Publication Requirements

Submission of Presentation for Publication

All submitted proposals that are accepted by the Bay Honors Consortium (‘BHC’) Proposal Committee and that are presented at the Bay Honors Research Symposium (‘BHRS’, ‘the Symposium’) are eligible for publication in Think You?!, The Journal of the Bay Honors Research Symposium. The lone exception to this is if the BHRS was not able to be held in a given year due to extenuating circumstances; in this case, the BHC may decide to allow all proposals that were accepted in that year to be allowed for publication without having been presented at the Symposium.

All presenters who wish to submit their presentation for publication in Think You?! must follow the requirements below. If the requirements are not met, the presentation may not be admitted into publication. It is the responsibility of the presenter(s) to meet the requirements exactly as stated in this document. At this time, only essays will be accepted directly into the journal; all videos must be posted on YouTube in accordance to the instructions below. All submissions and required documents must be submitted to the Think You?! Publishing webpage.

Finally, no double publication will be allowed, meaning that a presenter’s work must not already be published elsewhere.

Transparency Requirements

Note that Transparency Requirements will be part of each submission starting in September 2026. All students submitting their work must declare the following information:

  • Use of LLM-based Tools: All students who submit their work must declare whether they used an LLM-based tool to complete their submission. Examples include chat bots (e.g. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Co-Pilot) or websites (e.g. Adobe Firefly, Canva, ElevenLabs) or extensions (e.g. Grammarly) to create images or graphs, edit text, add audio or video components or add any other elements of the submission.
    • Information given on this series of questions will be kept by the Bay Honors Consortium and Think You?!.
    • Submission may be marked as having AI-generated images, videos or audio.
    • For video submissions that include AI-based content must be indicated as such in the YouTube settings.
  • Live or Recorded Interviews:All submissions that include the use of live and/or recorded interviews must include completed Interview Subject Release Form. The form must be completed and signed by both the (lead) presenter and any subjects of the still-graphic, video, or audio presentation. The forms will be on file at Think You?! and not published or disseminated in any way.
    • Adobe Digital Signature is most preferred method of signature.
    • Scanned copies of signed forms are also acceptable. Please use a PDF scanning app, such as Adobe Scan, camScanner, and smallPDF. No photographs of forms are allowed.

Required Documents

All presenters who wish to submit their work for publication will include the following documents:

  • Essay and/or Video Presentation (see requirements below)
  • Artwork Entry and Publication Form completed and signed by both the presenter(s) and the mentor, and scanned as a PDF.
    • If there is more than one author for a given presentation, then a signed form must be submitted by all authors; the mentor only has to sign one of the forms, and indicate that there were other authors on the project. See the form for details.
    • Adobe Digital Signature is most preferred method of signature.
    • Scanned copies of signed forms are also acceptable. Please use a PDF scanning app, such as Adobe Scan, camScanner, and smallPDF. No photographs of forms are allowed.
  • Interview Subject Release Form (if necessary)
  • Photo of student presenting the paper, either at the Bay Honors Research Symposium or staged in a classroom with similar arrangement. Photo should be no more than 5MB.

Essay Presentations

  • All documents must be no more than 256MB.
  • All documents are to be submitted in Microsoft Word “.docx” format.
  • All documents will be typed with the following formatting:
    • Font: Arial or Helvetica, 11 point, black.
    • Page settings: Margins set at ½-inch on all sides (‘narrow’ setting), 8 ½” x 11” page, all text aligned to the left side.
    • Title settings: All paper titles will utilize Title style setting, with 16-point of the same font, bolded, and center-justification. Author and mentor bylines will be below the title and include the name of the authors, their college, and their mentoring professors. Both title and author/mentor lines will be centered.
    • Section and sub-section headings: Both section and sub-section headings will be left-justified and in black. Section headings will use the Heading 1 style setting in 14-point of the same font, bolded. Sub-section headings will use Heading 2style setting in 14-point of the same font, bolded and italicized. Further sub-section levels should use Heading 3 style setting in 12-point of the same font, bolded. Should there be a need for further sub-section levels, continue using the next Heading style setting from the previous one, in black.
    • Paragraphs: no indentation; line spacing set at 1 (single space).
    • Endnotes and/or footnotes: in standard format for your discipline.
    • References and citations: in standard format for your discipline. Any direct citation that is more than four (4) lines of text long should be set off using the Quote setting on the style guide, with ½” indent on both the left and right side, and a reduction of the font size to 10-point. The text should be italicized.

      For instructions and examples for MLA, APA and Chicago Manual of Style, please see Purdue’s Online Writing Lab.
  • All publication submissions are to be one document.
  • If a paper includes images, graphs or tables, they need to be embedded into the document with a caption included beneath the picture. This caption must be no more than 2 sentences long, and must be written below the image using the ‘Insert Caption’ function. All images, graphs and tables must have alt-text; you can use an LLM-based tool to get appropriate alt-text, such as AltText.ai or the Arizona State University Image Accessibility Creator.
  • The document submitted will have a file name of the following format: FirstNameLastName_ProjectTitlePaper.docx. For example: SarahHarmon_WhatIsLanguage.docx.

Video Presentations

  • All video presentations are to be posted onto YouTube. The URL for the video will be sent to the submissions email address for Think You?!, so that it can be linked to our website.
    • We strongly recommend that presenters upload their video to YouTube as an Unlisted video. This ensures that the video is only reachable through the link.
  • Video submissions will be of professional style and quality. No shaky videos or videos with faulty video or audio will be accepted.
  • The video presentation should include an introduction, either verbally stated at the beginning or as a title slide at the beginning of your video.
  • The video presentation will go under review by the editor of Think You?! If the content is not deemed acceptable, it will not be linked to the Think You?! website.

Contact Information

If there are questions or comments about Think You?!, submissions or any other aspect of these projects, please contact the Editor, Dr. Sarah Harmon.

  • Email: harmons@smccd.edu
  • Address: Dr. Sarah Harmon, Academic Support and Learning Technology Division, Cañada College, 4200 Farm Hill Boulevard, Redwood City, CA 94061
  • Office hours: Please schedule through my Calendly scheduler