The Appraisal Journal Manuscript Guide

Manuscripts are considered in a double-blind review by members of the Editorial Board, Review Panel, and Academic Review Panel and by outside specialists when appropriate. Manuscripts written by academic authors are reviewed by a member of the Academic Review Panel as well as practitioner reviewers.

A manuscript may be returned to the author with specific recommendations for revisions. Making such revisions does not guarantee publication. Authors of manuscripts will receive notification of the decision by letter or email.

Style and Content

• Manuscripts should be interesting, lucid, succinct, and meaningful to real property appraisers.
• Manuscripts should include a review of published literature related to the topic. Authors should cite relevant established concepts and practices and specify how they agree or disagree with such concepts and practices. Where applicable, cite the most recent editions of The Appraisal of Real Estate and The Dictionary of Real Estate Appraisal.
• Authors are responsible for providing accurate mathematics and statistics, including proper documentation of specific software used. Editorial staff may request copies of relevant data, spreadsheets, regressions, or computations used.
• Manuscripts should be 3,000–8,000 words and double spaced without extra spaces between paragraphs. The Journal’s design staff creates the layout for printed articles; do not spend a lot of time customizing the manuscript.
• Editorial staff will revise the manuscript to conform with Appraisal Institute style of capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and usage. The editorial staff also will edit for clarity of presentation and for grammar. Manuscripts may be accepted for publication pending completion of revisions.

Required Elements

• A cover letter with complete address, phone, and email of each author. Authors’ names should not appear on any pages of the manuscript.
• An abstract of 75–100 words. The abstract should not be a repeat of the first paragraph.
• Brief major and secondary headings to emphasize divisions.
• Clearly written introduction and conclusion sections explaining the purpose of the article and significance of the research results.
• A brief professional biography for each author, including present employment, title, degrees, designations, publishing accomplishments, and preferred email.
• Footnotes, numbered consec utively, providing all facts of pub lication for sources used. For footnote style, consult http://bit.ly/ChicagoManualStyle. Footnote numbers should appear in superscript at the point of reference in the text.
• Exhibits titled and numbered in the order in which they appear. The text should specifically refer to each exhibit number. Original Excel files should be provided for graphs, figures, and regression exhibits. In published articles the exhibits will appear in black and white.

Submission Procedure

Manuscripts must be in Micro soft Word and emailed to taj@appraisalinstitute.org. Please title the email "Manuscript Submission."

Confidentiality and Disclosures

• Authors of manuscripts submitted to The Appraisal Journal must have specific authorization from their clients before disclosing (a) confidential factual data received from a client or (b) the analyses, opinions, or conclusions of an appraisal.
• Authors must disclose any relationships that may suggest bias in the research and results, including affiliations or funding.

Authors should not submit manuscripts that are being reviewed for publication in other journals. Authors should not engage in plagiarism or self-plagiarism, replicating previously published works. All articles accepted become the property of the Appraisal Institute and cannot be reproduced elsewhere without specific permission of the Appraisal Institute.