A guide to preparing manuscripts

Contacting the Editors:

Prof Rosalind Edwards
FAHS
London South Bank University
103 Borough Road
London SE1 0AA, UK

Submitting a paper to International Journal of Social Research Methodology

Please read these Guidelines with care and attention: failure to follow them may result in your paper being delayed. Note especially the referencing conventions used by International Journal of Social Research Methodology and for all manuscripts, non-discriminatory language is mandatory. Sexist or racist terms should not be used.

International Journal of Social Research Methodology considers all manuscripts on the strict condition that they have been submitted only to International Journal of Social Research Methodology, that they have not been published already, nor are they under consideration for publication, nor in press elsewhere. Authors who fail to adhere to this condition will be charged all costs which the journal incurs, and their papers will not be published.

Writing your paper

• Please write clearly and concisely, stating your objectives clearly and defining your terms. Your arguments should be substantiated with well-reasoned supporting evidence.
• The word limits are 6000 words for the Methodology section and 3000 words for the Practice section, and should not be exceeded. Please provide a word count for your article on the cover page of the manuscript.
• For all manuscripts, non-discriminatory language is mandatory. Sexist or racist terms should not be used.
• Please bear in mind that the journal has an international readership (See "Notes on Style" below).
• Abstracts of around 150 words are required for all papers submitted and should precede the text of a paper (see 'Abstracts' below).
• Manuscripts should be typed on one single side of A4 or 8 x 11 inch white good quality paper, double-spaced throughout, including the reference section.
• Five hard copies of the manuscript must be submitted, along with a CD version.
• Accepted manuscripts in their final, revised versions, must also be submitted as electronic word processing files on disk (see 'Disk submission' below).
• Authors should include telephone and fax numbers as well as e-mail addresses on the cover page of manuscripts.
• Bionotes should be contained on a separate sheet and be located at the beginning of a paper.
• In writing your paper, you are encouraged to review articles in the area you are addressing which have been previously published in the journal, and where you feel appropriate, to reference them. This will enhance context, coherence, and continuity for our readers.

Word templates

Word templates are available for this journal.
Please open and read the instruction document first, as this will explain how to save and then use the template.

Select the template that is most suitable for your operating system.

This applies both to direct reproduction or 'derivative reproduction' - when the contributor has created a new figure or table which derives substantially from a copyrighted source.

The following form of words can be used in seeking permission:

Dear [COPYRIGHT HOLDER]

I/we are preparing for publication an article entitled

[STATE TITLE]

to be published by Taylor & Francis Ltd in [journal]

I/we should be grateful if you would grant us permission to include the following materials:

[STATE FIGURE NUMBER AND ORIGINAL SOURCE]

We are requesting non-exclusive rights in this edition and in all forms. It is understood, of course, that full acknowledgement will be given to the source.

Your prompt consideration of this request would be greatly appreciated.

Yours faithfully

Code of ethics and practice

Contributors are required to follow the procedures in force in their countries which govern the ethics of work done with human subjects. For human participants in a research survey, secure the consent for data and other material - verbatim quotations from interviews, etc. - to be used.

Abstracts
An abstract is required for all papers, and should not exceed 150 words. It should be a summary of the entire article, outlining the methodological issues or debates addressed and the paper's main arguments or conclusions. It should also refer to the specific substantive contents if appropriate.

Free article access: Corresponding authors will receive free online access to their article through our website (www.informaworld.com) and a complimentary copy of the issue containing their article. Reprints of articles published in this journal can be purchased through Rightslink® when proofs are received. If you have any queries, please contact our reprints department at reprints@tandf.co.uk

Electronic submission
Accepted manuscripts for the Journal, in their final revised versions, must also be submitted on disk.

Text should be provided using any of the standard word processing software (preferably Microsoft Word 6, WordPerfect 6, TeX, LaTeX, or ASCII files) , prepared on 3.5 inch PC-compatible disks, along with the hard copy print-out.

LaTeX submission
If you wish to submit your paper in LaTeX, please contact authorqueries@tandf.co.uk

Authors who wish to prepare their articles using the LaTeX document preparation system are advised to use the article.sty.

The use of macros should be kept to an absolute minimum but if any are used they should be gathered together in the file, just before the \begin{document} command.

Authors should initially submit papers in the usual way to one of the editors as set out in the Instructions to Authors. On acceptance, authors should send the following to the editor:

(1) a 3.5-inch PC disk (double- or high-density or Apple Mac), containing the corrected version of the paper. The files for the final version should be text-only, with no system-dependent control codes (often called an ASCII file);

(2) two hard copies of the corrected version.

In addition you should submit the following information concerning the disk and its contents:

Figures on disk
We are able to accept line figures under the following conditions (NB photographs and transparencies can be accepted as hard copy only):

You must also supply high quality reproducible hard copy for all line figures (printed out from your electronic files)in case the disks are unusable.

All figures must be numbered decimally in the order in which they occur (e.g. 1.1, 1.2 etc.). In multi-part figures, each part should be labelled (e.g. 1.1(a), 1.1(b) etc.)

The figure captions are saved as a separate file and numbered correspondingly.

The figures are created in either Aldus Freehand, CorelDraw or Adobe Illustrator

They are supplied on disks containing EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) files containing all the necessary font information, and the source file of the application (in case modifications need to be made).

Please save each figure as an individual file and label the disk with the decimal number of each figure.

Taylor & Francis reserve the right to decide in each case whether to use disks .

Mathematics
Special care should be taken with mathematical scripts, especially subscripts and superscripts and differentiation between the letter 'ell' and the figure one, and the letter 'oh 'and the figure zero. If your keyboard does not have the characters you need, it is preferable to use longhand, in which case it is important to differentiate between capital and small letters, K, k and x and other similar groups of letters. Special symbols should be marked in the text and highlighted in the margin. In some cases it is helpful to supply annotated lists of symbols for the guidance of the sub-editor and the typesetter.

For simple fractions in the text, the solidus / should be used instead of a horizontal line, care being taken to insert parentheses where necessary to avoid ambiguity, for example, I /(n-1). Exceptions are the proper fractions available as single type on a keyboard.

Full formulae or equations should be displayed, that is, written on a separate line. Horizontal lines are preferable to solidi, for example:

61+ 5h +q

3n + 3yz²

But: a/b + c/d + a/d

P = (a²+ b²)(c² + d²)

The solidus is not generally used for units: ms ^{- 1} not m/s, but note electrons/s, counts/channel, etc.

Equations should be numbered serially (1.1, 1.2, etc.) on the right hand side of the page. Short expressions not referred to by any number will usually be incorporated in the text.

Symbols should not be underlined except vectors and matrices, which are indicated with a wavy line in the manuscript (not with a straight arrow or arrow above) and rendered in heavy type sans serif r (matrix) or r (vector) in print.

Braces, brackets and parentheses are used in the order {[( )]}, except where mathematical convention dictates otherwise (i.e. square brackets for commutators and anticommutators)

Notes on tables and figures
Artwork submitted for publication will not be returned and will be destroyed after publication, unless you request otherwise. Whilst every care is taken of artwork, neither the Editor nor Taylor & Francis shall bear any responsibility or liability for non-return, loss, or damage of artwork, nor for any associated costs or compensation. You are strongly advised to insure appropriately.

1. Tables and figures should be valuable, relevant, and visually attractive. Tables and figures must be referred to in the text and numbered in order of their appearance. Each table and figure should have a complete, descriptive title; and each table column an appropriate heading.
   
   Tables and figures should be referred to in text as follows: Figure 1, Table 1. 'As seen in Table [or Figure] 1 ...' (not Tab., fig. or Fig).
2. The place at which a table or figure is to be inserted in the printed text should be indicated clearly on a manuscript:
   
   [Insert Table 2 about here ]
3. Each table and/or figure must have a title that explains its purpose without reference to the text.
4. All figures and tables must be on separate pages and not embedded in the text. Original copies of figures should be supplied. All figures should allow for reduction to page width (125mm). Please avoid figures that would require landscape reproduction, i.e., reading from bottom to top of the page. Photographs may be sent as glossy prints or negatives.

Please number each figure on the reverse in pencil.

Do not type the caption to a figure on that figure; the legends to any illustrations must be typed separately following the main text and should be grouped together.

Acknowledgements
Any acknowledgements - specified or anonymous - authors wish to make should be included in a separate headed section at the end of the manuscript. Please do not incorporate these into the bionote or notes.

Book reviews

 

If you would be interested in providing a book review, view the list of the books available for review.  If you would like to review any of these books for the journal, please contact the book reviews editors Linda Bell or Giampietro Gobo on l.bell@mdx.ac.uk or  giampietro.gobo@unimi.it

 

The following header material should appear in all reviews in the following order:

The Politics of Social Research.
Martyn Hammersley
Sage, London, 1995, 192 pp., 35.00 (hbk), ISBN 0-8039-7718-2, 11.95 (pbk), ISBN 0-8039-7719

Copyright.
It is a condition of publication that authors assign copyright or license the publication rights in their articles, including abstracts, to Taylor & Francis. This enables us to ensure full copyright protection and to disseminate the article, and of course the Journal, to the widest possible readership in print and electronic formats as appropriate. Authors may, of course, use the article elsewhere after publication without prior permission from Taylor & Francis, provided that acknowledgement is given to the Journal as original source of publication, and that Taylor & Francis is notified so that our records show that its use is properly authorised. Authors retain a number of other rights under the Taylor & Francis rights policies documents. These policies are referred to at www.informaworld.com/authors_journals_copyright_position for full details. Authors are themselves responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce copyright material from other sources.