Submissions

Author Guidelines

General Requirements

Science & Technology Studies publishes editorials, research papers, discussion papers and book reviews.

Research papers

Research papers should present results that are novel and relevant for the community of researchers who study social dimensions of science and technology. Research papers can be empirical, theoretical, methods-oriented, or a mixture of these three categories. Research papers need to be scientifically sound and follow the rules of scientific publication.

Generally this means that…

• the reported research uses methods and empirical material in a way that is accepted by the scientific community
• the argumentation is clear and consistent
• the sources are adequately cited
• the text has not been published before in a refereed publication
• authorship is adequately represented
• the authors have followed relevant legislation and ethical norms in their work

Science & Technology Studies operates with a broad definition of science and technology studies. Papers are expected to address the social dimensions of science, technology, knowledge or innovation as an object of study. Research papers should be no longer than 10,000 words, excluding references.

Discussion papers

Discussion papers should raise issues that are somehow new for the community of researchers studying social dimensions of science and technology. They could bring up a new topic, revive an old or neglected topic, argue for a new standpoint, or comment upon recent research in the field. Discussion papers are thus not meant to support one or the other well-known standpoint in a debate, or to discuss a topic that has already been much discussed. Neither should they be reports from conferences or similar events. Discussion papers should follow academic convention when it comes to manner of argumentation and citation, and they should be no longer than 4,000 words, including references.

Book reviews

For information about book reviews, see these guidelines.

Editorials

Editorials are written by members of the editorial board or, in the case of special issues, also guest editors. Instructions about the format and contents of an editorial can be received from the assistant editors.

All manuscripts should be checked for language before submission. A paper with a poor quality of language cannot be reviewed in an efficient and fair way, and may therefore be rejected by the editors. Authors with English as a second language should take special notice of this instruction.

Review Process

Submitted manuscripts are first screened by the editors. The editors decide whether the manuscript will be sent for review or not. The responsible editor notifies the author about the decision as soon as it has been made.

The editors may have several reasons for rejecting the paper at this stage, such as that the research presented has substantial and obvious flaws in its design; that the argumentation is incoherent; that the paper is poorly written or has disturbing language problems; that the authors have failed to follow the instructions below; or that the topic of the paper is beyond the scope of this journal.

Papers that make it through the editorial screening are sent for review to at least two referees. Both referees are selected on the basis of expertise in the field of the paper. One of them is selected also to assess the relevance of the paper for science and technology studies. Science & Technology Studies uses double blind review, which means that referees do not know the identity of the authors and that, vice versa, authors are not informed about the identity of referees.

The referees choose one of the following recommendations:

a) publication without revision
b) publication after minor textual revisions
c) publication only after major revision
d) revise and resubmit
e) rejection

They also give more detailed feedback about the paper. When the responsible Editor has received the statements of the referees, she makes a decision about the response to the manuscript. The Editor takes the recommendations as a starting point for the decision. If the referee recommendations are contradictory, a third referee may be used. The author is informed about the decision as soon as it has been made.

In the case of acceptance after revisions, the author is asked to do revision according to the recommendations of the referees and the instructions of the Editor or Assistant editor. The recommendations and instructions should be followed closely. The resubmission should be accompanied by a letter that reviews the changes that have been done and explains any deviation from the recommendations and instructions. The editors review the new version of the manuscript and make a decision about publication. If revisions are not satisfactory, the paper may be rejected. In some cases further revisions are needed. Sometimes the editors consult the referees anew.

When the manuscript has been accepted for publication, a pdf preprint version will be sent to the author for a final check. Authors are responsible to check for flaws in the layout or the text. Science & Technology Studies cannot be held responsible for flaws that have not been pointed out by the author.

The author is also asked to approve an agreement for publication during the submission process. This should be read carefully before signing.

After publication, the author will receive an electronic (pdf) copy of his or her contribution.

Publication ethics

The editors of Science & Technology Studies, as well as the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology and Finnish Society for Science and Technology Studies take an active interest in publication ethics. This includes, but is not limited to plagiarism, falsification of data, fabrication of results, issues of authorship and other areas of ethical misconduct. Submitted manuscripts may be subject to checks using various electronic services in order to detect instances of overlapping and similar text.

Authorship

Authorship is a way of assigning responsibility and giving credit for intellectual work. Authorship practices should be judged by how honestly they reflect actual contributions to the final product. Authorship is important to the reputation, academic promotion, and grants support of the individuals involved, as well as to the strength and reputation of their institution.
 Everyone who is listed as an author should have made a substantial, direct, intellectual contribution to the work. Acquisition of funding and provision of technical services or materials, while they may be essential to the work, are not in themselves sufficient contributions to justify authorship. Everyone who has made substantial intellectual contributions to the work should be an author. All authors should participate in writing the manuscript by reviewing drafts and approving the final version. Everyone who has made other substantial contributions should be acknowledged. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to make sure that all authors and contributors to the work have been cited and or acknowledged appropriately.

Acknowledgment

Contributions that do not justify authorship should be acknowledged separately in the notes to the manuscript. These may include general supervision of a research group, assistance in obtaining funding, or technical support.

NOTE: These criteria follow closely those recommended by several professional associations: International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, Annals of Internal Medicine, 1988: 108, 258–265. Harvard Medical School Faculty policies on Integrity on Science
Committee on publication ethics (available at: http://publicationethics.org/).

Preparation of Manuscripts

Manuscripts should be written in UK English (use -ise ending rather than -ize) and saved in MS Word or rich text format. The text, including tables, figures and possible appendixes should not exceed 10,000 words. Abstract of no more than 150 words and 3-6 keywords should be on the first page. Do not include the author details here – they will be stored in the OJS submission system – the document should be fully anonymized. Acknowledgements, author details, etc will be included later when the paper goes to copyediting.

Please follow these instructions:

1. Remove all author information in the text (names, affiliations, acknowledgements) and change the references to author studies to “AUTHOR (year of publication)”. Place them first in the reference list and also omit all titles and publication channels. E.g.
   AUTHOR 2001A
   AUTHOR 2001B
   AUTHOR 2015
2. If a multi-author publication with the author is referenced, remove names of all the authors even if they are not authors of this manuscript. Multi-author studies can be referenced similarly to above as "AUTHOR (year of publication)".
3. Remove all information about the document owner in the file metadata: In Microsoft Word, File > Properties / Info > Inspect document / Remove author & company etc. details.

Tables and figures should be sent embedded within the original file. Editors may ask authors to provide figures and tables in the original format, such as .xls as separate documents if clarity or final layout so requires. Tables and figures should be numbered with short descriptive titles. Figures should give monetary values in €Euros or $US.

Footnotes should be avoided. However, when necessary, notes should be numbered consecutively and included as endnotes. Endnotes are to be used only for substantive observations, and not for the purpose of citation.

Long citations/quotations from informants, other authors, or sources should be indented (no italics, no quotation marks). When in text, please use ‘ ’ for concepts and “ “ for citations.

Authors are responsible for obtaining permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures, or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. All authors also receive a PDF copy of their text.

The reference style of the journal is Harvard Sage (search for add-ons if not automatically in your reference manager system). See more information here: https://uk.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/sage_harvard_reference_style_0.pdf

Text citations

1. All references are to be identified at an appropriate point in the text by last name of author, year of publication, and pagination where appropriate, all within parentheses.
2. Initials should be used without spaces or full points.
3. Do not use ibid., op. cit., loc. cit., infra., supra.
4. Where et al. is used, it should be upright, not italic.
5. Science & Technology Studies encourages inclusive referencing and linking research duly to previous research reported within the journal.

Examples

1. If the author’s name is in the text, follow with year in parentheses:
   … Bernal (1939) has argued …
   
   
2. If author’s name is not in the text, insert last name, comma and year:
   … several works (Bloor, 1981; Knorr, 1983; Mulkay, 1985) have described …
   
   
3. When appropriate, the page number follows the year, separated by a colon:
   … it has been noted (Merton, 1964: 61–64) that …
   
   
4. Where there are two authors, give both names, joined by ‘&’:
   … it has been stated (Geels and Schot, 2007) that …
   
   
5. If there are three or more authors, use et al.:
   … some investigators (Smith et al., 2010) …
   
   
6. If there is more than one reference to the same author and year, insert a, b, etc. in both text and the reference list:
   … it was described (Geels, 2002a, 2002b) …
   
   
7. If two or more references by the same author are cited together, separete the years with a comma:
   … the author has stated in several studies (Geels, 2002, 2004, 2006) …
   
   
8. For an institutional authorship, supply minimum citation from the beginning of the complete reference:
   … a recent statement (National Research Council, 1998: 201–205) …
   
   
9. For authorless articles or studies, use the name of the magazine, journal, newspaper or sponsoring organisation, and not the title of the article:
   … it was stated (Science Daily, 2005) that …

Reference list

1. Check that the list is in alphabetical order (treat Mc as Mac).
2. Where several references have the same author(s), do not use ditto marks or em dashes; the name must be repeated each time.
3. Last names containing de, van, von, De, Van, Von, de la, etc. should be listed under D and V respectively. (De Roux DP NOT Roux DP, de)
4. Check that all periodical data are included – volume, issue and page numbers, publisher, place of publication, etc.
5. Journal titles should not be abbreviated.
6. Where et al. is used in reference lists, it should always be upright, not italic. Et al. is used if the paper has more than six authors (thus up to six authors can be listed). If there are more authors, then list the first three and represent the rest by “et al.”

Reference styles

1. Journal article
   Collins HM (1999) Tantalus and the Aliens: Publications, Audiences, and the Search for Gravitational Waves. Social Studies of Science 29(2): 163–197.
   
   Ylijoki OH, Lyytinen A and Marttila L (2011) Different Research Markets: a Disciplinary Perspective. Higher Education 45:307-335.  
   
   Lim ET, Würtz P, Havulinna AS, et al. (2014) Distribution and Medical Impact of Loss-of-Function Variants in the Finnish Founder Population. PLOS Genetics 10(7): e1004494.
   
   
2. Journal article published ahead of print
   Huth EJ, King K and Lock S (1988) Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals. British Medical Journal. Epub ahead of print 12 June 2011. DOI: 10.1177/09544327167940.
   
   
3. Book
   Mullis K (1998) Dancing Naked in the Mind Field. New York: Pantheon Books.
   
   Prigogine I and Stengers I (1984) Order out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature. New York: Bantam Books.
   Lawrence C and Shapin S (eds) (1998) Science Incarnate: Historical Embodiments of Natural Knowledge. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
   
   
4. Book chapter
   Browne J (1998) I Could Have Retched All Night: Charles Darwin and his Body. In: Lawrence C and Shapin S (eds) Science Incarnate: Historical Embodiments of Natural
 Knowledge. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, pp.240–287.
   
   
5. Thesis or dissertation
   Clark JM (2001) Referencing style for journals. PhD Thesis, University of Leicester, UK.
   
   
6. Article in a newspaper or magazine
   Gates D (2011) Boeing celebrates 787 delivery as program’s costs top $32 billion.Seattle Times, 13 September. Available at: http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2016310102_boeing25.html (accessed 13.3.2015).
   
   In case the author is unknown:
   The Independent (2006) Referencing style for journals. 21 May, 56–57.
   
   
7. Conference paper
   Buur J and Sitorus L (2007) Ethnography as design provocation. In: Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings (eds Cefkin M and Anderson K), Keystone, CO, USA, 3–6 October 2007: 140–150. Keystone, USA: EPIC.
   
   
8. Report
   General Accountability Office (2011) Aviation Safety: Status of FAA’s Actions to Oversee the Safety of Composite Airplanes. Report to Congressional Requesters, September 2011.
   
   
9. Blog post or web site
   Solheim E (2015) Targeted policies to eradicate poverty. In: OECD Insights Blog, 9 March. Available at: http://oecdinsights.org/2015/03/09/targeted-policies-to-eradicate-poverty/ (accessed 13.3.2015).
   
   

Book Reviews

Science & Technology Studies welcomes reviews that summarize, critically assess, and provide context of topical and important books (or other scientific materials, e.g. CD-ROMs, thematic issues of a journal) in the field of science and technology studies.

Guideline for Preparing Book Reviews

Review authors should provide an overview of the contents of the book, and an evaluation of its potential contribution to relevant fields of research. A review should not be a chapter-by-chapter description of the book, but rather a presentation of its main themes and arguments and a stimulation of debate on its key issues. Both the strengths and weaknesses of the book should be addressed.

Relevant questions to be addressed in the review include: What is the book about? Who should read it? What are the main arguments or conclusions of the author(s)? Why are these new/surprising/trivial/problematic? How does the work relate to existing discourse within STS?

Format of the Book Review

At the beginning of the review, include:
Book information:

• Title of book
• Names of authors or editors (with edition if appropriate)
• Name and address of publisher
• Year of publication
• Number of pages and ISSN

The text of the review should not exceed 1200 words.

Include any notes and references at the end of the review.

The review should also contain your complete contact information including organizational affiliation and email address.

Submission Process

Suggestions and submission of book reviews should be sent electronically through our online submission system. Please remember to select the journal section Book Reviews when submitting your work.