Submissions

This page is designed to help you ensure your submission is ready for and fits the scope of the journal.

Before submitting you should read over the guidelines here, then register an account (or login if you have an existing account)

Theory and Social Inquiry is dedicated to analyzing all facets and dimensions of social life, from micro-level interactions between individuals to the durable institutions that organize societies at a macro level. Our modal article asks big questions, theorizes boldly, and draws on thorough empirical research to arrive at knowledge that often challenges conventional wisdom. We endorse the principle that a critical analysis of existing social structures and social processes is not divorced from – but an important source of – scientific discovery. The journal values rigorous humanistic inquiry as well as historical perspectives on continuity and change. We are open to the full range of social scientific methods, including scholarship that draws on new and innovative approaches under the rubric of problem-solving sociology and engaged research. Theory-inspired, theory-driven, and theory-relevant social science takes many forms. Theory and Social Inquiry is interested in all these modes.

Theory and Social Inquiry is dedicated to analyzing all facets and dimensions of social life, from micro-level interactions between individuals to the durable institutions that organize societies at a macro level. Our modal article asks big questions, theorizes boldly, and draws on thorough empirical research to arrive at knowledge that often challenges conventional wisdom. We endorse the principle that a critical analysis of existing social structures and social processes is not divorced from – but an important source of – scientific discovery. The journal values rigorous humanistic inquiry as well as historical perspectives on continuity and change. We are open to the full range of social scientific methods, including scholarship that draws on new and innovative approaches under the rubric of problem-solving sociology and engaged research. Theory-inspired, theory-driven, and theory-relevant social science takes many forms. Theory and Social Inquiry is interested in all these modes.

Please follow the below checklist before submitting your manuscript to Theory and Social Inquiry, ensuring that:

1. The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in 'Comments to the Editor').
2. Any third party owned materials used have been identified with appropriate credit lines, and permission obtained from the copyright holder for all formats of the journal. Theory and Social Inquiry requires authors to secure any permissions for the reproduction of images as figures within articles that are currently licensed to be reproduced under restrictive terms (e.g., an artist's estate, archive or gallery). Evidence of any granted permissions will need to be shown to the editorial team prior to an article's publication in the journal. Permission to reproduce images must be obtained from the copyright holder prior to submission, and details of the permissions obtained, including a copy of any agreed licensing terms, should be included with your submission. Image permissions should permit open access publication with no restrictions on duration of use or recurring renewal costs.
3. All authors qualify as authors and have given permission to be listed on the submitted paper, as per the publisher's guidance on authorship.
4. Authors should declare any competing interests when they submit articles to the journal. For information on the publisher’s 'Competing Interests' policy, see the publisher's 'Malpractice Statement'. Information on how to declare a competing interest can be found here.
5. The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the journal's 'Author Guidelines'. Every effort has been made to ensure that author names are removed from the manuscript (following the instructions to ensure anonymous peer review).
6. Tables are all cited in the main text and are included within the text document.
7. Figures are all cited in the main text and are uploaded as supplementary files. Figures/images have a resolution of at least 150dpi (300dpi or above preferred). The files are in one of the following formats: JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, EPS (to maximise quality, the original source file is preferred).

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. If you would prefer to publish your work under an alternative Creative Commons License, please indicate this in the Comments for the Editor box below, providing reasons for your request.

Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

License

This journal recommends that authors retain their copyright via a CC BY 4.0 attribution license. This means that users accessing the work must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. They may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses them or their use of the work. No additional restrictions, however the user may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

This journal operates a double-anonymous peer review process, meaning that authors and reviewers remain anonymous for the review process. We operate robust editorial standards, requiring two positive independent scholarly reviews by experts in the field(s), before articles can be considered for publication. The peer review process usually takes 3 months in total for the author's manuscript to be returned to them with review comments, although this can, in exceptional cases, take longer. Peer reviewers are expected to return review reports after 1 month for editorial assessment. Reviewers are asked to provide formative feedback, even if an article is not deemed suitable for publication in the journal.

Further information on the journal's 'Peer Review Policy' can be found on the 'Journal Policies' page.

There are no publication fees. This journal is published by the Open Library of Humanities (OLH). Unlike many open-access publishers, the OLH does not charge any author fees. This does not mean that we do not have costs. Instead, our costs are paid by an international library consortium.

If your institution is not currently supporting the platform, we request that you ask your librarian to sign up. The OLH is extremely cost effective and is a not-for-profit charity. However, while we cannot function without financial support and we encourage universities to sign up, institutional commitment is not required to publish with us.

Authors who have access to institutional funds or grant funding earmarked for Open Access publication (via a research grant or through their institution's department or library)—and only those authors—are asked if they may use those funds to cover the £450 Voluntary Author Contribution (VAC) of their publication in Theory and Social Inquiry. For further information on this, please visit the journal's 'About' page or the publisher's policy on VACs.

The journal is published online as a continuous volume and issue throughout the year. Articles are made available as soon as they are ready to ensure that there are no unnecessary delays in making content publicly available.

Special Issues of articles are welcomed and will be published as part of the normal issue, but also within a separate collection page.