Legacy Editorial Policy and Submission Guidelines

Editorial Policy

Legacy is published once a year by students currently enrolled in credit courses at Reading Area Community College and available free to all members of the college community. Legacy's main purpose is to provide an annual showcase for outstanding student work – prose, poetry, artwork, and photography. All rights, including e-rights, are reserved by the college and Legacy has the right to use any work in whole or in part in promotional materials including posters and online postings. Copyright for individual works reverts to authors and artists upon publication. Any reprint of prose, poetry, artwork, or photography in a new edition of Legacy must receive permission from the student authors and/or artists. Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect those of the editors, the general staff, or the college.

Every piece submitted to Legacy is reviewed and discussed by the staff – members of the club and the students enrolled in Publishing Practicum COM 125 and COM 126. The staff discusses each submission extensively and debates its merits before putting it to a final vote. The final vote determines which works will be edited and published. Student identities remain anonymous throughout the selection process in order for the staff to remain unbiased. The Legacy staff reserves the right to edit any submission to ensure clarity and accuracy of language, develop its effectiveness, and enhance its artistic appeal. After the final vote, the staff discusses possible edits and sometimes works with student authors and artists with the goal of helping each piece reach its highest potential. The edited pieces make up the content of the journal. Only those authors and artists whose works are chosen for publication are contacted.

Submission Guidelines

Submissions to Legacy are accepted from current RACC students and recent graduates (alums no more than five years out). All work must be submitted with the proper submission form once you have agreed to the terms and conditions.

A separate form must be submitted for each piece.

Art / Photography Guide for Submission

  • Title each work with something other than "Untitled." Make sure your title adds some value to your piece.
  • Ensure there is no identifying copyright, watermarks, crease lines etc. on your submission and no visible borders or framing around it.
  • If it is a three-dimensional piece such as a sculpture, use a clean, simple background. It is best that your work is the only object in the photograph.
  • Submit your work as a digital file. The preferred files are JPEG and TIFF.
  • If your work is selected for publication, your submitted image should not be blurry. Image quality is best when submitted images are original files direct from the capture device, not manipulated in any way. Also make sure that your image is high resolution (300 dpi). If not, we may need to ask you for your original work or a higher quality file for our printing purposes. You can visit this link to check the resolution of your file.

Note: Please do your best to submit a high-quality image. If you need our help, please let us know (legacy@racc.edu).

Prose Guide for Submission

  • Proofread each piece thoroughly; look for spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors.
  • Use Times New Roman 12' and double-space each submission.
  • Center the title and make sure your name is NOT on your file at all.
  • For poetry: format how you would like the work to be published
  • Save your file as a Word document, not as a Google Doc.