Submissions

Aims & Scope

Before submitting your manuscript to Sophia: The Journal of Social and Humanities Studies (JSHS), please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.

Article types

• Original Research
• Book Reviews

Typical submissions range between 5000-10000 words not including the title, keywords/ abstract, or references. There are no limit to the number of references.

Editorial policies

Peer review policy

JSHS does not permit the use of author-suggested (recommended) reviewers at any stage of the submission process, be that through the web-based submission system or other communication.

Reviewers should be experts in their fields and should be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. Our policy is that reviewers should not be assigned to a paper if:

• The reviewer is based at the same institution as any of the co-authors.
• The reviewer is based at the funding body of the paper.
• The author has recommended the reviewer.
• The reviewer has provided a personal (e.g. Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail) email account and an institutional email account cannot be found after performing a basic Google search (name, department and institution).

The journal’s policy is to have manuscripts reviewed by two expert reviewers. JSHS utilizes a double-anonymized peer review process in which the reviewer and authors’ names and information are withheld from the other. Reviewers may at their own discretion opt to reveal their names to the author in their review but our standard policy practice is for their identities to remain concealed. All manuscripts are reviewed as rapidly as possible, while maintaining rigor. Reviewers make comments to the author and recommendations to the Editor who then makes the final decision.

The Editor or members of the Editorial Board may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for possible publication in the Journal. In these cases, the peer review process will be managed by alternative members of the Board and the submitting Editor/Board member will have no involvement in the decision-making process.

JSHS is committed to delivering high quality, fast peer-review for your paper.

Authorship

All parties who have made a substantive contribution to the article should be listed as authors. Principal authorship, authorship order, and other publication credits should be based on the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their status. A student is usually listed as principal author on any multiple-authored publication that substantially derives from the student’s dissertation or thesis.

Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors.

Acknowledgements

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support. Please supply any personal acknowledgements separately to the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.

Writing assistance

Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g., from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance. It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.

Funding

JSHS requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Declaration of conflicting interests

It is the policy of JSHS to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles. Please ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your manuscript, after any acknowledgements and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’.

Research data

The Journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:

• Share your research data in a relevant public data repository
• Include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, use the statement to confirm why it cannot be shared.

Publishing policies

Publication ethics

JSHS is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors.

Plagiarism

JSHS takes issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the Journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarized other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.

Prior publication

If material has been previously published it is not generally acceptable for publication in JSHS.

Contributor’s publishing agreement

Before publication, JSHS requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. JSHS’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive license agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants JSHS the sole and exclusive right and license to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than JSHS. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society.

Open access and author archiving

JSHS is open access journal

Preparing your manuscript

Formatting

The preferred format for your manuscript is Word.

Artwork, figures and other graphics

For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit JSHS’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines.

Reference style

JSHS adheres to the Chicago Manual reference style 17th edition (full note, short title subsequent). View the CChicago Manual reference style 17th edition guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.

Submitting your manuscript

ORCID

As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process JSHS is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.

The collection of ORCID IDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this Journal. If you already have an ORCID ID you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID ID will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID ID is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.

If you do not already have an ORCID ID please create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.

Information required for completing your submission

You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. The affiliation listed in the manuscript should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a manuscript note at the end of the paper. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).

Permissions

Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere.

On acceptance and publication

JSHS Production

Your JSHS Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be made available to the corresponding author via our editing portal JSHS Edit or by email, and corrections should be made directly or notified to us promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.

Online First publication

Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication.

Promoting your article

Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible.

Further information

Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to JSHS editorial office as follows:

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Appealing the publication decision

Editors have very broad discretion in determining whether an article is an appropriate fit for their journal. Many manuscripts are declined with a very general statement of the rejection decision. These decisions are not eligible for formal appeal unless the author believes the decision to reject the manuscript was based on an error in the review of the article, in which case the author may appeal the decision by providing the Editor with a detailed written description of the error they believe occurred.