Complete guidelines for preparing and submitting your manuscript to this journal are provided below.

SUBMITTING YOUR MANUSCRIPT

Manuscripts may be submitted directly to submission@refpress.org or alternatively via journal’s dedicated Online Submission System. Manuscripts can be submitted in any standard format, including Word, LaTex.

Manuscripts must be submitted by one of the authors of the manuscript, and should not be submitted by anyone on their behalf. The principal/corresponding author will be required to submit a Copyright Letter along with the manuscript, on behalf of all the co-authors (if any). The author(s) will confirm that the manuscript (or any part of it) has not been published previously or is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

EDITORIAL POLICY

The Editorial Policies can be viewed at Policy page. The journal will only consider manuscripts that have not previously been published and that are not under consideration for publication or in press elsewhere. Articles are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY-NC) license.

ORIGINALITY

Submissions must be original work, the copyright to which is not already owned elsewhere. Originality, creativity and a cross-disciplinary approach or perspectives are strongly encouraged. Significant duplication of papers and parallel submissions are not allowed and in such cases the publishers reserves the right to withdraw publishing rights from authors and co-authors of the paper for a substantial period of time. It is the authors’ responsibility to check for possible copyright conflict with the copyright holder and agree to our Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement.

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

The manuscript should be written in English in a clear, direct and active style. All pages must be numbered sequentially, facilitating in the reviewing and editing of the manuscript. The journal accepts letters/short communications, original research articles, and mini- and full-length review articles written in English.

MANUSCRIPT LENGTH

There is no maximum limit on the length of manuscripts General guidelines: Manuscripts must be typewritten, double spaced with wide margins on one side of white paper. The first page of manuscript should include (a) Title of Manuscript (b) Names, addresses and email addresses of all co authors (c) Name, complete address, telephone number, fax number and email address of the corresponding author (d) Abstract. An electronic copy of the paper should accompany that final version. The Editors reserve the right to adjust style to certain standards for uniformity.

SECTIONS OF THE MANUSCRIPT

Manuscripts should feature the following sections:

• Title Page
• Abstract
• Keywords
• Main text of the paper
• List of abbreviations (if any)
• Conflict of interest
• Acknowledgments
• References
• Figures/illustrations (if  any)
• Tables with captions (if any)

Title:

The title should be precise and brief and must not be more than 120 characters. Authors should also provide a short ‘running title’.

Abstract:

An abstract of not more than 250 words, at the beginning of each paper, is required for Research Articles, Reviews and Letters/Short Notes.

Keywords:

Please submit a maximum of eight relevant keywords, listed alphabetically, that do not appear in the article title.

Text:

The main text should begin on a separate page and should be divided into separate sections. For Research articles, the preparation of the main text must be structured into separate sections as Introduction, Materials and Methodology, Results, Discussion and Conclusion. For Review and Letter articles, the manuscript should be divided into title page, abstract and the main text. The text may be subdivided further according to the areas to be discussed, which should be followed by the Acknowledgements and Reference sections. The review article should mention any previous important reviews in the field and contain a comprehensive discussion starting with the general background of the field. It should then go on to discuss the salient features of recent developments. The authors should avoid presenting material which has already been published in a previous review. The authors are advised to present and discuss their observations in brief. The manuscript style must be uniform throughout the text. The full term for an abbreviation should precede its first appearance in the text unless it is a standard unit of measurement. The reference numbers should be given in square brackets in the text. Italics should be used for Binomial names of organisms (Genus and Species), for emphasis and for unfamiliar words or phrases. Non-assimilated words from Latin or other languages should also be italicized e.g. per se, et al. etc.

List of Abbreviations:

Abbreviations use should be restricted to a minimum. All non-standard abbreviations should be listed in alphabetical order, along with their expanded form, defining them upon the first use in the text. Non-standard abbreviations should not be used unless they appear at least three times in the text. If abbreviations are used in the text either they should be defined in the text where first used, or a list of abbreviations can be provided

Conflict of Interest:

Authors are required to disclose any sponsorship or funding arrangements relating to their research and all authors should disclose any possible conflicts of interest.

Acknowledgements:

Acknowledgments should be limited to technical, scientific and brief. Authors may briefly mention individuals making significant non-authorship contributions to the manuscript. Funding support for the work presented should be detailed.

References Page Formatting:

• References follow the text in a section headed REFERENCES (use first-level head format identified earlier).
  All references should be double-spaced and use a hanging indent.
• Use title case for all titles (capitalize all words except prepositions such as of, between, through), articles (such as a, the, and an), and conjunctions (such as but, and, or; however, capitalize them if they begin the title or the subtitle).
• Capitalize only the first word in hyphenated compound words, unless the second word is a proper noun or adjective (for example, don’t capitalize it in The Issue of Self-preservation for Women, but do capitalize it in Terrorist Rhetoric: The Anti-American Sentiment).
• All references should be in alphabetical order by first authors’ last names Include first names for all authors, rather than initials, but use first-name and middle-name initials if an author used initials in the original publication.
• List all authors. It is not acceptable to use et al. in the References section unless the work was authored by a committee.
• For repeated authors or editors, include the full name in all references (note: this is a change from the third edition of the ASA Style Guide). Arrange references for the same author in chronological order, beginning with the oldest.
• Baltzell, E. Digby. 1958. Philadelphia Gentlemen. Glencoe, IL: Free Press Baltzell, E. Digby. 1964. The Protestant Establishment. New York: Random House.
• Baltzell, E. Digby. 1976. “The Protestant Establishment Revisited.” American Scholar 45:499-519.
• When an author appears in both single-authored references and as the first author in a multiple-authored reference, place all of the single-authored references first, even though they may not be in the proper chronological order.
• Hoge, Dean R. 1979. “A Test of Theories of Denominational Growth and Decline.” Pp. 179-197 in Understanding Church Growth and Decline 1950-1978, edited by D. R. Hoge and D. A. Roozen. New York and Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press.
• Hoge, Dean R., Benton Johnson, and Donald A. Luidens. 1994. Vanishing Boundaries: The Religion of Mainline Baby Boomers. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.
• When the same first author appears in multiple references, arrange them alphabetically by the last name of the second author.
• Alba, Richard and Philip Kasinitz. 2006. “Sophisticated Television, Sophisticated Stereotypes.” Contexts 5(4):74-77.
  Alba, Richard, John R. Logan, and Brian J. Stults. 2000. “The Changing Neighborhood Contexts of the Immigrant Metropolis.” Social Forces 79(2):587-621.
• When including more than one work by the same author(s) from the same year, add letters to the year (2010a, 2010b, 2010c) and then list the references for that author and year alphabetically by title.
• Fyfe, James J. 1982a. “Blind Justice: Police Shootings in Memphis.” The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 73(2):707-22.
• Fyfe, James J. 1982b. “Race and Extreme Police-Citizen Violence.” Pp. 173-94 in Readings on Police Use of Deadly Force, edited by J. J. Fyfe. New York: Police Foundation.

Reference Examples

Book with One Author
Author’s full name, inverted so that last name appears first. Year. Book Title in Title Caps and Italicized. Publishing City: Publisher.
Note that the two-letter state abbreviation should be given only if needed to identify the city. For a publisher located in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, or Boston, for example, it would not be necessary to include the state abbreviation.
Note that the word “volume” is capitalized and abbreviated but not italicized.
Gurr, Ted Robert, ed. 1989. Violence in America. Vol. 1, The History of Crime. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Mason, Karen. 1974. Women’s Labor Force Participation. Research Triangle Park, NC: National Institutes of Health.

Book with Two or More Authors
Same as with one author, but do not invert authors’ names after the first author. Separate authors’ names with a comma (unless there are only two authors), and include the word and before the final author.
Note that the word “edition” is abbreviated, and not italicized or capitalized.
Corbin, Juliet and Anselm Strauss. 2008. Basics of Qualitative Research. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Edited Volume (when citing the entire volume)
Same as book reference but add “eds.” to denote book editor'(s’) name(s).
Hagan, John and Ruth D. Peterson, eds. 1995. Crime and Inequality. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Chapter in an Edited Volume
Put chapter title in quotes.
Use Pp. and page numbers to designate where the chapter is found in the volume.
Italicize the book title, then give the book editor’(s’) name(s).
Do not invert editor'(s)’ name(s).
Use initials instead of first and middle names for editor(s).
Clausen, John. 1972. “The Life Course of Individuals.” Pp. 457-514 in Aging and Society. Vol. 3, A Sociology of Stratification, edited by M.W. Riley, M. Johnson, and A. Foner. New York: Russell Sage.

Scholarly Journal Article
Author’s full name, inverted so that last name appears first. Year. “Article Title in Title Caps and in Quotes.” Journal Title in Title Caps and Italicized Volume Number (Issue Number):page numbers of article.
Note that there is no space after the colon preceding page numbers.
For multiple authors, invert last name of first author only.
Separate with commas, unless there are only two author.
Use and between last two authors.
Conger, Rand. 1997. “The Effects of Positive Feedback on Direction and Amount of Verbalization in a Social Setting.” American Journal of Sociology 79:1179-259.
Coe, Deborah L. and James D. Davidson. 2011. “The Origins of Legacy Admissions: A Sociological Explanation.” Review of Religious Research 52(3):233-47.

Magazine or Newspaper Article
Ziff, Larzer. 1995. “The Other Lost Generation,” Saturday Review, February 20, pp. 15-18.
Newspaper Article (author unknown)
Lafayette Journal & Courier. 1998. Newspaper editorial. December 12, p. A-6.
Public Documents
Because the nature of public documents is so varied, the form of entry for documentation cannot be standardized. The essential rule is to provide sufficient information so that the reader can locate the reference easily.

Reports, Constitutions, Laws, and Ordinances
New York State Department of Labor. 1997. Annual Labor Area Report: New York City, Fiscal Year 1996 (BLMI Report, No. 28). Albany: New York State Department of Labor.
Ohio Revised Code Annotated, Section 3566 (West 2000).
Telecommunications Act of 1996, Public Law 104-014,  110 U.S. Statutes at Large 56 (1996).
U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1990. Characteristics of Population. Vol. 1. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 4.

Legislation Examples
Court cases and legislative acts follow a format stipulated by legal publishers.
The act or case is listed first, followed by volume number, abbreviated title, and the date of the work in which the act or case is found.
The volume number is given in Arabic numerals, and the date is parenthesized.
Court cases are italicized, but acts are not.
Case names, including v., are italicized.
Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
If retrieved from an online database, such as LexisNexis or HeinOnline, provide access information.
Ohio v. Vincer (Ohio App. Lexis 4356 [1999]).
U.S. Congress. House of Representatives. Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007. H.R. 2. 110th Congress, 1st Session, 2007. Retrieved July 11, 2010  (http://thomas.loc.gov).

Unpublished Materials
Name of author. Year. Title of Presentation. Location where the article was presented or is available or has been accepted for publication but has not yet been published.
Conger, Rand D. Forthcoming. “The Effects of Positive Feedback on Direction and Amount of Verbalization in a Social Setting.” Sociological Perspectives.
Smith, Tom. 2003. “General Social Survey.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, August 16, Atlanta, GA.

Dissertation or Thesis
King, Andrew J. 1976. “Law and Land Use in Chicago: A Pre-history of Modern Zoning.” PhD dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Print Edition of a Book Accessed through an Online Library
Daniels, John. 2010. Apathetic College Students in America. Middletown, IL: University of Middletown Press. Retrieved April 6, 2011(http://site.ebrary.com/lib/collegestudies/docDetail.action?docID=1010101010).

Archival Sources
Meany Archives, LRF, Box 6, March 18, 1970. File 20. Memo, conference with Gloster Current, Director of Organization, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Electronic Sources
For electronic references, follow the same guidelines as for print references, adding information about the medium, such as the URL and date of access.
For online periodicals (journals, magazines, and newspapers), use the same format as for printed periodicals, unless they are available ONLY in online form. In that case, simply add the date viewed and the URL for retrieving the article.

Manuscript Writing Style
In addition to providing guidelines for the general formatting of a manuscript and for in-text citations and the page of references, which follows a document, the ASA Style Guide also specifies a particular style of writing for presenting sociological work.

Basics
Generally, avoid writing in the first person, unless instructed to do so. Avoid giving an opinion, unless the purpose of the writing is to make an argument.
Use the active voice (click here to view the OWL’s resources on active voice).
Spell out words such as percent, chi-square and versus, rather than using their abbreviations (except when presenting data in tables or graphs).

Avoiding Plagiarism
Whenever using data that someone else collected, or whenever referring to that data, or whenever using another person’s ideas, whether published, unpublished, or available electronically, reference the author(s). This is true whether quoting their work verbatim or paraphrasing it (click here to view the OWL’s resources on avoiding plagiarism).

Clarity
Use straightforward language, avoiding jargon, superlatives, wordy phrases and common expressions. Pay close attention to such “nuts and bolts” issues as consistent use of verb tenses and accuracy in spelling, punctuation, sentence construction, and following a well-thought-out outline.

Bias Gender
Unless gendered terms are important to the analysis or demographics, use nongendered terms wherever possible.
Instead of man, men, or mankind, use person, people, individual, or humankind.
Then there will be peace for mankind becomes Then there will be peace for humankind.
When appropriate, use a plural noun (people) or pronoun (they). Replace gendered pronouns with an article when possible (the instead of hers).
A girl can play her guitar becomes People can play their guitars or A person can play the guitar.

Race and Ethnicity
Avoid racial and ethnic stereotyping.
Be as specific as possible when using terms that describe a race or ethnicity.
Chinese is more specific than Asian; Puerto Rican is more specific than Latino.

Use the following terms:
– African American (no hyphen)
– Black (not capitalized)
– White (not capitalized)
– Hispanic, Chicano, Latino, or Latina (Latino if gender is unknown or known to be male; Latina if known to be female)
– American Indian or Native American (no hyphen)
– Asian or Asian American (no hyphen)

Avoid using the following:
– Negro
– Afro-American
– Oriental

Acronym Usage
The first time you use an acronym, you should give the full name with the acronym in parenthesis.
Afterwards, you can use only the acronym.
According to a Department of Energy (DoE) report…
Later in the text:
The DoE suggests that..

Verb Tense
Different sections of a paper may call for different verb tenses but use the same tense within each section.

Literature Review
Use the past tense to communicate that the research being reviewed has been completed.
In their study of declining congregations, Hoge and Roozen (1979) found that institutional factors were also important.
It is possible to mix tenses if it helps to explain the finding.
In their study of declining congregations, Hoge and Roozen (1979) found that institutional factors may also help to explain congregational decline.

Methods Section
Use the past tense to explain the methods used in the research.
Data collection consisted of twenty interviews in each congregation between the months of November 2010 and February 2011.

Results Section
Use either past or present tense but don’t mix them.
These results suggest that institutional factors do help explain congregational decline.
OR:
These results suggested that institutional factors did help explain congregational decline.

Punctuation
In addition to following general writing conventions, the ASA Style Guide also provides the following guidelines
Use only one space after punctuation marks (do not use two spaces between sentences).
Punctuation marks should be in the same font (including italics) as the text that precedes it. (Note: this is a change from the previous usage in The Chicago Manual of Style). The respondent replied, “I loved the movie, Crash!”
When numbering a series of items in a list, use the convention (1), (2), (3) rather than 1. or 1).
The study finds that three variables are important predictors of openness to outside groups: (1) endorsement of the group, (2) political climate, and (3) cultural compatibility.

Proofs
Proofs will be sent to the author (first named author if no corresponding author is identified of multi –authored papers) and should be returned within 48 hours of receipt. Corrections should be restricted to typesetting errors: any others may be charged to the author .Any queries should be answered in full. Please note that authors are urged to check their proofs carefully before return. Since the inclusion of late corrections cannot be guaranteed.