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.
A 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:
- The ampersand ‘&’ should never be used in body text outside parentheses.
- Since the letters al in et al. are an abbreviation of alia they should always be followed by a dot.
- 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
USE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) TOOLS
The STSS policy on AI use in manuscripts is based on three core principles:
- Authorship - AI cannot be listed as an author and should not be used for generating arguments and scientific insights, writing analysis or drawing conclusions.
- Accountability - Authors bear full responsibility for the paper's content, including ethical and copyright considerations, as well as the overall integrity and accuracy of the work.
- Disclosure – Upon submission, authors must disclose any use of AI tools, specifying the tool, its purpose, and the sections of the paper where it was applied. This disclosure should be included after the biographical statements and before the acknowledgments, using the following template:
During the preparation of this paper the author(s) used [NAME TOOL / SERVICE] in [NAME PART OF THE PAPER] for [REASON]. After using this tool/service, the author(s) reviewed and edited the content as needed and take(s) full responsibility for the content of the publication.
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’.
