Guide for Authors
The Official Journal of the
ISA RC28 on Social Stratification and Mobility
Instructions to Authors
Submission of Articles
All manuscripts must be submitted through the
Research in Social
Stratification and Mobility online submission and review Web site (
http://ees.elsevier.com/RSSM/).
Authors are requested to submit the text, tables, and artwork in electronic form to this address.
General
Submission
of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published
lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all Authors
and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published
elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the Publisher.
Authors are highly
encouraged to include a list of three or more potential reviewers for
their manuscript, with complete contact information.
Upon acceptance
of an article, Authors will be asked to transfer copyright (for more information on copyright see
http://www.elsevier.com/copyright).
This transfer will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. A letter will be sent to the corresponding Author confirming
receipt of the manuscript. A form facilitating transfer of copyright will be provided.
If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included,
the Author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted
forms for use by Authors in these cases: contact Elsevier's Rights Department, Oxford, UK: phone (+44) 1865 843830, fax (+44) 1865 853333,
e-mail
permissions@elsevier.com. Requests may also be completed online via the Elsevier homepage (
http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissions).
Authors' rights
As an author you (or your employer or institution) may do the following:
- make copies (print or electronic) of the article for your own personal use, including for your own classroom teaching use
- make
copies and distribute such copies (including through e-mail) of the article to research colleagues, for the personal use by such colleagues
(but not commercially or systematically, e.g., via an e-mail list or list server)
- post a pre-print version of the article on Internet
websites including electronic pre-print servers, and to retain indefinitely such version on such servers or sites
- post a revised
personal version of the final text of the article (to reflect changes made in the peer review and editing process) on your personal or
institutional website or server, with a link to the journal homepage (on
www.elsevier.com)
- present the article at a meeting or conference and to distribute copies of the article to the delegates attending such a meeting
- for your employer, if the article is a 'work for hire', made within the scope of your employment, your employer may use all or part
of the information in the article for other intra-company use (e.g., training)
- retain patent and trademark rights and rights to
any processes or procedure described in the article
- include the article in full or in part in a thesis or dissertation (provided
that this is not to be published commercially)
- use the article or any part thereof in a printed compilation of your works, such
as collected writings or lecture notes (subsequent to publication of your article in the journal)
- prepare other derivative works,
to extend the article into book-length form, or to otherwise re-use portions or excerpts in other works, with full acknowledgement of
its original publication in the journal
Should Authors be requested by the Editor to revise the text, the revised version should
be submitted within 16 weeks. After this period, the article will be regarded as a new submission.
Submission to the journal
prior to acceptance
Submission to this journal proceeds totally online. Use the following guidelines to prepare your article
available at
http://authors.elsevier.com/ to prepare your article. Here you will be guided stepwise through the creation
and uploading of the various files. The system automatically converts source files to a single Adobe Acrobat PDF version of the article,
which is used in the peer-review process. Please note that even though manuscript source files are converted to PDF at submission for
the review process, these source files are needed for further processing after acceptance. All correspondence, including notification
of the Editor's decision and requests for revision, takes place by e-mail and via the Author's homepage, removing the need for a hard-copy
paper trail.
The above represents a very brief outline of this form of submission. It can be advantageous to print this "Guide for
Authors" section from the site for reference in the subsequent stages of article preparation.
Electronic format requirements
for accepted articles
General points
We accept most wordprocessing formats, but Word, WordPerfect or LaTeX
is preferred. The preferred order of files is as follows: cover letter, suggested reviewers, response to reviews (revised manuscripts
only), manuscript file(s), table(s), figure(s). Files should be labeled with appropriate and descriptive file names (e.g., SmithText.doc,
Fig1.eps, Table3.doc). Upload text, tables and graphics as separate files. Do not import figures or tables into the text document. Complete
instructions for electronic artwork submission can be found at
Preparation of text
Presentation of manuscript
General: Please write your text in good English (American or British usage is accepted, but not a mixture of these). Italics
are not to be used for expressions of Latin origin, for example, in vivo, et al., per se. Use decimal points (not commas); use a space
for thousands (10 000 and above).
Language Polishing: Authors who require information about language editing and copyediting
services pre- and post-submission please visit
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorshome.authors/languagepolishing or contact
authorsupport@elsevier.com for more information. Please note Elsevier neither endorses
nor takes responsibility for any products, goods or services offered by outside vendors through our services or in any advertising. For
more information please refer to our Terms & Conditions:
http://www.elsevier.com/termsandconditions.
Provide the
following data on the title page (in the order given).
Title. Concise and informative. Titles are often used in information-retrieval
systems. Avoid abbreviations and formulae where possible.
Author names and affiliations. Where the family name may be ambiguous
(e.g., a double name), please indicate this clearly. Present the Authors' affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) below
the names. Indicate all affiliations with a lower-case superscript letter immediately after the Author's name and in front of the appropriate
address. Provide the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name, and, if available, the e-mail address of each
Author.
Corresponding Author. Clearly indicate who is willing to handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication,
also post-publication. Ensure that telephone and fax numbers (with country and area code) are provided in addition to the e-mail address
and the complete postal address.
Present/permanent address. If an Author has moved since the work described in the article
was done, or was visiting at the time, a "Present address" (or "Permanent address") may be indicated as a footnote to that Author's name.
The address at which the Author actually did the work must be retained as the main, affiliation address. Superscript Arabic numerals
are used for such footnotes.
Abstract. A concise and factual abstract is required. The abstract should state briefly the
purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions. An abstract is often presented separate from the article, so it
must be able to stand alone. References should therefore be avoided, but if essential, they must be cited in full, without reference
to the reference list. Non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided, but if essential they must be defined at their first
mention in the abstract itself.
Keywords. Immediately after the abstract, provide a maximum of 5 keywords, avoiding general
and plural terms and multiple concepts (avoid, for example, "and", "of"). Be sparing with abbreviations: only abbreviations firmly established
in the field may be eligible. These keywords will be used for indexing purposes.
Abbreviations. Define abbreviations that
are not standard in this field at their first occurrence in the article: in the abstract but also in the main text after it. Ensure consistency
of abbreviations throughout the article.
N.B. Acknowledgements. Collate acknowledgements in a separate section at the end of the
article and do not, therefore, include them on the title page, as a footnote to the title or otherwise.
Arrangement of the
article
Subdivision of the article. Divide your article into clearly defined and numbered sections. Subsections
should be numbered 1.1 (then 1.1.1, 1.1.2, ?), 1.2, etc. (the abstract is not included in section numbering). Use this numbering also
for internal cross-referencing: do not just refer to "the text." Any subsection may be given a brief heading. Each heading should appear
on its own separate line.
Appendices. If there is more than one appendix, they should be identified as A, B, etc.
Acknowledgements. Place acknowledgements, including information on grants received, before the references, in a separate section, and not as a footnote
on the title page.
References. See separate section, below.
Vitae. Include in the manuscript a short biography
of each Author.
Figure captions, tables, figures, schemes. Present these, in this order, at the end of the article. They
are described in more detail below. High-resolution graphics files must always be provided separate from the main text file (see Preparation
of illustrations).
Footnotes. Footnotes should be used sparingly. Number them consecutively throughout the article, using
superscript Arabic numbers. Many wordprocessors build footnotes into the text, and this feature may be used. Should this not be the case,
indicate the position of footnotes in the text and present the footnotes themselves on a separate sheet at the end of the article. Do
not include footnotes in the Reference list.
Table footnotes. Indicate each footnote in a table with a superscript lowercase
letter.
Tables. Number tables consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text. Place footnotes to tables below
the table body and indicate them with superscript lowercase letters. Avoid vertical rules. Be sparing in the use of tables and ensure
that the data presented in tables do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article.
Preparation of supplementary data.
Elsevier accepts electronic supplementary material to support and enhance your scientific research. Supplementary files offer the Author
additional possibilities to publish supporting applications, movies, animation sequences, high-resolution images, background datasets,
sound clips and more. Supplementary files supplied will be published online alongside the electronic version of your article in Elsevier
Web products, including ScienceDirect:
http://www.sciencedirect.com.
In order to ensure that your submitted material is directly usable, please ensure that data is provided in one of our recommended file
formats. For more detailed instructions please visit our artwork instruction pages at
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions
References
Responsibility for the accuracy of bibliographic citations lies entirely with the Authors.
Citations in
the text: Please ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice versa). Any references
cited in the abstract must be given in full. Unpublished results and personal communications are not recommended in the reference list,
but may be mentioned in the text. If these references are included in the reference list they should follow the standard reference style
of the journal and should include a substitution of the publication date with either "Unpublished results" or "Personal communication"
Citation of a reference as "in press" implies that the item has been accepted for publication.
Citing and listing of Web references.
As a minimum, the full URL should be given. Any further information, if known (Author names, dates, reference to a source publication,
etc.), should also be given. Web references can be listed separately (e.g., after the reference list) under a different heading if desired,
or can be included in the reference list.
Text: Citations in the text should follow the referencing style used by the American
Psychological Association. You are referred to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Fifth Edition, ISBN
1-55798-790-4, copies of which may be ordered from
http://www.apa.org/books/4200061.html
or APA Order Dept., P.O.B. 2710, Hyattsville, MD 20784, USA or APA, 3 Henrietta Street, London, WC3E 8LU, UK. Details concerning this
referencing style can also be found at
http://linguistics.byu.edu/faculty/henrichsenl/apa/apa01.html.
List: References should be arranged first alphabetically and then further sorted chronologically if necessary. More than
one reference from the same Author(s) in the same year must be identified by the letters "a", "b", "c", etc., placed after the year of
publication.
Examples:
Reference to a journal publication:
Van der Geer, J., Hanraads, J. A. J., & Lupton R.
A. (2000). The art of writing a scientific article.
Journal of Scientific Communications, 163, 51-59.
Reference to a book:
Strunk, W., Jr., & White, E. B. (1979).
The elements of style. (3rd ed.). New York: Macmillan, (Chapter 4).
Reference
to a chapter in an edited book:
Mettam, G. R., & Adams, L. B. (1994). How to prepare an electronic version of your article. In
B. S. Jones, & R. Z. Smith (Eds.),
Introduction to the electronic age (pp. 281-304). New York: E-Publishing Inc.
Note
that journal names are not to be abbreviated.
The digital object identifier (DOI) may be used to cite and link to electronic documents.
The DOI consists of a unique alpha-numeric character string which is assigned to a document by the publisher upon the initial electronic
publication. The assigned DOI never changes. Therefore, it is an ideal medium for citing a document, particularly 'Articles in press'
because they have not yet received their full bibliographic information.
The correct format for citing a DOI is shown as follows (example
taken from a document in the journal
Physics Letters B):
doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2003.10.071
When you use the DOI to
create URL hyperlinks to documents on the web, they are guaranteed never to change.
Preparation of illustrations
General
points
- Make sure you use uniform lettering and sizing of your original artwork.
- Save text in illustrations as "graphics"
or enclose the font.
- Only use the following fonts in your illustrations: Arial, Courier, Helvetica, Times, Symbol.
- Number
the illustrations according to their sequence in the text.
- Use a logical naming convention for your artwork files.
- Provide
all illustrations as separate files and as hardcopy printouts on separate sheets.
- Provide captions to illustrations separately.
- Produce images near to the desired size of the printed version.
A detailed guide on electronic artwork is available on our website:
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions. You are urged to visit this site; some excerpts from the detailed information
are given here.
Formats
Regardless of the application used, when your electronic artwork is finalised, please
"save as" or convert the images to one of the following formats (Note the resolution requirements for line drawings, halftones, and line/halftone
combinations given below.):
EPS: Vector drawings. Embed the font or save the text as "graphics".
TIFF: Colour or greyscale photographs
(halftones): always use a minimum of 300 dpi.
TIFF: Bitmapped line drawings: use a minimum of 1000 dpi.
TIFF: Combinations bitmapped
line/half-tone (colour or greyscale): a minimum of 500 dpi is required.
DOC, XLS or PPT: If your electronic artwork is created in
any of these Microsoft Office applications please supply "as is".
Please do not:
- Supply embedded graphics in your wordprocessor
(spreadsheet, presentation) document;
- Supply files that are optimised for screen use (like GIF, BMP, PICT, WPG); the resolution
is too low;
- Supply files that are too low in resolution;
- Submit graphics that are disproportionately large for the content.
Captions
Ensure that each illustration has a caption. Supply captions separately, not attached to the figure. A
caption should comprise a brief title (not on the figure itself) and a description of the illustration. Keep text in the illustrations
themselves to a minimum but explain all symbols and abbreviations used.
Line drawings
The lettering and symbols,
as well as other details, should have proportionate dimensions, so as not to become illegible or unclear after possible reduction; in
general, the figures should be designed for a reduction factor of two to three. The degree of reduction will be determined by the Publisher.
Illustrations will not be enlarged. Consider the page format of the journal when designing the illustrations.
Do not use any type
of shading on computer-generated illustrations.
Photographs (halftones)
Remove non-essential areas of a photograph.
Do not mount photographs unless they form part of a composite figure. Where necessary, insert a scale bar in the illustration (not below
it), as opposed to giving a magnification factor in the caption.
Optimizing the title and abstract of an article for your
audience
In order to increase the exposure of your article, we suggest the following:
•The title of your article
must be clear and descriptive, using keywords that are relevant to the subject area, and would most likely be used in an online search.
•The abstract must also contain keywords and common phrases for the subject area, perhaps using wording from the title. These
carefully chosen keywords and phrases can also be emphasised in the text, however please do this with caution as some search engines
can reject overly repetitive webpages.
Proofs
When a manuscript is received by the Publisher it is considered
to be in its final form. Proofs are not to be regarded as "drafts".
One set of page proofs in PDF format will be sent by e-mail to
the corresponding Author, to be checked for typesetting/editing. No changes in, or additions to, the accepted (and subsequently edited)
manuscript will be allowed at this stage. Proofreading is solely the responsibility of the Author.
A form with queries from the copyeditor
may accompany the proofs. Authors should answer all queries and make any corrections or additions as required.
The Publisher reserves
the right to proceed with publication if corrections are not communicated. Authors should return corrections within 3 days of receipt
of the proofs. Should there be no corrections, Authors should confirm this.
Elsevier will do everything possible to correct and publish
articles as quickly and accurately as possible. In order to do this, Elsevier requests the help of Authors in ensuring that all corrections
to proofs are contained within a single communication from the Author to the Publisher. It is not possible to include supplementary corrections
once the first set of corrections has been received.
National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Elsevier will send a version
of the author's accepted manuscript that includes author revisions following peer-review for public access posting 12 months after final
publication. Because the NIH 'Public Access' policy is voluntary, authors may elect not to deposit such articles in PMC. If you wish
to opt out and not deposit in PMC, you may indicate this by sending an e-mail to
NIHauthorrequest@elsevier.com. (More
information regarding the agreement between Elsevier and the National Institutes of Health can be found at
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorshome.authors/nihauthorrequest).