Author Guidelines
This advice is for authors intending to submit a manuscript to London Journal of Social Sciences. Before submitting an article to the journal, please ensure you have read and understood the Aims and Scope of the journal and that you have attended to the formatting of your manuscript as detailed below. Submissions that do not comply will not be considered.
1-Registration
To submit an article to the journal, you need to first register as an author. When registering you need to explicitly tick the “Author” box.
2-Publication Fees
The journal charges for manuscript processing and/or publishing materials. The publication of an article in the Journal incurs a charge of 150 £. It is the publication year that governs the publication fee, not the submission year.
The total sum will be charged to the author(s) upon acceptance of his/her article.
3-Withdrawal of Manuscript
Withdrawal of a manuscript after peer review or typeset (but not yet published) will be charged according to the following: 50 £. per article (after peer review) and 100 £. per article (after peer review and typesetting).
We rely on authors complying strictly with the guidelines below to facilitate copy-editing and ensuring high-quality publications.
4-Originality
Submissions to the journal should be principally unpublished and not under consideration by another journal or for conference proceedings. The journal welcomes submission of manuscripts from peer-reviewed conferences, which may have already appeared in proceedings of London International Conferences and other conferences as a special recognition for outstanding work. Please note that it is your responsibility to confirm any relevant conditions in your institution's research management procedures, for example, ethics committee approvals.
5-Prior to submission
Preparing for submission
Submitted manuscripts should follow the recommendations stated:
Please refer to the information provided below as well as the submission preparation checklist to be sure that you have conformed to the requirements before beginning the submission process. Incomplete submissions will not be considered.
If the guidelines are not properly followed or if required data or information is missing from the manuscript, please note that this will lead to delays in the initial review process. Submissions lacking required documents/information and/or that have not been set up correctly may be archived.
Submitted manuscripts should follow the recommendations stated below:
Title Page and suggesting Reviewers.
- Corresponding author and authors
All authors’ names, affiliations, and email addresses (if authors want to hide the email addresses on the text, please note it) must be listed on the title page.
Please note that the submitting author will be the principal contact for editorial correspondence, throughout the peer review.
Please provide the ORCID ID for each author in the submission metadata.
In the title page letter, the corresponding author should reveal whether the submitted article- or very similar work- has been previously published or orally presented or is under consideration elsewhere. In addition, the author may suggest 3-4 potential reviewers. Names, affiliations, and email addresses must be provided.
- Acknowledgements/ Conflict of interest and funding
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an acknowledgments section of the title page, i.e., not listed in the main manuscript. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or writing assistance, or a department chairperson who provided only general support.
Financial and material support should also be acknowledged. Authors are responsible for disclosing financial support from the industry or other conflicts of interest that might bias the interpretation of results. If no competing interests exist, please state in this section, “The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest”.
The title page revealing the identity of the authors are uploaded separately.
If complicated statistical data are provided, the authors may be requested to submit a statement issued by a certified statistician regarding the validity of the methods used.
Manuscript preparation
Manuscripts are to be written in English.
The usual length of an article is between 5000 and 8000 words (not more than 15 pages), including abstract, figures, tables, and references, but occasionally lengths outside this range are accepted.
- Formatting (Technical Guidelines)
- All manuscripts must be typed in Microsoft Word. The template can be downloaded.
- Vertical A4 page size,
- 4 cm top margin, 3 cm left and bottom margin, and 2 cm right margin,
- be single-spaced,
- 12 pt. Times New Roman font
- a single column layout with left margin aligned,
- first 6 pt. and then 6 pt. paragraph margins
- paragraph indent and double enter not allowed.
- Manuscript Layout
Wherever possible, the paper should follow the traditional layout: title, abstract, keywords, introduction (motivation, problem identification, and a short literature survey), present investigation (background, method, materials, subjects, results, and discussion), conclusion, and references.
- The title: Sentence case 14 pt., Bold and Centred
- Abstracts should include a summary of the main research findings. Avoid generic statements. no more than 300 words.
- Keywords: not more than 5.
- Subtitles: Sentence case, 12 pt. Bold, left aligned.
- Introduction: start on a new page with an introduction.
- Tables, figures, and footnotes must be referenced in the text.
- All illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
- Citation and references
Authors are free to choose one of the well-known In-text citations and reference styles. But the editorial board recommends the latest edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA style manual). Examples can be found on the APA site (http://www.apastyle.org/). (Download)
Citation in the main text:
- citation in brackets. Example: (Daft, 2007: 619).
- no hyperlink in the text.
- where available, list DOI rather than URL
- in the end,
- alphabetical,
- with no number,
- left aligned,
- hanging by 1.25 cm.
6-Submission
What happens to a manuscript once it is submitted to the journal?
The journal is a double-blind peer-reviewed journal. All submitted manuscripts are initially previewed by the managing editor, who reserves the right to accept or reject the manuscript. Paper may be rejected directly by the Managing Editor if it is judged to be out of scope or if it does not meet the journal’s writing rules or if it is scientifically sub-standard.
If the managing editor concludes that the manuscript is within the scope of the journal and meets the standards and requirements for publication, the managing editor proceeds to send the manuscript to two peer reviewers on the Editorial Board. Reviewers are chosen based on their eminence and competence in the research area to which the submitted manuscripts are related.
Peer Review Process
Papers submitted to the journal are subject to rigorous peer review to ensure that the research published is “good science”. The journal adheres to a “double blind” peer review process and thus the identity of the authors should remain unknown. Authors are not told who reviewed their paper. The referees’ identity remains unknown to the authors throughout the review process.
Manuscripts are sent out for review electronically, and all correspondence takes place via e-mail.
NB: The author's name must not appear in the article itself for the blind review. Replace the name with the word “author” where necessary.
NB: With Microsoft Office documents, author identification should also be removed from the properties for the file (see under File in Word), by clicking on the following, beginning with File on the main menu of the Microsoft application: File > Save As > Tools (or Options with a Mac) > Security > Remove personal information from file properties on save > Save.
More about the Peer Review Process
7-After Review Process
The review process is typically conducted anonymously to ensure impartiality and objectivity. The reviewer submits their feedback and comments to the journal editor, who then communicates with the authors on behalf of the reviewers.
The managing editor is responsible for conveying the feedback, comments, and recommendations from the peer reviewers to the authors. The editor may summarize the reviewers’ feedback and provide guidance on revisions or further steps in the publication process. This helps maintain the integrity of the peer-review process and allows for constructive feedback to be provided in a controlled and organized manner.
Direct contact between reviewers and authors is usually discouraged to prevent potential conflicts of interest, ensure the anonymity of the reviewers, and maintain the confidentiality of the peer-review process.
After the peer review process has ended and an adequate number of reviews has been received, the managing editor or assigned editor makes the final decision about the manuscript (accept, invite a revision, or reject) based on a consideration of all the reviewer comments, general critique, and other external factors (e.g. the article is consistent with the journal purpose, similar articles recently published, number of accepted articles awaiting publication, the potential impact of the article, etc.). A decision summarizing the opinions of editors and reviewers will be sent to the corresponding author.
8-Final Step (Publishing accepted paper)
After a paper has been through the peer-review process and accepted by the journal, there are typically a few more steps remaining:
- The authors may need to make some final formatting changes to ensure that the manuscript is in the format required by the journal.
- After the final version of the paper is received, it will be assigned a DOI (digital object identifier).
- Eventually, the paper is assigned an issue number and page numbers. the authors will be sent a link to the final paper that they can use to share it.
