Submission Guidelines

SComS is a platinum open access journal: neither authors nor readers pay any fee. These guidelines apply to all submissions. Please also read the Submission Checklist, which you will be asked to confirm when you submit.

What to submit

Every submission consists of two separate files: the manuscript, fully anonymised, and a title page carrying the title of the manuscript and the full name, affiliation, postal address, e-mail address and, where available, ORCID iD of every author.

Files may be in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF or WordPerfect format. You may add supplementary material — typically tables and figures with further results, or information on the instruments used. It is published as an online supplement and is formatted by the authors.

Anonymisation

Manuscripts in peer-reviewed sections are assessed double-blind. The manuscript itself must contain no author names, no institutional affiliations and no acknowledgements or funding statements, and your name must be removed from the document properties of every file you submit. Where you cite your own earlier work, use “Author” and the year in the text, in footnotes and in the reference list. Step-by-step instructions are given on our page How to anonymise your submission.

Language

Manuscripts may be written in English, German, French or Italian. In English, either US or UK spelling is acceptable as long as it is used consistently. If the manuscript is not in English, please also provide the title, the abstract and the keywords in English.

Abstract and keywords

The abstract is a single paragraph of 150 to 200 words giving a pertinent overview of the work. At most eight keywords, separated by commas. The keywords you enter in the submission form must be identical to those in the manuscript.

Length

Manuscripts do not exceed 9,000 words, including the abstract and all references, tables, figures, footnotes and appendices.

This is not an absolute limit. Well-founded exceptions are possible: if your manuscript is longer, explain the reasons in “Comments for the Editor” when you submit.

Section

Full papers are published in the General Section or in a Thematic Section. Please state which section your submission is intended for. For a Thematic Section, give its title.

Structure and headings

Use single-spaced text in a 12-point font, and italics rather than underlining, except for URLs. At most three heading levels. Headings are brief and written in lower case: levels one and two left-justified and bold, level three left-justified and italic. Introduce sub-sections only where there are at least two of them. Bold type is reserved for headings; use italics to emphasise words in the text.

Tables and figures

Number tables and figures consecutively and give each a meaningful title in sentence case, placed above the item. Both belong in the main text rather than at the end of the document. Tables should present new information rather than repeat the text, and readers should be able to interpret them without reference to it. Articles contain at most six display items unless a larger number is justified.

Figures are additionally submitted as separate files in a size suitable for printing. Pictures require a resolution of at least 300 dpi (tif or jpeg), line art at least 600 dpi (eps or ai). Images supplied in colour are published in colour online and in black and white in print unless otherwise arranged, so please make sure they remain comprehensible in black and white — for instance through distinctive patterns or dotted lines — and avoid words indicating colour in the captions. Supply colour art as original source files and as PDF for viewing.

References

References follow APA 7. Every in-text citation must have a corresponding entry in the reference list, and vice versa.

In parenthetical citations, place a comma between author and year (Lohmann & Riedl, 2018). For a work with three or more authors, name only the first author followed by “et al.”, from the first citation onwards (Kösters et al., 2019). When citing several works, arrange them alphabetically as in the reference list and separate them with semicolons. Give page numbers where applicable (Hibberd, 2019, pp. 383–385). Use an ampersand inside parentheses and the word “and” outside.

  • Journal article: Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of the article in sentence case. Journal in Title Case, Volume(Issue), firstpage–lastpage. https://doi.org/xxxxx
  • Advance online publication: Author, A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of the article in sentence case. Journal in Title Case. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/xxxxx
  • Book: Author, A. A. (Year). Title of the book in sentence case. Publisher.
  • Book chapter: Author, A. A. (Year). Title of the chapter in sentence case. In A. A. Editor & B. B. Editor (Eds.), Title of the book in sentence case (pp. firstpage–lastpage). Publisher.
  • Thesis: Author, A. A. (Year). Title of thesis in sentence case [Doctoral dissertation, Name of University]. Name of Repository. https://xxxxx
  • Webpage: Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of the webpage. Website Name. https://xxxxx
  • News article: Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of the news article. News Outlet in Title Case. https://xxxxx

Footnotes, punctuation and quotations

Footnotes are numbered consecutively and used for short commentaries only, not for bibliographical information. They begin with a capital letter, end with a punctuation mark, and the number is placed after the end of the sentence.

Use a space before a percent or currency sign (57 %, 30 €) and between slashes (quality / broadsheet newspapers). Use hyphens to indicate a word connection (data-driven surveillance) and en dashes for a period or range (2016–2019) or a break in thought. Define abbreviations the first time they appear in the abstract and in the text. Mark an ellipsis with square brackets and spaces […]. Quotations of 40 words or more are set as block quotes.

After acceptance

Acknowledgements, funding information and conflict-of-interest statements are not part of the submitted manuscript: they would identify you to the reviewers. We ask you for them once your article has been accepted, and they appear in the published version. Where there is no conflict, the statement reads “The author(s) declare(s) no conflict of interests.”

Research data

SComS encourages authors to make the data supporting their article publicly available upon publication, whenever this is ethically feasible. Our Open Data Policy explains the licences and repositories we recommend and how to link a dataset to your article.

Manuscript template

A Word template with the required styles is available for download.