Proposal & Paper Preparation Guidelines

A template is available on the conference web site. Please use this template when writing and submitting your paper.

Papers that do not follow the Paper Preparation Guidelines will be returned to the author.

All papers should be formatted as follows:

• Times New Roman
• 12-point font
• 1-inch margins
• Single Spaced
• Left-justified (except the title, authors, and 1st-level headings)
• No header or footer
• No page numbers (they look silly in the proceedings)

Title Case

Use APA Title case. For example:

1. A Super-Fabulous RUME Proposal: More About Maxima and Minima

Here are directions for implementing APA's title case:

1. Capitalize the first word of the title/heading and of any subtitle/subheading;
2. Capitalize all “major” words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns) in the title/heading, including the second part of hyphenated major words (e.g., Self-Report not Self-report); and
3. Capitalize all words of four letters or more.

Author(s) and Institution(s)

• In a blinded proposal, these should be listed as “Author” and “Institution” (to ensure that there will be enough space to include these in the un-blinded proposal).
• For each author, the author’s name should appear on one line with their institution’s name directly underneath.
• There should be no more than three authors listed on a given line.

For a single author, the name and institution should be centered:

When there are multiple authors, when possible, list all names on one line and all affiliations on a line below that:

When that is not possible due to having four or more authors, repeat this arrangement as needed. For example:

Headings

Please follow APA formatting for headings as described below:

There should also be a carriage return after titles, and first- and second-level headings. Third-, fourth-, and fifth-level headings are not followed by a period but not a carriage return

Abstract Preparation

The abstract is limited to 150 words. Please include in the abstract an informative description of the context, theoretical framework, research questions, goals, and findings. All proposals, including posters, are required to have an abstract.

Keywords

You will be asked to provide 3-5 keywords that describe your paper. The first letter of each word should be capitalized. When appropriate, your keyword list should include descriptors of the mathematical focus, theoretical perspective, and/or methodology. For example, keywords to describe a design experiment in abstract algebra might include: Abstract Algebra, Design Experiment, Realistic Mathematics Education.

Other examples of keywords are: Calculus, Precalculus, Preservice Secondary Teachers, Differential Equations, Linear Algebra, Elementary Teacher Training, Number Theory, Transition to Proof, Teaching Assistants (TA), Discourse Analysis, Classroom Research, Cognitive Research, etc.

Figures & Tables

All figures and tables should be located in the body of the paper and labeled in APA formatting. Figures and tables count towards the overall page limits.

References

References must be provided in the standard APA format. An example is provided here:

Dreyfus, T. (1991). Advanced mathematical thinking processes. In D. Tall (Ed.) Advanced Mathematical Thinking (pp. 25-41). Dordrecht: Kluwer.

References do not count towards the page limits.

Blinding

Authors are responsible for removing any information from their proposals that might lead a reviewer to discern their identities or affiliations. With some exceptions (see below), references in the author line, within the text (as citations, footnotes, webpages, etc.), and within the reference list for each author must be blinded.

If one of the authors has written a paper that is in wide circulation (e.g., if it has already been published in a widely-read academic journal), please cite that paper using the standard citation. If the work being cited is not in wide circulation (e.g., technical report, dissertation, …) please cite with AUTHOR. We have adopted this blinding policy because often substituting AUTHOR in describing a paper makes it more obvious who has submitted the proposal. For example, “AUTHOR has previously found that lecturers in abstract algebra present informal ways of thinking about proof” basically tells a reviewer that Tim FC wrote the paper.

Specific Instructions

• Change the author information at top of the proposal to say “Author” and “Institution”.
• Except for cases described above, within the text, mask author’s self-citations of published work for each author and for each citation with any author, regardless of authorship order. Replace the author names with “Author” in both in-text citations and reference entries. For example, instead of “Students attend to different aspects of lectures… (Weinberg & Fukawa-Connelly, 2014)” write “Students attend to different aspects of lectures … (Authors, 2014).” If in the aforementioned example only Weinberg is a proposing author, the citation should still be blinded.
• Be sure active website links are replaced with blind placeholders (e.g., PROJECT WEBSITE), that NSF-numbers are blinded (e.g., PROJECT NUMBER), and that references in footnotes or tables are also checked and blinded.
• Entries in the reference list for author self-citations should be re-alphabetized under “A for Authors” rather than leaving the entries in their original placement in the section. Reference entries for “Author” should show only Author and the year.
• DO NOT include article titles, DOIs, or other identifying information.

Authors & Affiliations After Acceptance

If your proposal is accepted, you will need to upload an un-blinded version of your paper.

Compliance to Guidelines

All proposals will be checked for compliance to the RUME Paper Preparation Guidelines. Papers that do not conform to the guidelines will be returned to the author. Adherence to type size, font type and margins is necessary so that no author will have an unfair advantage by using small type or smaller margins and therefore, more text.