How to Submit a Case Study

Authors will submit a case study to campus-casestudies@archivists.org 

The submission process for a Campus Case Study is designed for ease and flexibility of use and obligates authors only to a minimum of required information for submission. A completed submission form in and of itself may be sufficient for a Campus Case Study, although links for context, contacts, and more detailed description or other evidence of results are encouraged. The length of the case study may vary.  Preparing your Campus Case Study: Suggested case study length is 2,500 to 5,000 words. Please use the SUBMISSION FORM and the Rubric as a guideline. Elements for the Campus Case Study include introduction and institutional context and background; nature of the records; key challenges anticipated; appraisal, processing, and preservation accomplished prior to the case study; resources; analysis; and future plans, as well as a literature review. Optional keywords are offered. Illustrations, such as tables, charts, and digital images, are welcome and should be embedded in the Word document.  Authors are responsible for understanding and following the principles that govern the “fair use” of quotations and illustrations and for obtaining written permission to publish, where necessary. Accuracy in citations is also the author’s responsibility. A submission will not be considered if it is being reviewed by another publishing outlet at the same time, nor if it has been published previously in a similar form. Submit your completed Campus Case Study as a Word doc to Campus-CaseStudies@archivists.org .  

Review Process: All submissions will be reviewed by three members of the College & University Archives Section and evaluated according to a RUBRIC. The reviewers will return the case study and completed rubric within three weeks of receipt to the Chair of the C&U Section, who will then review the feedback and make a publication recommendation to SAA’s Publications Editor, who has the right to not accept a submission even if the College & University Archives Section approves it. Within five weeks after submission, the case study author will be notified of the publication decision by the C&U Chair.  

Production Process: SAA will provide light copyediting and, in some instances, may also request minor revisions to be made by the author. The author will sign off on *final* version. SAA will format the Campus Case Study and post it on its website as a PDF.   Copyright of the case study will remain with the author, and SAA will acknowledge that in the copyright line that will appear with the Campus Case Study. Authors will consent, grant, and assign to SAA the right to publish and/or distribute all or any part of the case study throughout the world in electronic or any other medium.  Please direct requests for additional information to PublicationsEditor@archivists.org.    

C&U Case Studies Process (Internal process for section members) 

A case study is submitted to campus-casestudies@archivists.org, which is received by C&U chair, vice chair, and both case studies reviewers. 

The Chair then emails the author that their proposal was received and emails them a copy of the rubric (blank), a link to the current SAA Publications Board Generative AI Statement https://www2.archivists.org/publications/book-publishing/AIstatement, stating that we expect their proposal to be in compliance with this statement, or they need to change their proposal. 

Within three weeks of receiving the author’s case study, the reviewers review it using the rubric and send their recommendation to the Chair, who will anonymize their comments and send them to the author. If changes are requested, the author may make changes and resubmit for a second review.  

Regardless of whether the recommendation is to publish or not publish, the recommendation will be emailed to the Publications Editor to review. If we wish, the Publications Editor may share our recommendation with the Publications Board for review. The Publications Editor will inform the case studies reviewers of their decision of whether or not to publish the case study.  

Within five weeks of receipt, it is the responsibility of the case studies reviewers to inform the author of the Publications Editor’s decision.