Instructions for Authors

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SUBMISSION OF ARTICLE MANUSCRIPTS

The Editors welcome manuscripts all year round. Authors are also invited to contact the editorial office to discuss their work before submission.

All manuscripts submitted will be considered for publication, on the understanding that they are original material and are not being considered for publication elsewhere. Author submissions should ensure their work meets the following criteria:

  • Theoretical and empirical value of the work;
  • Level of scholarship and thoroughness in regards to research conducted and evidence provided for arguments made;
  • Alignment with the objective of the journal;
  • Readability, including being organised in a logical manner and written in an accessible style with an international audience in mind.

Please submit only completed manuscripts that have been formatted according to the journal's specifications. Please consult the journal's style guide.

Manuscripts should not exceed 8,000 words (including references, tables/figures and abstract). Submissions of articles must be made through our online submission system. If you have any problems doing so, please contact the co-editors jessica.terruhn@waikato.ac.nz or shinya.uekusa@gmail.com.

Submitted manuscripts should be anonymised and accompanied by a cover letter that includes:

  • the author's name(s), departmental or institutional affiliations, postal and e-mail addresses;
  • a short biography for each author (50 words maximum);
  • up to six key words.

SUBMISSION OF OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS

Short-form essays, commentaries, research notes and other non-peer reviewed material

Short-form essays, commentaries and research notes (roughly 2,000 words each) are pieces that are engaged in debate, development, and productive conversation with sociological practice, ideas or history. Contributions should be theoretically ambitious and can be informed by empirical research. We welcome efforts to expand the conceptual and methodological horizons of sociological practice.

Book reviews and review essays

Those interested in offering to submit such material must contact the editor(s) before doing so. Communication about book reviews and review essays should be with Book Review Editor, Guanyu Jason Ran (j.ran@napier.ac.uk). All reviews should comply with the journal's style guide.

Each review should be 1000-2000 words. Begin by citing the book to be reviewed with full bibliography
information including all author details, publication date, full title including any subtitle, place of
publication, publisher, number of pages, ISBN number. For example:

Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples. Smith, Linda (1999). London: Zed Books
Ltd, pp. 224. ISBN: 9781856496247. Please do not use footnotes and if you reference other titles in the review, add the full reference in a reference list at the end.

A good book review is guided by a discussion of the engaged debate; it should position the book in its field of literature and give a few points of information on the authors' background. It should be neither an uncritical advocate of the book by offering an overly meticulous summary without analysis, nor should it take the book that is to be discussed as an occasion for presenting the reviewer’s own views on a theme or topic. The reviewer should highlight key passages or chapters with direct quotes from the book's text including page number, as follows: Brown (p. 64). While a review may be positive or negative in its judgement of the book, we do not welcome reviews that comment on the author's character.

Book review essays (3-5000 words) cover 2-4 books in one review and will normally be solicited by the Book Review Editor.

After you have submitted your review/review essay, we will consider it for publication and will contact you with a final decision and, if accepted, a publication date. We may suggest some changes and will provide appropriate deadlines.

Special issues

The editors invite proposals for special issues that address critical sociological issues that fit the aims and scope of the journal. Please contact the co-editors jessica.terruhn@waikato.ac.nz or shinya.uekusa@gmail.com to discuss your proposal.

COPYRIGHT

Authors will be required to sign a Contributors Agreement for Publishing before publication in which they agree to grant New Zealand Sociology the right to publish the work. New Zealand Sociology as the copyright owner reserves the right to print and publish the work in New Zealand Sociology in conventional printed form as well as preserve its storage electronically. All other uses, reproduction and distribution, including without limitation commercial reprints, selling or licensing copies or access, or posting on open internet sites, your personal or institution's website or open access repository, are prohibited. For exceptions, permission may be sought for such use by contacting the New Zealand Sociology co-editors (jessica.terruhn@waikato.ac.nz or shinya.uekusa@canterbury.ac.nz)

ETHICAL PRACTICE

New Zealand Sociology is committed to meeting and upholding the standard of ethical behaviour at all stages of the publication process. Contributors are expected to meet internationally accepted guidelines on carrying out ethical and culturally-competent research:

  • We expect any research that involves human participants to have been approved by an institutional ethics committee where appropriate;
  • All those who have made a significant contribution should be listed as co-authors, while authors who have contributed in certain substantive aspects to the manuscript can be listed in the acknowledgments section;
  • Authors are responsible for fact-checking the content of their work and should present an accurate account of the research performed, and offer an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately. The manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements or research conduct are unethical and unacceptable;
  • Authors should declare all funding sources and any actual or potential conflicts including any financial, personal or other relationships with other people and organisations in the acknowledgements;
  • Authors are responsible for referencing all articles correctly. The work and words of others must be appropriately cited or quoted. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable;
  • It is the responsibility of the Author to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material from other sources (including text, tables, photographs, slides, line illustrations or any other artwork). Tables and illustrations must be accompanied by written permission for their use from the copyright owner, along with complete information as to source. In most cases this will mean contacting the publisher of the original work. We request that authors provide us with a written confirmation prior to acceptance of the final manuscript. We encourage authors to start this process as early as possible;
  • Authors are obliged to notify the journal editors immediately to retract the article or publish an appropriate erratum if they discover a significant error or inaccuracy in their published work.

PEER REVIEW POLICY

New Zealand Sociology is a double-blind refereed journal peer reviewed to international standards:

  • Some papers are rejected without peer review owing to lack of novelty, not meeting the standard required for academic scholarship or being outside the scope of the journal;
  • Manuscripts will be acknowledged by the Editors upon receipt;
  • Following editorial review, manuscripts will be sent to two referees for blind review. To facilitate this process, the authors details should be included only on the separate cover page, although the title and abstract should appear in the main manuscript document;
  • Revised articles are usually sent for re-review to the original peer reviewers if these indicate their willingness to review the article again;
  • Revision of an article gives no guarantee of acceptance and in some cases revised articles are rejected if the improvements are not sufficient or new issues arise;
  • All authors should be prepared to return revised papers and proof corrections to the deadlines required for publication;
  • Preliminary consultation with the editors about the suitability of an article does not necessarily guarantee its publication.

Submissions from authors with whom the Editors have a conflict of interest will be assessed by an Associate Editor or member of the Editorial Board. Submissions by Editors, Associate Editors or members of the Editorial Advisory Board will be managed in a way so as to avoid conflict of interest and will be subject to the same double-blind review as other authors.

PROOFS

These will be emailed to authors and any improved layout suggestions should be returned to the managing editor within one week. Major alterations to the text cannot be accepted at this stage.

The editors reserve the right to make minor editorial alterations or deletions to articles without consulting the author(s), so long as such changes do not affect the substance of the article.