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Preparing manuscripts with central and salient humanistic content.

Article Excerpt
One of my greatest joys as an editor comes from facilitating the development of a manuscript from its initial submission, through one or more revisions, until ultimately it is ready for publication. Each time I begin to read a manuscript, it is my sincere hope that it will be one that is well-suited for publication in The Journal of Humanistic Counseling, Education and Development (JHCEAD). I consider our journal to be one that is author-friendly, and my heart sinks whenever I come to the conclusion that I should decline a piece for publication. All too often, the decision not to publish is related to the fact that the content of the manuscript is not clearly related to humanism. In fact, this may be the most common problem that I find in submitted manuscripts. As a result, my purpose in writing this editorial is to provide guidelines for preparing manuscripts in which humanistic themes are central and salient.

In a previous editorial on recommended practices for publishing in scholarly journals, Smaby, Crews, and Downing (1999) found a significant correlation between the quality of a manuscript's introduction and the final disposition of the manuscript. They recommended that submitting authors include a current review of the literature and a statement of the importance of the problem being addressed. Of course, when preparing a manuscript for JHCEAD, similar recommendations apply. In addition, the authors should discuss the relevance of the manuscript to humanism or humanistic counseling. On several occasions, I have read comments from JHCEAD's editorial reviewers similar to the following: "While your proposed program is obviously humane, I am not sure how it pertains to humanism."

I strongly encourage authors to put on their humanistic spectacles while preparing their manuscripts for submission to JHCEAD. I provide the following sections detailing "Themes Characteristic of the Humanistic Perspective" and "The Evolutionary Nature of Humanism and Humanistic Counseling" as guides for facilitating humanistic perspective-taking.

THEMES CHARACTERISTIC OF THE HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE...

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