Submissions

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. You can download Author Guidelines.

1-Registration

To submit an article to the journal, you need to first register as an Author. When registering you need to tick the "Author" box explicitly.

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 160 £. 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 editorial assessment of his/her article. The Editorial check assesses the paper, considering the journal’s scope, originality and merits. The EiC may reject the paper at this stage

3-Withdrawal of Manuscript

Withdrawal of a manuscript after peer review or typeset (but not yet published) will be charged according to the following: 70 £. per article (after peer review) and 90 £. per article (after peer review and typesetting).

We rely on authors complying strictly with the guidelines below to facilitate copy-editing and ensure high-quality publications.

4-Originality 

Submissions to the journal should be principally unpublished and not under consideration by another journal or for conference proceedings. London International Conferences welcomes the 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 with 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 that have not been set up correctly may be archived.

Submitted manuscripts should follow the recommendations stated in 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 acknowledgements 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. 

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an acknowledgements 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 is uploaded separately.

• Statistic validity

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

• Language

Manuscripts are to be written in English.

• Length 

The usual length of an article is between 5000 and 8000 words (not more than 20 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 have to 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

The authors are free to choose one of the well-known In-text citations and reference styles. However, 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
• at 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 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 journal's scope 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

A manuscript submitted to the journal goes through an internal review and if it meets the basic requirements, it is sent out for double-blind review from experts in the field from the editorial board/reviewers. Comments from the reviewers are sent to the authors. This entire review process will take up to 2 or 3 months after submission of the manuscript. The managing editor’s decision is final.

The journal follows a double-blind peer-review process, whereby authors do not know reviewers and vice versa. Peer review is fundamental to the scientific publication process and the dissemination of sound science.

The journal aspires to select and publish, through double-blind peer-review, the highest quality research globally. To achieve this goal, the entire peer-review process should be thorough, objective, and fair. Journal reputation depends heavily on the fairness of the peer-review process.

Review Quality

Peer reviewers are chosen by the managing editor. Reviews are expected to be professional, honest, courteous, prompt, and constructive. The journal considers its reviewers as experts in the scientific topics addressed in the articles they review. They provide the written assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of written research to improve the reporting of research and identify the most appropriate and highest quality material for the journal. 

Ratings of review quality and other performance characteristics are periodically assessed by the managing editor to ensure optimal journal performance. These ratings also contribute to decisions on reappointment to the Editorial Board and ongoing review requests. 

Reviewers are welcome to recommend a particular course of action, but they should bear in mind that the other reviewers of a particular paper may have different technical expertise and/or views, and the Journal's editors may have to decide based on conflicting advice. The most useful reports, therefore, provide the editors with the information on which decisions should be based. Setting out the arguments for and against publication is often more helpful to the editors than a direct recommendation one way or the other.

The submitted manuscript is a privileged communication; reviewers must treat it as confidential. It should not be retained or copied. Also, reviewers must not share the manuscript with any colleagues.

Reviewers are selected from the highest university teaching and research titles. The choice of reviewers is at the discretion of the managing editor and the Editorial Board. 

Reviewers must not have a conflict of interest concerning the authors. If such conflicts exist, the reviewers must report them to the managing editor without delay.  The reviewer who feels unqualified to review the research reported in the manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the managing editor.

Reviewers are obliged to send the review to the managing editor within two weeks of receipt of the manuscript. Reviews must be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is deemed inappropriate. Reviewers are expected to express their views clearly, with supporting arguments. If there is any justified suspicion about plagiarism or ethical misconduct in the manuscript, the peer reviewer is obliged to inform the managing editor about it.

Reviewers should alert the managing editor to any well-founded suspicions or the knowledge of possible violations of ethical standards by the authors. Reviewers should recognize relevant published works that have not been cited by the authors and alert the Editor to substantial similarities between a reviewed manuscript and any manuscript published or under consideration for publication elsewhere, in the event, they are aware of such. Reviewers should also alert the managing editor to a parallel submission of the same manuscript to another journal, in the event they are aware of such.

Timeliness

The reviewer should be prompt with his/her reviews. If the reviewer cannot meet the deadline given, he/she should contact the managing editor as soon as possible to determine whether a longer time or a new reviewer should be chosen. Typically, the time to complete the first review is three weeks.

Manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Reviews are conducted in a standardized way by using the Peer Review Form, which is, along with Instructions for Reviewers, sent by the managing editor to reviewers without revealing the author’s identity. 

A reviewer must fill in data related to the manuscript (title, the area of research, the subject of analysis, adequacy of methodology and interpretation, quality of literature used).

In the Reviewer’s Conclusions section, the peer reviewer needs to check the category of the paper appropriate for the reviewed manuscript (original scientific article or review article), and proceed to check one of the 4 possible options: 

• Accept the paper (Paper to be published as it is)
• Accept the paper after the minor changes.
• Resubmit after major revisions (Paper to be published with mandatory changes with a relevant explanation)
• Decline the submission (Paper should not be published with appropriate explanation)

The peer reviewer’s name, surname, title, the full name of the institution where he/she is employed and the place and date of the review are confidential stay with the Editorial Board and are not sent to the author of the reviewed manuscript. During the review process, reviewers act independently, and without insight into each other’s identities. In cases where the manuscript receives diverging reviews (a positive and a negative one), the Editor will assign an additional reviewer.

Authors that receive conditionally positive reviews are required to consider the comments made by the reviewers, or if they do not wish to do so, they can withdraw their submissions and report their decision immediately to the Editor. Authors are required to send the amended manuscripts to the Journal within 4 weeks. After 4 weeks the revised manuscript will be considered a new submission. The final evaluation of the manuscripts related to the fulfilment of reviewers’ requests is made by the managing editor.

Peer-Review

Two referees independently evaluate the scientific quality of the submitted manuscripts.  Manuscripts should be written so that they are intelligible to the professional reader who is not a specialist in the field. They should be written in a clear, concise, and direct style. Where contributions are judged as acceptable for publication based on content, the managing editor/editors reserves the right to modify the typescripts to eliminate ambiguity and repetition and improve communication between author and reader. If extensive alterations are required, the manuscript will be returned to the author for revision.

The Managing editor considers all the returned reviews before making a decision. If the reviews differ widely, the editor may invite an additional reviewer to get an extra opinion before making a decision.

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.

7-After Review Process

The Managing editor sends a decision email to the author including any relevant reviewer comments. Comments will be anonymous. 

• If the article is rejected or sent back for either major or minor revision, the managing editor should include constructive comments from the reviewers to help the author improve the article. At this point, reviewers should also be sent an email or letter letting them know the outcome of their review. If the paper was sent back for revision, the reviewers should expect to receive a new version, unless they have opted out of further participation. However, where only minor changes were requested this follow-up review might be done by the managing editor.
• If accepted, the paper is sent to production.