Goals

The Forum Committee seeks your support in achieving the following goals for Contributed/Invited Paper Sessions:

1. Consistent high quality paper presentations


2. Stimulating discussions


3. Quantity and variety of publishable manuscripts

Session Format

1. Paper Sessions are 40 minutes in length.


2. A facilitator will open and close the session, encouraging discussion between the author(s) and the audience.

Forum Attendance and Registration

1. At least one author must attend the Forum to present the paper. All authors and co-authors that attend must register for the Forum and pay the full fee.


2. Registration materials and the Preliminary Program Book were mailed to all AIR members in February. If you have not received a copy, or are unable to access the information through the AIR Web site http://www.airweb.org/, please contact the AIR office at 850-644-4470 or send an E-mail to: air@mailer.fsu.edu.

Copies of Your Paper

1. Please mail one copy of your completed paper to the facilitator for your session by May 1, 2002. This is essential in order for him or her to carry out facilitator responsibilities. A vita should also be sent to provide material for the facilitator to use in the introduction to the session. (E-mail addresses and phone numbers for most facilitators will be found in the online AIR Members Directory at http://airweb.org/members/ - you will need to be a current AIR member to access the online Directory. If you do not find the E-mail address and phone number or are not a current AIR member, please call the AIR Office at 850-644-4470 or send an E-mail to: air@mailer.fsu.edu.)


2. Please bring fifty (50) copies of your paper to the Forum for distribution. Electronic copies of your paper(s) will be posted on the AIR Web page after the Forum. By June 10, 2002, please forward an electronic copy of your presentation either as an E-mail attachment with the subject line 2002 Forum Paper for Web or on diskette to:

Christine Call
Assistant Director of Marketing and Communications
Association for Institutional Research
114 Stone Building, FSU
Tallahassee, FL 32306-4462
E-mail: ccall@garnet.fsu.edu

Submission of the Paper for Publication Consideration

Publication Guidelines for AIR Forum Presenters outlines publication opportunities, review criteria, and procedures for preparing and submitting manuscripts. We anticipate a large number of the papers submitted at the Forum will be included in the ERIC Collection of AIR Forum Papers. We also anticipate strong competition for inclusion in the AIR Professional File, in the special Forum issue of Research in Higher Education, and for the Charles F. Elton Best Paper Award (formerly known as the Forum Best Paper Award.)

Publication Opportunities

The Forum Publications Editorial Advisory Committee conducts a "masked review" of all Forum papers submitted for publication. The Committee is responsible for nominating papers for the Charles F. Elton Best Paper Award and for inclusion in the ERIC Collection of AIR Forum Papers (published in lieu of Forum Proceedings). The editors of Research in Higher Education and the AIR Professional File are responsible for selecting papers for inclusion in their respective publications. All papers will be reviewed by the Forum Publications Editorial Advisory Committee and the editors of Research in Higher Education and the AIR Professional File unless otherwise designated by the author(s).

ERIC Collection of AIR Forum Papers. All submitted papers that meet the AIR evaluation criteria and manuscript preparation requirements are included in this series. The ERIC papers are announced in Resources in Education. Individual papers may be ordered from ERIC or accessed through ERIC microfiche collections in many libraries.

The AIR Professional File. Each paper submitted is reviewed by the editor of the AIR Professional File, with the assistance of the Forum Publications Editorial Advisory Committee, for possible inclusion in the series. Contribution to the practice of institutional research is the key criterion for recommendations to the Professional File.

AIR Forum Issue of Research in Higher Education (RHE). Each paper submitted is reviewed by the editor and by two consulting editors of Research in Higher Education, with the assistance of the Forum Publications Editorial Advisory Committee, for possible inclusion in the special AIR Forum issue of RHE. Theoretical significance, methodological competence, and the quality of the literature review are considered, with particular weight given to the significance of the paper as a contribution to the institutional research literature. Authors interested in RHE publication are advised to examine previous AIR Forum issues.

Charles F. Elton Best Paper Award. Provided it complies with the manuscript preparation procedures that follow, each paper submitted will be considered for this award, which is presented annually for the Forum paper that most clearly exemplifies the standards of excellence established by the award's namesake, Founder and Editor Emeritus of RHE, and that makes a significant contribution to the field of institutional research and decision making in higher education. The award recipient is recognized at the next Forum.

Review Criteria

Each manuscript being considered for inclusion in the ERIC Collection as well as for other publication or award will be reviewed by the AIR Forum Publications Editorial Advisory Committee using the following three criteria:

1. Does the paper make a significant contribution of direct value to the practice of institutional research or to the development of theory or scholarship of institutional research?


2. Does it convey the message clearly and concisely?


3. Does it meet the manuscript requirements described under "Manuscript Preparation" below?

Preparation of the Manuscript

In all matters of format, title page and abstract, paragraphs and headings, abbreviations, mathematics and statistics, units of measurement, references, notes and footnotes, tables and figures, and copyright and quotations, papers must closely follow the guidelines found in the Publications Manual of the American Psychological Association [APA], Fourth Edition, 1994. Appendix B of this volume (pp 341-344) contains a handy checklist with references to the full explanations in previous chapters of the manual. Papers that do not follow the guidelines may not be reviewed, so if you have questions, please contact Dolores Vura in advance of the Forum.

Amplification of the APA guidelines (concerning the most commonly made error) and information particular to AIR and its publications follow:

1. Papers must contain 1) a title page with full author identification, 2) a separate page with both the title and the abstract, and no author or institutional/agency identification from the abstract page onward throughout the paper. Masked review means that all editors, including the Chair and Editor of the Forum Publications Editorial Advisory Committee, must be able to remove the title page of the paper before sending it out for review without "losing" either the title or the abstract on the copy that goes to reviewers.
2. There is no longer any page limit for Forum papers considered for publication. The guiding principle is to use the length you need and no more. Keeping papers as short as possible allows the maximum number of papers to be published in the Forum edition of Research in Higher Education. Papers that greatly exceed a "normal" length of 20-25 pages will be carefully scrutinized for economy of prose.


3. Appendices are not acceptable: do not include them.


4. Authors have the responsibility for obtaining permission to quote copyrighted material (see APA Publications Manual).AIR publications are copyrighted in the name of Association for Institutional Research. If another publication requests permission to reprint a paper, that request is usually granted. Research in Higher Education is copyrighted by Human Sciences Press, Inc. New Directions for Institutional Research is copyrighted by Jossey-Bass, Inc.; and Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research is copyrighted by Agathon Press.

Manuscript Submission

Eight (8) good-quality copies of the complete manuscript, including one (1) camera-ready original copy and a 3.5" diskette with the document saved as either a Word or a WordPerfect file must be deposited in the designated box in the AIR Forum Office, which is the Carlton and Oxfood rooms on the Mezzanine level of the Sheraton NO LATER THAN 12:00 NOON ON TUESDAY, JUNE 4, 2002. Papers received after 12:00 noon on Tuesday, June 4, 2002, will NOT be considered for publication with one exception: anyone who is not planning to arrive at the Forum until after this deadline must notify Dolores Vura (dvura@fullerton.edu) by noon on Thursday, May 30, 2002, to make special arrangements.

The Forum Publications Editorial Advisory Committee will assume that you are submitting your paper for consideration for all of the opportunities listed above. If you do not want your paper to be considered for an award or publication in one or another of these venues, please so specify in a note attached to your manuscript. All authors will be notified of the final dispositions of their papers as soon as possible (generally in late August). Thank you for your cooperation.

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