Editorial Policy

About the CODEE Journal and the CODEE Digital Library

The CODEE Digital Library is an online repository for materials related to the teaching and learning of ordinary differential equations. In the 1990s, through the support of three grants from the National Science Foundation, CODEE published a newsletter containing news, articles about teaching differential equations, ideas for modeling projects, and reviews of books and software. This digital library is an effort to leverage prior work and further the mission of CODEE: to improve the teaching and learning of ordinary differential equations, primarily through encouraging the use of modeling projects and computer experiments. The goal of the CODEE Digital Library is to create a community of instructors of ODEs and to disseminate materials related to the teaching and learning of ODEs.

For more information about CODEE, please visit the About Us page.

The CODEE Journal is a peer-reviewed online publication, distributed by the CODEE Digital Library, for original materials that promote the teaching and learning of ordinary differential equations. Unlike traditional print and electronic journals, which usually aggregate content into regularly-published issues, materials are published online in the CODEE Journal as soon as they complete the review process and approved for publication by the editorial board. This system helps to reduce the time between the submission of a manuscript and its publication and use by others. Each manuscript published in the CODEE Journal has a stable uniform record locator (URL) to allow for consistent retrieval and archival of content.

The CODEE Digital Library is built on the open-source Plone content management system, which organizes the content on this digital library and allows authors to submit their manuscripts, interact with the editorial board and check on the status of their manuscripts. The CODEE Digital Library is also compliant with the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting, which allows for its content to be efficiently disseminated to interested users.

All items in the CODEE Journal have a permanent uniform record locator (URL) so that the material will be reliably accessible in the future and can be referenced in a uniform way. A suggestion of how to cite materials in the CODEE Journal might be:

B. Borrelli and C. Coleman, "Pitfalls and Pluses in Using Numerical Software to Solve Differential Equations," CODEE Journal, February 2009. URL http://www.codee.org/ref/PA09-0157

Submission Policies and Procedures

The editorial board of the CODEE Journal welcomes original materials that promote the teaching and learning of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) in concert with CODEE's mission. Submissions to the CODEE Journal will typically fall in one of three categories: (1) articles about the teaching and learning of ODEs, (2) projects or activities intended for use in ODEs courses, and (3) reviews of software, books or other materials related to the teaching and learning of ODEs. In most cases, articles, projects and reviews should be written with instructors of ODEs courses, instead of students, as their target audience.

Articles. Expository articles that advance the art and practice of the teaching and learning of ODEs are welcome in the CODEE Journal. Some possible topics for such articles include ideas for student research projects, mathematical content that is uncommon but could be incorporated in ODEs courses, pedagogical strategies for teaching ODEs, descriptions of best practices for the use of a particular software or technology in an ODEs course, or presentations of research on the teaching and learning of ODEs. Articles that reflect and draw on findings from the mathematics education literature are especially welcome. Articles will be evaluated by anonymous peer reviewers based on their usefulness to instructors, accuracy, validity, and quality of writing.

Projects. As the heart of CODEE is a community of instructors who share instructional ideas with each other, the CODEE Journal welcomes projects and activities that instructors of ODEs can use in their classrooms. The goal of CODEE is to advance the teaching and learning of ODEs, primarily through encouraging the use of modeling projects and computer experiments, so projects that involve modeling and/or computer experimentation are especially welcome. Interdisciplinary projects are also highly desirable.

Manuscripts submitted to the CODEE Journal under this category should consist primarily of a narrative that describes the project or activity with sufficient detail for other instructors to successfully implement it. At minimum, authors should include these elements in their narrative: (a) motivation (why should instructors and students use these materials?), (b) target audience of project or activity (for example, mathematics majors in an advanced ODEs course or STEM majors in an introductory ODEs course), (c) prerequisite knowledge required (particularly if knowledge from disciplines other than mathematics is required), (d) learning outcomes (what should students be able to do or know after completing this activity or project?), (e) detailed descriptions of the project or activity itself, along with specific ideas for implementation. The narrative may also include lesson plans, assessment strategies, assessment results, sample student work, ideas for further student exploration or suggestions on presentation of the material.

The typical project will occupy one or several meetings and/or homework assignments of an ODEs course. Authors can increase the utility of their project or activity, by suggesting several possible ways of using their materials. For example, the author of an activity on the Duffing oscillator might suggest that instructors wishing to focus on stability and Lyapunov functions use questions 1-4 whereas instructors wishing to focus on the chaotic behavior of the system use questions 3-8. Suggested adaptations to help instructors meet various class time constraints are also particularly helpful.

Attachments such as videos, animations, handouts, homework questions, assessment questions, software (for example, Mathematica notebooks, Maple notebooks, Matlab m-files, ODEToolkit save-files) are also welcome. Authors can upload these attachments together with their narrative to the CODEE Digital Library. The CODEE Digital Library can also allow for any subset of the files to be viewable by authenticated faculty members, if so desired. Where possible, the file format for these types of attachments should allow for other instructors to easily use and adapt them. For example, if set of homework questions is created using LaTeX, the original TeX source file should be uploaded instead of the compiled PDF version.

Projects will be evaluated by anonymous peer reviewers based on their usefulness to instructors, appeal to students, accuracy of mathematical content, and quality of writing.

The editors of the CODEE Journal recognize that many ODEs instructors have ideas for engaging projects and activities, but may not have the time to write up their ideas for formal publication. These instructors are encouraged to use the Instructor to Instructor discussion forum to share and hone their ideas with each other. Through these discussion forums, instructors can also find collaborators with which to write up their ideas for publication in the CODEE Journal.

Reviews. The CODEE Journal also welcomes reviews of software, books or other materials related to the teaching and learning of ODEs. Authors must remember that the opinions expressed in their reviews do not necessarily reflect the views of CODEE or any affiliated institutions. Reviews will undergo a less stringent peer review process, but they will still be evaluated on their usefulness to instructors, accuracy and quality of writing. The editorial board reserves the right to refuse reviews from authors whose impartiality can be questioned.

The submission and editorial review process for the CODEE Journal will consist of the following steps: (1) the author submits a manuscript to the CODEE Journal via this web site, (2) the editorial board assigns anonymous reviewers to the manuscript, (3) based on comments from reviewers, the editorial board will accept or reject the manuscript and, in the former case, decide if revisions should be made, (4) the author reviews comments from reviewers and the editorial board and makes changes to the manuscript, if necessary, (5) the editorial board finalizes the manuscript, (6) the author signs a publication agreement form, and (7) the manuscript appears in the CODEE Digital Library.

Individuals with questions about the editorial and submission process should email codee@hmc.edu. Instructions on how to submit materials to the CODEE Journal are given below.

Copyright and Fair Use

One of CODEE’s goals is to facilitate the open sharing of ideas and materials to improve the teaching and learning of ODEs. To that end, all materials published in the CODEE Journal will, unless otherwise arranged by its authors, be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. Materials published under this license can be used as the basis for other materials, freely distributed, as long as proper attribution is made and any derived materials are distributed under the same license. This flexible licensing arrangement encourages dissemination and adaptation while maintaining intellectual property rights for authors. To find out more about Creative Commons and its mission, please visit its web page.

Manuscript Preparation

Manuscripts prepared using LaTeX are strongly recommended. Style files and sample documents for the CODEE Journal are located at http://www.codee.org/how-to-prepare-manuscripts.zip. Manuscripts may be submitted in other formats, but the submission and editorial review process will be delayed to allow for documents to be converted to LaTeX.

The use of color graphics, images and other visual elements is strongly recommended. However, color graphics should be designed with appropriate contrast so that they can be rendered well on black and white printers. All graphics files should be uploaded together with the manuscript during the submission process (see below). Vector art formats such as encapsulated PostScript (EPS) or Adobe Illustrator (AI) are preferred to raster art formats such as JPEG, GIF or TIFF. For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_art.

Manuscript checklist:

1. Does the manuscript include all of the required elements as described in the "Submission Policies and Procedures" section above? Does it address all listed criteria for peer evaluation?
2. Is all bibliographic information complete and accurate?
3. Is all text in any figures, plots or diagrams readable? A minimum font size of 12-point is recommended.
4. Was a spell-checking program used to catch typographic errors?
5. Have all granting or support sources been properly acknowledged?

How to Submit Materials Electronically to the CODEE Journal

The CODEE Digital Library is built on the open-source Plone content management system, which allows authors to submit their manuscripts, interact with the editorial board and check on the status of their manuscripts through this web site. Before beginning the submission process, authors should create an account on this digital library and collect the following pieces of information: (a) names of all authors, and usernames of each author on this web site, if available, (b) title of the manuscript, (c) abstract (without mathematical symbols or LaTeX commands), (d) locations of all of the relevant files (TeX files, PDF files, art files, etc.) for your manuscript on your computer, (e) contact information for corresponding author.

Follow these steps to submit a manuscript to the CODEE Journal. Authors may find it helpful to print out this page before beginning the process.

1. Use your web browser to navigate to the CODEE Digital Library at http://www.codee.org and log in using your account credentials. (Create an account if you haven't already done so.)
   
2. Click on the "Submit Manuscript" link in the navigation box on the left.
3. Fill in each of the boxes with the information requested. You will need to supply the locations of the files on your computer that you would like to be uploaded with your manuscript.
4. When you are finished entering information for your manuscript click on the "Save" button. The uploading process may take a while if your internet connection is slow or if your files are large. Please do not click on the "Save" button more than once during this time. When the process is complete, you will be take to a web page displaying your manuscript's title and you will see the message "Changes saved."
   
5. Your manuscript will be located inside a folder entitled "My Folder," which can be found on the blue horizontal bar next to your name. At this point, no one else will be able to see your manuscript besides you. You can continue to make changes to your manuscript until you are ready to submit it for review by clicking on the "Edit" tab above the green horizontal bar.
   
6. To submit your manuscript for review, click on the "My Folder" link, then click on your manuscript's title. On the right end of the horizontal green bar, click on the words "State: Private" and select "Submit for publication." This action will automatically notify the editorial board of your submission and the review process will begin. The editorial board will contact you via email to update you on the status of your manuscript.