Guidelines for Resubmissions
If you have been invited to revise and resubmit your manuscript to the Journal of Marriage and
Family, please follow the instructions below.
General
 Upload your revision at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jmf. In your Author Center, first
find your original (or most recently revised) manuscript under "Manuscripts with
Decisions." Then under "Actions," click "Create a Revision." Upload your revised
manuscript and delete the original version.
 Authors do not need to pay an additional submission fee to submit their revised
manuscript.
 Unless the Editor has specified otherwise, please continue to blind your resubmission by
not including author information or acknowledgements.
 Along with your revised manuscript, please create a new document explaining the
changes you made in response to the comments of the Editor and Reviewer(s). It is best to
refer to the pages in which changes were made rather than reprinting the new material.
Manuscript Preparation and Formatting
 Continue to follow JMF’s style guide.
 Submit revised manuscripts as Microsoft Word documents. In particular, tables and
figures should be in an editable format in Word. In other words, tables and images should
not be copied and pasted as an image in Word. This facilitates the copyediting process
should your manuscript be accepted for publication.
Accepted Manuscripts
 Once accepted, all files are checked to make sure they are in editable formats and ready
for the copyediting stage. You will be contacted by JMF Editorial Assistants if final
versions of your files are required.
 You will be sent a publisher’s copyright agreement form, which is required by WileyBlackwell for publication. Authors are asked to sign and return copyright agreement
forms within three business days.
 Your manuscript will be sent to First Look for copyediting. The Copyeditors will send
you a proof of your manuscript after initial edits are complete.
 You will review the edits made by the Copyeditor, make any necessary corrections, and
return your files for final approval by the Copyeditor by the requested date.
 Your manuscript is then sent to Wiley-Blackwell for production.
 Wiley-Blackwell will send a PDF proof of your article to you so that you have the
opportunity to make corrections to proofs. Proofs must be returned within 72 hours of
receipt to assure publication in the next available issue. More than five corrections will
result in a charge.
 After publication, articles that have received funding from federal funding sources such as
NIH will be automatically deposited into PubMed and ERIC by Wiley-Blackwell (if the
funding source is clearly acknowledged by the author in the manuscript).
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Frequently Asked Questions
1. What types of manuscripts does the Journal of Marriage and Family publish?
JMF features original research and theory, research interpretation and reviews, and critical
discussion concerning all aspects of marriage, other forms of close relationships, and families.
An example issue is available here. JMF publishes three types of manuscripts:
Standard full-length manuscripts: Full-length manuscripts are approximately 35 pages in
length and typically contain a well-developed theoretical framework and literature review along
with an original empirical component.
Brief reports: JMF encourages brief reports or research notes for significant or timely
contributions (e.g., replications, innovative designs) that do not require full-length manuscripts.
In brief reports, the background presents a brief description of the theoretical framework and
prepares the reader for the sample, the measures, and the analytic strategy. It includes a succinct
review of only the literature directly relevant to these points. Readers should get to the method
by page 5 or 6 (title page is p. 1, abstract is p. 2). The method and results sections are not much
different from a full-length manuscript. Rather than a discussion, however, research notes have
a conclusion summarizing the major findings, limitations, and a brief statement of the study's
contribution. Generally, the conclusion runs around 3 pages. The reference list should not
exceed 4 pages, and the manuscript should not exceed 25 pages, including the title page,
abstract, text, references, tables, figures, and any appendices.
Comments: Comments on articles published in JMF are evaluated in the same way as other
manuscripts. If the comment is accepted for publication, the author(s) of the original article will
be invited to reply. Comment and reply are published simultaneously.
2. How does JMF’s review process work?
All submissions begin in the Awaiting Admin Checklist queue, where they are initially reviewed
by the editor. At this stage, manuscripts may be rejected without peer review if the topic of the
manuscript is not well-suited or relevant to JMF (for example, if family and/or close
relationships are not central concerns of the manuscript). This rejection process means that
authors receive a decision on their manuscript quickly (typically within 2 weeks) and do not need
to wait for the review process.
Manuscripts that are not rejected without review are checked into our system by the editorial
assistants, who review the manuscripts to ensure that they comply with JMF’s Submission
Guidelines. Manuscripts that do not comply with the guidelines may be returned to the authors so
that they can modify their manuscript accordingly. Manuscripts that comply with the guidelines
will move to the Select Reviewers queue, during which a list of several potential reviewers will
be selected.
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After invitations are sent to potential reviewers, manuscripts are moved into the Assign
Reviewers queue. Your manuscript may be returned to the Invite Reviewers queue if too many
reviewers decline and more invitations must be sent.
After we have secured the appropriate number of reviewers, your manuscript will move into the
Awaiting Reviewer Scores queue. Your manuscript may be returned to the Assign Reviewers
queue if one or more reviewers accepted the invitation but are no longer able to review or if they
are late and unresponsive with their review.
After the editor has received all reviews, she (or the deputy editor assigned to the manuscript)
will use that feedback, along with her own judgment to make a final decision on the manuscript.
Final decisions are typically made within 3 months from the date of submission.
You may log into your JMF Manuscript Central account at any time to review your manuscript’s
progress.
3. My article that was published in JMF received funding from a federal agency that
requires that the article be deposited into PubMed and/or ERIC. How does the article get
deposited?
After publication, articles that have received funding from federal funding sources such as
NIH will be automatically deposited into PubMed and ERIC by Wiley-Blackwell. In order for
Wiley-Blackwell to automatically deposit articles into PubMed and/or ERIC, authors must
clearly state all details of all funding sources for the manuscript in the acknowledgments.
Please give the full official funding agency name, no acronyms, complete grant numbers in
parentheses and the recipient of the grant, if necessary. For example: This work was
supported by the National Institutes of Health (grant numbers P50 CA098252 and CA118790
to the first author), and a grant from the Alcohol & Education Research Council (HFY
GR667789) awarded to the second author.
Our publisher, Wiley-Blackwell (WB), has a website, "Author Services" that explains journal
publishing and important information about publishing research that is funded by federal
agencies such as NIH. There are other links with information such as how to track the
progress your article is making in the editorial process.
http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor .
4. Does JMF publish book reviews?
At present, JMF does not publish book reviews.
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