of multiple revisions.

You will be asked to sign a document indicating that you have reviewed your thesis for compliance with APA style. Once a certain, very limited number of mistakes are found in the document, review of your document will stop, the document will be returned to you with those mistakes marked, and you will be responsible for re-reviewing the document for compliance to APA style. Once you have completed your re-review, you may submit the document for a second style check. Failure of the second style check may have entail required consequences, such as paid copy editing.

In addition, deadlines will be adjusted and implemented. Dissertations will be due for APA style clearance within a specified window of time after the defense.

More details will be posted in the fall after formal adoption by the faculty, but students are encouraged to remember that it is part of their professional responsibility to be able to write in APA style.

Queue for Master's Projects

As of January 15, 2009

Mandy Cassil
Hana Carmona
Ann Yeh
Tracy Lo
Chris Waters
Joey Tadie
Liz Welsh
Mackenzie Abraham
Curtis Lehmann
Tim Arentsen
Rebeca Marin

Current Dissertation Queue

As of January 15, 2009

Tat Cheung

If you think I should have your project, but you are not on this list, email me. Please do not email asking for an estimated return date. (I have been spending far too much time responding to these sorts of emails. That time, of course, would be better spent on the projects themselves.)

Initial Checklist

So, you've completed your study, written your paper, obtained the approval of your advisor and/or committee, and now you are ready to obtain copyediting approval. Congratulations!

The substantive work is done, but you may be surprised at the amount of work you still need to do to conform to APA and departmental formatting rules. There are things you can do to reduce the time your paper will spend in editing and the number of submissions you will be required to make.

Here is a checklist that will help you correct errors in your paper before you submit it for review. Please note that once three errors are found in these categories, your paper will be returned to you for you to correct before the editing process is resumed.

APA Editing Checklist

□ Quotes used only when paraphrase is insufficient

□ Appropriate verb tense used

□ Intro (including hypotheses) past or present perfect tense

□ Method and Results: past tense

□ Discussion: present tense

□ Statistical copy and tables formatted correctly (see APA manual pp. 136-176)

□ Comparisons completed

□ “Since” and “while” used only in temporal sense (vs. “whereas,” “but,” “although,” or “because”)

□ Commas separate each element in series of three or more elements

□ Clarity emphasized over repetition

□ Citations formatted correctly

□ Authors listed correctly

□ “et al.” formatted correctly

□ Headings formatted correctly (pp. 16, 95, 113-114)

□ Bold and italics used correctly (pp. 100-102)

□ Margins justified on left side only

□ Acronym spelled out in first use and then enclosed in parentheses

□ “Study”, “table”, or “figure” followed only by “show” or “indicate”, not any kind of action verb

□ Sentences do not begin with “it” unless your goal is to be extremely tentative

□ Active voice used whenever possible

□ Use of first person pronouns avoided

□ Subjects and verbs agree (pp. 44-47)

□ Pronouns and antecedents agree (pp. 47-50)

□ Gender-neutral pronouns used whenever appropriate

□ Clear antecedents for “this” and “that” used

□ Correct spelling and grammar used

□ Appropriate line and page spacing used

□ Clear differentiation between speculation/opinion, theory, and research findings

□ Colloquial language, informal language, and contractions avoided

□ Serif font used for text, sans serif font for figures

□ Paper reads well aloud