Submissions

Author Guidelines

Welcome to the OTESSA conference submission portal!

For COMPLETE conference information, please visit the OTESSA Website and click "Conference" and choose the current conference year, where you fill find information about the conferece themes, parallel conferences with whom we have reciprocal attendance agreements, membership and fees, and more.

Submission includes:

• Completion of the online submission form. Please be sure to enter the names of all authors and presenters and enter the abstract (150-200 words);
• Upload a proposal using the proposal template provided. This includes title, session format (e.g., 20-min session), session type (research or practice), theme, mode of session (F2F or online), review type requested (double-blind or open), proposal summary (250-500 words if no proceeding submitted separately), and statement of engagement (max 200 words). The template provides further instructions.
  • session proposal template
• Optional: Upload a proceedings for publication using one of the templates below for either a short conference research paper or a short conference practice paper (1000-2000 words, excluding references and appendices).  The short paper is considered for publication as part of the OTESSA conference proceedings. Short conference papers may include works in progress. Authors must follow the author guidelines for publishing proceedings and use the appropriate template when uploading this file:
  • research proceeding template  
  • practice proceeding template 
• Optional: A full paper of 4000-7000 words, including references, but not including appendices, for publication as part of the OTESSA Journal. Full manuscripts are to be submitted separately to the OTESSA Journal and to follow the guidelines and templates provided on that website. We encourage submissions by March 1 to be published in advance of the conference; however, we have an open-door policy and will process submissions as they are submitted, whether pre- or post-conference.

All submissions should follow the American Psychological Association (APA) formatting and style guide. 

Submitters are allowed to be first author or sole presenter TWICE for the entire OTESSA conference. Additional participation as co-authors not presenting as sole presenter is allowed. Please note: this limitation does not include presenting at other conferences at Congress (e.g., an author could present two first author sessions at OTESSA and one first author session at CSSE, etc.).

Proposals must conceal the identity of the author(s). Citing one’s own work is permissible, but authors must ensure their identity is not revealed. This means deleting their names from the article, including references and citations and have inserted "Author" in its place. Titles of works published should be replaced with "Deleted for Peer Review." Author identification must also be removed from the file properties. Proposals that do not comply may be rejected or returned for revision.

Where available, URLs for the references have been provided and hyperlinked.

The sessional proposal's text format is double-spaced; uses 11-point font Arial. The optional short or full papers for publication should follow the style provided in the short and full paper templates

All illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within text at appropriate points, rather than at the end.

Evaluation Criteria

Research-oriented submission criteria:

1. Significance to the field, to practice, to society, to OTESSA mission/focus
2. Relevance to conference theme 
3. Clarity (of objectives or purpose, of writing, of arguments, etc.)
4. Situatedness (i.e., has the author situated their work in the broader research literature, provided perspective[s] or theoretical framework)
5. Substantiated conclusions and/or recommendations
6. Methodological and analytic rigour as required by the inquiry approach employed

Practice-oriented submission criteria:

1. Significance to the field, to practice, to society, to OTESSA mission/focus
2. Relevance to conference theme 
3. Clarity (of objectives or purpose, of writing, of arguments, etc.)
4. Situatedness (i.e., has the author situated their work in the broader context of similar work conducted by others)
5. Substantiated conclusions, and/or recommendations

Optional Short Proceedings or Full Article Publications

Authors submitting to the conference have the option to submit a short or full article (including text and media options). The short article would be considered for publication as a conference proceeding. The full article would be considered for publication in the OTESSA Journal. Those opting to submit for a session only will receive either an Accept or Decline decision. Those opting to submit for a session plus proceeding will receive one of: Accept Session/Accept Proceeding; Accept Session/Revisions Required for Proceeding; Accept Session/Reject Proceeding; or Rejection Session/Rejection Proceeding.

We encourage short proceedings to be submitted at the same time as session proposals as per the conference call for proposals deadline; however we practice an open-door policy and will process proceedings as received for review and consideration for publishing, even well after the conference. When proceedings are added at a later date after session proposal submission, we ask that they be uploaded within the same original submission as a new file. This can be as an attachment to a discussion thread in the original submission.

Full papers can be submitted to the OTESSA Journal at any time as we have an open-door policy; however, in order to publish works prior to the conference, we would need to receive submissions by March 1. Those opting to submit for a full paper for publication will undergo a separate review process on the OTESSA Journal website that is overseen by the OTESSA Journal co-editors.

Full paper submission guidelines found on the OTESSA Journal. Please ensure you review these as they will contain information about ensuring web accessible files, media format standards, addressing ethics, and more detail on formatting.

Visit the OTESSA website and click on Conference for more conference information and participation details.

For optional short or full paper submissions only: the work being considered must not have been previously published, nor is it before another review board for consideration (or provide an explanation in "Comments to the Editor").

Open Access Policy

All submissions that opt into and are accepted for the proceedings collection will be published open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. Those authors who do not wish to publish their work as open access proceedings may opt to submit their work for presentation only (no proceedings).

Language Option

The official language of OTESSA is English; however, submissions can be accepted in either English or French, which are the official languages of Canada. We are also pleased to accept Indigenous language submissions. Authors are encouraged to sign up as reviewers. Under "areas of interest," enter "English reviewer," "French reviewer," or "Indigenous language reviewer" to assist us with the review assignment process.