Submissions

Online Submissions

Already have a Username/Password for Studies of Transition States and Societies?
Go to Login

Need a Username/Password?
Go to Registration

Registration and login are required to submit items online and to check the status of current submissions.

 

Author Guidelines

Guidelines for articles

This guide is primarily designed to help authors prepare the layout, formatting and style of articles they wish to submit for publication, as well as providing a guide for citations and references. At the end there is also a brief guide for authors wishing to send a book review.

LAYOUT

The final version of your manuscript should contain:

  • title
  • names of the authors
  • abstract
  • keywords
  • main text (with tables and figures)
  • references
  • biographical statements
  • acknowledgements
  • appendixes

Manuscripts should be approximately 6,000 – 8,000 words in length including all elements (title page, abstract, notes, references, tables, etc.).

Titles should have all main words capitalised.

The Paradox of Institutional Trust and Entrepreneurship in Transitional Countries

Author’s name(s) should be immediately below the title and separated by a comma when there are two or more authors. One of the authors should be marked with a footnote containing an email address for possible correspondence with readers.

Lida Fan, Nazim N. Habibov, Yunhong Lyu, Alena Auchynnikava,* and Rong Luo

Abstract can be up to 200 words and should give a concise statement of the intention, results and conclusions of the paper.

Keywords (up to 5) should be provided after the abstract.

Keywords: transnationalism, diaspora, media.

The main text can have a maximum of 3 levels of headings as indicated below. All headings should use minimal capitalisation so that only the first word and proper nouns start with a capital letter. Headings are not numbered.

H1 Institutional trust in the context of change (12 pt, bold)

H2 Trust as a concept (11pt, bold)

H3 Results from the first questionnaire (11pt, italic)

Tables and figures should be added in the article text in the places they should appear when the paper is published. All tables and figures need to have a caption and their sources marked.

References should follow APA style 7th edition – for more see the references guide below.

brief biographical statement of approximately 50 words about each author should be included after the references list. The statement should include the author’s current institutional affiliations, general research interests, and recent publications. Do not use titles (Prof, PhD, MA) before or after the name.

Acknowledgements are used to give information about funding or words of gratitude to colleagues, reviewers etc.

Appendixes may be used to include important information that would otherwise break up information in the main text. However, please try to keep the number of Appendixes to a minimum.

FORMATTING AND STYLE

General guidelines

Spelling  – UK spelling is preferred

Footnotes – Use footnotes (not endnotes) in order to convey substantive information to the reader, and not for reference purposes. Insert footnote markers after punctuation, like this.1

Non-English terms need to have a translation added in [square brackets]. This also applies to titles of publications in the references list.

Abbreviations

Initialisms consisting of capital initial letters (NATO or UN) do not have full stops.

Do not use commas after the following abbreviations:

i.e.            e.g.         et al.

Longer direct quotes (40 words or more) including interview extracts and field notes are formatted as separate paragraphs in italics. The source or interviewee is indicated in brackets after the full stop (not in italics). 

Refusing the working conditions or long working hours is perceived by colleagues and managers as a sign of ineffectiveness. This is a point of shame that many employees seek to avoid. (Respondent 11)

Punctuation

Hyphens and dashes

Use hyphens for compound words (including adjective phrases)

   decision-making              research-based                long-term phenomenon

Use en-dashes for ranges

p. 231–274             2011–2015         

DO NOT use em-dashes

Quotation marks

For quotes less than 40 words – use single quotes and then double quotes for quotes within quotes

For emphasis – use italics

Numbers

Use words for 1–10 and numerals from 11 onwards, except when presenting information that benefits from the use of numerals (e.g. stage 1, phase 2, cluster 3, cohort 4).

Indicate large numbers using commas, and decimal points with a period.

2,874        5,403,222             3.156

Abbreviate million and billion as follows with a non-breaking space after the number:

1.2 m       45.3 bn

REFERENCES

References are to be formatted using APA style 7th edition. Please pay close attention to capitalisation: only names of periodicals use maximal capitalisation.

In text citations should use the following format:

(Tamm, 2015)   (Morton & Bass, 2012)   (Hitachi et al., 2018)

Note:

  1. The ampersand ‘&’ should never be used in body text outside parentheses.
  2. Since the letters al in et al. are an abbreviation of alia they should always be followed by a dot.
  3. Do not italicise et al.

Reference list entries

The basic form for journal articles is:

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article, not capitalised. Title of Periodical, volume number(issue number), pages.

And for books:

Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle. Publisher.

For more examples follow this link for an easy-to-use guide: https://aut.ac.nz.libguides.com/ld.php?content_id=49292669

NB. If you are wondering whether your manuscript might be suitable for STSS please read this blog post: Things to check before you submit to minimize chances of desk rejection


Guidelines for book reviews

If you want to review a book, please contact one of our Book Review Editors so that you can check when there is a slot available, whether the book is appropriate for the journal, and what the deadlines are for submission.

From 2022, STSS will only review academic books for sale under €35

At STSS we have become concerned by the pricing policy of some academic publishers, making knowledge difficult to access especially to scholars based in some regions of the world. In addition, we fail to understand why some publishers can manage to produce books that sell at €10-20 and others keep publishing hardbacks selling at €100+ and more, thus undermining the purchasing power of libraries and departments.

As a result of our reflections, starting from 2022, we will no longer review books that sell for more than €35. We are aware that this is a drop in the ocean and will limit the choice of books, but you have to stand for what you believe in. We believe that the pricing policy of some publishers is abusive and exploitative and is ultimately harming science. We, therefore, wish to support publishers that work hard to deliver quality science at an accessible price (and there are actually quite a few of them out there now)

Book Reviews should be between 1,000 and 1,500 words in length. In exceptional cases (longer book reviews including 2-3 titles together) this limit can be exceeded.

In general, we would advise you to cover the following questions:

  • What is the book about and how does it fit within the literature?
  • What are the main points (chapters, themes) of the book? Are they addressed in innovative ways?
  • Why is the book interesting? (How might it benefit readers?)
  • What are the highlights (best elements) of the book?
  • What are its main shortcomings? What could have been approached differently, deepened, or improved (main criticisms)?
  • What would be a good audience for the book? Does it have policy implications?

We advise you to use a sandwich structure in drafting your book review: praise the book, provide an outline of the content, provide 1-2 main criticisms, and finally explain why the book is worthwhile reading.

Please add a short biographical statement (a couple of sentences) to the end of the review. There should be no titles before or after your name (Prof, PhD, MA). Books and journal names, if included, are in italics, project names in single ‘quotation marks’.


 

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

  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. The submission file is in Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
  3. The text adheres to the stylistic requirements (including referencing) outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.
  4. The instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.
 

Copyright Notice

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

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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).

 

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.