Social Change | JOURNAL

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Social Change is a peer-reviewed journal which follows a double-anonymised review process. Full-fledged papers may be of 5,000 to 8,000 words. Brief write-ups of 2000 to 2,500 words (research reports, commentaries, theoretical notes, and data-based profiles) may also be sent; these will be considered for inclusion in sections titled Commentary, Perspectives and Documents. Responses to an article published in Social Change will be considered for inclusion in the section titled Discussion.

Manuscripts should be emailed, as MS Word files, to socialchange@csdindia.org. Manuscripts will be considered for publication only if written in accordance with the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th edition, 2020).

Submissions emailed to Social Change are normally acknowledged within 2-3 days. Authors, who do not receive an acknowledgment in their inboxes, are requested to check their spam folders.

The Editorial Team makes every effort to process each submission without delay. However, given our elaborate review process as well as the bulk of submissions we receive, it might sometimes take a year or more to communicate a final decision regarding a manuscript. Social Change follows a double-anonymised peer review process, which has three main stages: internal review (IR), external review (ER), and final scrutiny (FS). The manuscripts qualifying the IR stage are sent for ER by two domain experts. Wherever required, authors are asked to revise their manuscripts in the light of the ER reports. Revised manuscripts are then evaluated to determine if those could be accepted/shortlisted for the FS stage. Authors must understand that revision is a continuous process, and therefore, revisions maybe sought even at the FS stage. In case the revisions are found to be unsatisfactory, the Editorial Team reserves the right to reject the manuscript.

Authors will be provided with a copyright form once the contribution is accepted for publication. The submission will be considered as final only after the filled-in and signed copyright form is received.

Structure

The manuscript should be structured as follows:

• Cover page, showing title of the paper, name of author, author’s affiliation and institutional address with pin code, email ID and a 100–150 word abstract. Authors’ names and references should not be used in the main text in order to keep authors’ anonymity (e.g., ‘as the author has written elsewhere’, should be avoided). In case there are two or more authors, then corresponding author’s name and address details must be clearly specified on the first page itself.
• The contributors should also provide 4–5 keywords for online searchability.
• The text of the main article should start on a new page, and must not contain the names of authors.
• References cited in the manuscript should be listed at the end. The list of references should not include any reference that has not been cited in the text.
• Tables and figures should be provided in editable format and should be referred to in the text by number separately (e.g., Table 1) not by placement (e.g., see Table below). They should each be submitted on a separate page following the article, numbered and arranged as per their references in the text. They will be inserted in the final text as indicated by the author. Source citations with tables and figures are required irrespective of whether or not they require permissions.
• Figures, including maps, graphs and drawings, should not be larger than the page size. They should be numbered and arranged as per their references in the text. All photographs and scanned images should have a resolution of minimum 300 dpi and 1500 pixels and their format should be TIFF or JPEG. Permissions to reprint should be obtained for copyright protected photographs/images. Even for photographs/images available in the public domain, it should be clearly ascertained whether or not their reproduction requires permission for purposes of publishing. All photographs/scanned images should be provided separately in a folder along with the main article.
• Mathematical formulae, methodological details, etc. should be given separately as an appendix, unless their mention in the main body of the text becomes essential.

Language

• Language and spellings used should be British (U.K.), with ‘s’ variant (e.g., globalisation instead of globalization; labour instead of labor). For non-English and uncommon words and phrases, use italics only for the first time.
• Meaning of non-English words should be given in parenthesis just after the word when it is used for the first time.
• Articles should use non-sexist and non-racist language.
• Spell out numbers from one to ten, above ten remain in figures. However, for exact measurement (e.g., China’s GDP growth rate 9.8 per cent) use numbers. Very large round numbers, especially sums of money, may be expressed by a mixture of numerals and spelled-out numbers (e.g., India’s population 1.2 billion). Follow thousand, million, billion number metric system instead of lakhs and crores.
• Single quotes should be used throughout. Double quotation marks are to be used within single quotes. Spellings of words in quotations should not be changed. Quotations of 45 words or more should be separated from the text.
• Notes should be numbered serially and presented at the end of the article. Notes must contain more than a mere reference.
• Use ‘per cent’ instead of % in the text. In tables, graphs etc., % can be used. Use ‘twentieth century’, ‘1990s’.
• Social Change does not encourage frequent use of capital letters. They should be used selectively and consistently. Only the first word of title and subtitle should start with capital letters. Although proper names are capitalised, many words derived from or associated with proper names, as well as the names of significant offices should be in lower case. While the names of ethnic, religious and national groups are capitalised (e.g., the Muslims, the Gurkhas, the Germans), designations based loosely on colour (e.g., black people) and terms denoting socio-economic classes or groups (e.g., the middle class, the dalits, the adivasis, the african-american) should be in lower case. All caste, tribe and community names (e.g., the Santhals, the Jatavs) are to be capitalised, but generic terms (e.g., the kayasths) are to be in lower case. Civil, military, religious, and professional titles (e.g., the president) and institutions (e.g., the parliament, the united nations) are to be put in lower case, but names of organisations (e.g., the Labour Party, the Students’ Federation of India) are to be capitalised. The names of political tendencies (e.g., the marxists, the socialists) should remain in lower case.
• Abbreviations are spelled out at first occurrence. Very common ones (e.g., US, GDP, BBC) need not be spelled out. Other commonly used abbreviations (e.g., am, pm, cm, kg, ha) can be used in lower case, without spaces.

Citations and References

• Guidelines specified in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th edition, 2020) must be followed.

References:

• List of references: A consolidated listing of all books, articles, essays, theses and documents referred to (including any referred to in the tables, graphs and maps) should be provided at the end of the article.
• Arrangement of references: Reference list entries should be alphabetised by the last name of the first author of each work. In each reference, authors’ names are inverted (last name first) for all authors (first, second or subsequent ones); give the last name and initials for all authors of a particular work unless the work has more than six authors. If the work has more than six authors, list the first six authors and then use et al. after the sixth author’s name.
• Chronological listing: If more than one work by the same author(s) is cited, they should be listed in order by the year of publication, starting with the earliest.
• Sentence case: In references, sentence case (only the first word and any proper noun are capitalised – e.g., ‘The software industry in India’) is to be followed for the titles of papers, books, articles, etc.
• Title case: In references, journal titles are put in title case (first letter of all words except articles and conjunctions are capitalised – e.g., Journal of Business Ethics).
• Italicise: Book and journal titles are to be italicised. Citations should adhere to the guidelines below (based on the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th edition).
• In-text citations: Some examples of in-text citations are given below for the convenience of authors–

• 1. One work by one author: (Kessler, 2003, p. 50) or ‘Kessler (2003) found that among the epidemiological samples…’.
  2. One work by two authors: (Joreskog & Sorborn, 2007, pp. 50–66) or Joreskog and Sorborn (2007) found that.
  3. One work by three or more authors: (Basu, Banerji & Chatterjee, 2007) [first instance]; Basu et al. (2007) [second instance onwards].
  4. Groups or organisations or universities: (University of Pittsburgh, 2007) or University of Pittsburgh (2007).
  5. Authors with same surname: Include the initials in all the in-text citations even if the year of publication differs, e.g., (I. Light, 2006; M.A. Light, 2008).
  6. Works with no identified author or anonymous author: Cite the first few words of the reference entry (title) and then the year, e.g., (‘Study finds’, 2007); (Anonymous, 1998).
  7. If abbreviations are provided, then the style to be followed is: (National Institute of Mental Health [NIMH], 2003) in the first citation and (NIMH, 2003) in subsequent citations.
  8. Two or more works by same author: (Gogel, 1990, 2006, in press).
  9. Two or more works with different authors: (Gogel, 1996; Miller, 1999).
  10. Secondary sources: Allport’s diary (as cited in Nicholson, 2003).
  11. Films: (Name of director, year of release).