Author guidelines

  1. Preparing for submission
  2. Publication ethics
  3. Acceptable use of AI-assisted technologies in articles
  4. Article types
  5. Formatting your article
  6. Formatting Revisions
  7. Figures, tables, file size and formatting
  8. English language
  9. Data availability statement
  10. Depositing your data
  11. Image permissions and copyright
  12. Referencing style
  13. House style

Preparing for submission

Please follow these author guidelines before submitting to the journal.

All manuscript text should be Times New Roman 12-point font and be double spaced. Before submitting to the journal, all authors must have read and agreed to the UCL Press Journal’s Editorial Policy https://journals.uclpress.co.uk/site/editorial_policy.

Any enquiries can be sent via email to the journal’s editors at admin [at] internationaljournalofsocialpedagogy.com.

When you are ready you can submit here:

Submit to the journal

Anonymisation

The International Journal of Social Pedagogy operates double anonymised peer review, where both the reviewers and authors are anonymised to each other during review. Authors should submit an anonymous version of the manuscript, stripped of all identifying references to the author(s) for peer review. Authors should submit their manuscript as:

  1. The complete manuscript not blinded, as a word file (.doc/.docx, etc.) and;
  2. An anonymous PDF version of the manuscript, stripped of all identifying references to the author(s) for peer review (anonymisation includes references to authors, acknowledgements, self-references, and any electronic author identification., etc.) Manuscripts may be returned before peer review if manuscripts are not sufficiently anonymised.

Word length

Manuscripts must be submitted in English and should not exceed 8,000 words in total. Where the manuscript includes Tables and Figures, the word total should be commensurately reduced to allow space for them.


Covering letter

Covering letters are welcome to be submitted with the manuscript for the Editors reference. Should you wish to provide one, please briefly summarise your manuscript, its findings, major themes, context and framing of the research, relevant discussion points and any disclosures including conflicts of interest the Editor should be aware of. The covering letter will be openly available to read as part of the submission preprint.


ORCiD

ORCiD helps researchers record and report their work by providing researchers with a personal unique identifier that can be kept throughout their career. UCL Press journals now implement ORCiD in publications and authors are encouraged to register with ORCiD and enter their ORCiD details into their submission as a URL link or ORCiD number. To register, follow the instructions on the ORCiD web pages at https://orcid.org.


Publication ethics

The International Journal of Social Pedagogy is committed to upholding the integrity of the work published. The following ethics requirements are primarily for Research articles (that primarily report empirical research) and Practice papers (that report practice based evidence and learning) being submitted to the journal, however, the general principles of the ethical requirements outlined here should be applied across all manuscripts being submitted to the journal.


Research articles

Authors submitting research papers are required to follow best ethical practice for research as outlined in the British Educational Research Association, available online at https://www.bera.ac.uk/publication/ethical-guidelines-for-educational-research-2018, or similar professional body (please indicate this clearly in your submission). Authors are required to show in their manuscripts that they have received ethical approval for their research from all relevant institutional review boards and that they have followed General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) in the handling of personal data. Where such committees do not operate, authors are responsible for providing evidence of their adherence to relevant ethical guidelines in the submission for the Editors attention (please indicate this clearly in your manuscript).

Note: while not all social pedagogy researchers and authors may align themselves with education research, the Editors have elected to follow the British Educational Research Association ethical guidelines (above) as the principles align well with social pedagogical research.

Authors are encouraged to use the following three (3) headings and following statements to clearly format and declare this in the manuscript (please select the appropriate statement and include at the end of your manuscript).


Ethics approval statement

  1. The author(s) declare/s that research ethics approval for this article was provided by ___________________ ethics board.
  2. The author(s) declare/s that research ethics approval for this article was waivered by ____________________ ethics board.
  3. The author(s) conducted the research reported in this article in accordance with _________________ standards.

Consent for publication statement (for articles reporting on original research or any activity involving human participants.)

  1. The author(s) declares that research participants’ informed consent to publication of findings – including photos, videos and any personal or identifiable information – was secured prior to publication.

Conflict of interest statement

  1. The author(s) declare/s no conflict of interest with this work.
  2. The author(s) declare/s the following interests: ___________________________

Practice papers

Authors submitting practice papers are asked to uphold similar high ethical standards including the principles of anonymity and confidentiality and to take all reasonable steps to ensure that the participants whose practice is discussed in the manuscript have given their consent to publication. A statement to this effect should be included in the paper, as above. Editors may query authors about the veracity of ethical procedures undertaken.

Authors are also encouraged to read the UCL Press publication policy on ethical publication, made available at https://journals.uclpress.co.uk/site/editorial_policy/#ETHICS.


Acceptable use of AI-assisted technologies in articles

Please refer to UCL Press's Principles on the use of AI-assisted technologies in articles here.

Broadly, the use of AI-assisted technologies and tools should not replace key authoring tasks and applying AI technology should be done with transparency and human oversight. All the work should be reviewed and edited carefully, because AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that can be incorrect, incomplete or biased.


Article types

Article type Description
Original research article Original research articles are detailed studies reporting original research classified as primary literature.
Review article
 Reviews provide critical and systematic appraisal of the current research to provide authoritative judgement to its particular context, topic, and field.
Practice paper Practice papers are short articles highlighting aspects of social pedagogical practice in order to provide relevant insights into how social pedagogy can be embedded in practice settings. These should explicitly draw on social pedagogical theories and principles to show the theory-practice connection.
Perspective and opinion article Perspective and opinion articles are shorter scholarly articles that cover key specific concepts and ideas, aimed to present a well thought out personal critique of the field, topic, or research, to stimulate further discussion and debate. These articles are normally by invitation only, however, unsolicited articles are welcome and prospective authors should firstly contact the Editors with their contribution before formal submission.
Commentary article Commentary articles provide further explanation on a new or existing topic as well as an article published in the journal, aimed to specifically address the key topic or subject to provide further clarification to the journals audience and literature. Commentaries are usually shorter articles with concise and narrow narratives.
Book review Book reviews are brief concise articles that provide an evaluation of a published scholarly book.
Book reviews are generally invited only, however, suggestions are welcome and should be sent to the Editors of the journal. A book review might assess the importance of a book's contribution to a particular field covered by the journal’s aims and scope and should aim to objectively review the strengths and weaknesses that concern the journal’s audience. Please refer to the journal's aims and scope.

Formatting your article

Please submit your manuscript main text/body as a single Microsoft word (.DOC or .DOCX) file. The file size should not exceed 200Mb.

It makes a huge difference to the ease of production if you read and adhere to the author guidelines when preparing your manuscript. If your submission does not follow these guidelines it may be returned to you for modification.


  1. Title page (non-anonymised word file)
    The title page must be a single page and attached a the manuscripts first page and include all of the information below, in the same order. No further information should be included:
    1. Title of the manuscript
    2. Full name(s) of contributing authors including their institutions/affiliation and address, and their institutional email address (including ORCiD ID’s - see below note on ORCiD).
    3. The corresponding author(s) should be clearly identified and include their contact email address (normally this will be your university email address).

  2. Abstract
    Present the abstract as an overview of your article (up to 250 words), giving a summary of the contents and major themes. (Note that this will ultimately be used by search engines, and it will form part of the meta-data that will be seen first by people searching your article.)

  3. Keywords
    All articles must list a maximum of up to ten key words.

  4. Main body of text
    The body of the submission should be structured in a logical and easy to follow manner. A clear introduction section should provide non-specialists in the subject with an understanding of the topic and a background to the issue(s) involved.

  5. Abbreviations and Acronyms
    All abbreviations and acronyms are defined in text when first introduced.

  6. Headings and sub-headings
    Up to three level headings may be present and must be clearly identifiable using different font sizes, bold or italics. We suggest using Headings 1, 2 and 3 in MS-Word’s ‘Style’ section.

  7. Notes
    Use endnotes, not footnotes, for any additional notes and information. These appear at the end of the main text, before References. All notes should be used only where crucial clarifying information needs to be conveyed.

  8. Tables, Figures, Alt Text and Figure Captions
    These can be included within the text or can be deposited into a data repository and cited in text. Please make sure to include Alt Text for any figure, table or image included in your article (see the below section on Figures for further guidance). Data or information should not be submitted as supplementary information alongside the manuscript, but instead be included in the manuscript or deposited into a publicly available repository, depending on the type of data or information concerned.

  9. Funding and Acknowledgement Statements
    All sources of funding for the research reported should be declared, including any project codes.

  10. Authorship Contribution
    Authors are required to include an authorship statement in their article to outline how each author contributed to the article, after any acknowledgements in the article.

  11. Data availability Statement (see below).

  12. Declarations and conflicts of interest statements
    Clearly state the following in the article as sub-headings:

    1. Conflicts of interest
      Clearly declare any possible conflicts of interest, including but not limited to financial and non-financial competing interests. Where there are no conflicts of interests or competing interests, authors must clearly declare this under the same heading. For further information, please refer to the journal’s Editorial Policy at https://journals.uclpress.co.uk/site/editorial_policy.
    2. Ethics approval
      Authors are required to show in their articles that they have received ethical approval for their research from all relevant institutional review boards and that they have followed appropriate personal data protection regulations (e.g. EU General Data Protection Regulation and the UK Data Protection Act 2018) in the handling of personal data. Where such committees do not operate, authors are responsible for providing evidence of their adherence to relevant ethical guidelines for the subject. Where ethics approval is not applicable (e.g. due to the type of article) please indicate this as "N/A".
    3. Consent for publication
      For all articles involving human subjects, including any images, videos, and any other personal and identifiable information, authors must have secured informed consent to participate in the study and to publication before submitting to the journal, and a statement declaring this must be included in the article. Where consent for publication is not applicable (e.g. no such data is included) please indicate this as "N/A".

  13. References/bibliography
    A full references list should contain all the sources cited in the text.

  14. Author biographies
    If you wish to include a short biography of each author, please format under the author biographies heading and not as a footnote.

Formatting Revisions

Should your manuscript be requested for revision to raise the acceptability for publication in the journal, please ensure that you follow below points when revising your manuscript and responding to peer review comments.

Please provide your timely revisions along with a response letter to any reviewer reports, within the specified revision period to the Editor as instructed in your revision request email. Namely:

  • Clearly show and/or highlight the revisions you have made in the text. This can be accommodated by making use of either a different colour text, highlighting the text, or by using Microsoft Word's Track Changes function.
  • Outline what revisions you made to your manuscript by way of a response letter, addressing all points raised by the editor and reviewers, preferably sequentially (e.g. Editor comments response, Reviewer 1 comments response, Reviewer 2 comments response) and in a bullet point list.
  • Where applicable, perform any additional analyses or experiments the reviewers recommend (unless you feel that they would not make your paper better; if this is the case, explain why in your response letter).
  • Provide a polite objective rebuttal to any points or comments you disagree with.

Figures, tables, file size and formatting

No single file should exceed 20Mb. Should you require submitting a file exceeding this size, please contact the journal editorial office for further advice.


Figures
  • Figures should be included within the main text file in sequential order and should be set in the document as a .png file.
  • For large figures (e.g. larger than a single page), see the below heading on Very large figures and tables.
  • Figures such as graphs and charts should also be submitted as separate files during submission as an Excel file with the original data (if they were created in Excel).
  • Line art: where specialist software was used to produce any line art (e.g. diagrams, flow-charts) authors are requested to additionally submit these as individual figures as vector files (e.g. .eps or .ai).
  • Please provide a caption to label and explain each figure. If the figure is sourced from elsewhere, please provide reference to the source in the caption and reference list.

Examples of captions

Figure 1. The three subsystems of the university and their third spaces (Source: based on Lauer, 2023: 144; see also: Schneider et al., 2022: 59).

Figure 2. Which competences are of particular importance in your area? – Word cloud based on 31 interviews with members of a higher education professional network (Netzwerk Wissenschaftsmanagement [Network for Science and Research Managers]) (Source: Rathke et al., 2023a).


Alt text

As part of our commitment to accessibility, we require authors to provide alternative text – ‘alt text’ – for all figures, graphs, and images, in their article (alongside captions). Alt text describes the content of an image for those who cannot see it. This text will be embedded in the article metadata so it can be accessed via assistive technology (such as screen readers).

Please include your alt text as an additional sentence/paragraph, below each figure caption and clearly labelled.

For more information about how to write alt text and to see examples of this, please see our alt text guidelines here. For any further help, please contact us at uclpressjournals@ucl.ac.uk.


Tables

Tables should be included within the main text file. For large tables (e.g. larger than a single page), see the below heading on ‘Very large figures and tables’.


Supporting or supplementary information and data

Data or information should not be submitted as supplementary information alongside the manuscript, but instead be included in the manuscript or deposited into a publicly available repository, depending on the type of data or information concerned.

Where supporting information is included in the article that has no persistent identifier (for example, a Google survey), authors may be requested to deposit the information into a relevant data repository to ensure persistent access, assign it a DOI and then cite the DOI in the article.

Please see the below heading on ‘Depositing your data’ for further guidance.


Very large figures and tables

Where figures and data sets/tables are very large and cannot be included in the main text file as above (e.g. are larger than a single page) authors are encouraged to deposit the figure/data set/table in its original file format to a relevant data repository to assign it a DOI that can then be cited in the main text article.

English language

All articles published in the journal are in British English.

In order to facilitate rigorous and high quality peer-review, all manuscripts should be submitted to a high and coherent level of English language. Should you require help when writing your manuscript, a native English language colleague may be well suited to help edit the level of English language in the manuscript. You may also want to consider using a professional English language editing service to improve the level of English language.

Please note that by using professional English language editing services does not guarantee manuscript acceptance in the journal, and you may be charged for these services.


Data availability statement

The International Journal of Social Pedagogy strongly encourages authors to make all data and datasets on which the conclusions of the manuscript rely to be publicly available either in publicly open repositories (where available and appropriate) or presented in the main article in machine-readable format (such as formatted tables rather than flat images) whenever possible.

Authors are encouraged to follow the FAIR data principles – to make data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Re-usable.

Further information and guidance on these principles is outlined at https://www.force11.org/group/fairgroup/fairprinciples.

Authors must clearly state in their manuscript where their data are made available at time of submission. In circumstances where ethical and legal issues dictate any restrictions on sharing data (including research using personal data), a statement to this effect must be included for clarity. Where a widely established research community expectation for data archiving in public repositories exists, submission to a community-endorsed, public repository is mandatory. Persistent identifiers (such as DOIs and accession numbers) for relevant data must be provided in the manuscript as a citation/reference. For guidance on this please read the below heading on ‘Depositing your data’.

Authors are required to confirm the data availability statement to indicate how fellow researchers can access their software and data and link to data sets in repositories. It is recommended to declare this by adding one of the following statements to their manuscript:


  1. The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the repository: *[source]
  2. The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
  3. Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
  4. All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article (and its supplementary information files).
  5. The data that support the findings of this study are available from * but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of * [source]

* You may add a link here to your data sets and/or software at a standard data repository. We also strongly encourage you to cite your data in the reference section according to the Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles.


Depositing your data

Data has the power to revolutionise and disrupt the way societies are governed for the better. None more so than making data openly available for readers to access alongside the published research article.

Data are facts, observations or experiences on which an argument or theory is constructed or tested. Data may be numerical, descriptive, aural or visual. Data may be raw, abstracted or analysed, experimental or observational. Data include but are not limited to: laboratory notebooks; field notebooks; primary research data (including research data in hardcopy or in computer readable form); questionnaires; audiotapes; videotapes; models; photographs; films; test responses. Research collections may include slides; artefacts; specimens; samples.

Submitting authors are strongly encouraged to make freely available all data on which the conclusions of the manuscript rely on by depositing it in publicly available repositories whenever possible. General repositories – for all types of research data – such as Figshare may be used where appropriate.

In circumstances where ethical and legal issues dictate any restrictions on sharing data (including research using personal data) should always be considered before doing so, when storing and preserving research data. The International Journal of Social Pedagogy adheres to the statement: "as open as possible, as closed as necessary". For help finding relevant research data repositories please see https://repositoryfinder.datacite.org.


Image permissions and copyright

Please ensure that where the copyright of any image or figure is used in the manuscript, appropriate permission to reuse in an open access journal publication has been obtained in writing and signed by the copyright holder. Please contact UCL Press for any questions, at uclpressjournals@ucl.ac.uk.


Referencing style

IJSP uses the APA Author-date style (https://apastyle.apa.org). This format consists of in-text citations, e.g. (Smith, 1994: 33) and a list entitled ‘References’ placed at the end of a journal article. The list of references should contain only those works cited in the text and should not be subdivided. Each entry on the list of references must correspond to at least one citation in the text.


In the main text:

  • Do not use the ampersand – write ‘and’ in full, e.g. (Smith and Jones, 1990)
  • If there are two publications with the same author/s and year, use a, b etc., e.g. (Smith, 1994a)
  • For three or more authors, use et al.
  • References should be after the closing quotation mark of a quotation but before the full stop in a sentence
  • After block quotations, put the source in parentheses following the quotation

In the list of references:

  • Give the names (surname and initials) for all authors – do not use et al.
  • List works by the same author chronologically, with the earliest first
  • Where there are lots of books by one author, in conjunction with other people, works should be ordered chronologically within each of the following categories in the following order:
  • Single author (Smith, 2000, 2001, 2002 etc)
  • Each set of named two authors listed alphabetically (Smith and Bloggs, 2000, 2001, followed by Smith and Jones, 1990, 1991)
  • Multiple authors, irrespective of alpha order of author names (Smith, Winters and Bloggs, 1990, followed by Smith, Jones and Bloggs, 2000)
  • Use (ed.) for one editor; (eds) for two (‘eds’ does not have a full stop)

Please refer to the APA style guide for further reference: https://apastyle.apa.org.


House style

The following guidelines list our preferred conventions for spelling, punctuation, abbreviations, numbers/dates, etc. Please follow them closely.


Spelling

  • Authors should consistently adopt British spelling conventions (except in quotations from other sources, where the spelling convention of the original should be retained, or where stipulated specifically in by the journal – for example World Health Organization).

Punctuation

  • Systems should consistently follow British conventions (except in quotations from other sources, where the punctuation convention of the original should be retained). British style uses single inverted commas, except for quotations within quotations (which have double inverted commas).
  • Punctuation should follow closing inverted commas (except for grammatically complete sentences beginning with a capital).
  • Punctuation should precede closing quotation marks (except for dashes, colons and semicolons, unless these are part of the quoted matter).

Hyphenation

  • Use a hyphen when two words form a compound adjective: middle-class families.
  • Hyphenation must be used consistently throughout your text.
  • Please follow Collins English Dictionary for guidance.

Contractions and abbreviations

  • If you need to use them please write in full at the first appearance with the abbreviation in brackets. You may repeat an abbreviation if it reappears later in your article.
  • Abbreviations are usually expressed without full stops, e.g. GNP, USA, PhD
  • British style contractions will have no full points (e.g. Mr, St, edn), though abbreviated words, which do not end with their final letter, will (e.g. vol., vols., ed., eds.)

Commas

  • An Oxford comma (also known as a serial comma) is a comma used after the penultimate item in a list of three or more items, before ‘and’ or ‘or’. We do not use the Oxford comma – commas should be omitted before the final ‘and’ or ‘or’. E.g. red, white and blue. The exception is if the meaning is ambiguous without one, E.g. The menu choices were fish and chips, steak and chips, or pie and mash. E.g. The dog, Jack, and Sasha.

Dashes

  • Spaced en dashes – not em dashes or hyphens – should be used.
  • Use unspaced en dashes not hyphens for ranges of pages or dates, e.g.11–12, 22–9.

Semicolons and colons

  • A semicolon should be used to separate items in a complicated list (i.e. if the items in the list have internal commas or very long descriptions), or to separate two related but grammatically independent clauses.
  • Use semicolons sparingly in the main text.
  • Colons should primarily be used to introduce block quotations or lists.

Translations

  • If quoting from a non-English source, the quotation should usually be in the original language. Give translation (either author’s or from a published translation) if reader is unlikely to understand original language. The translation should usually appear in the text in parentheses immediately following the quotation but can be given in a numbered note if preferred. Alternatively, the translation can be given in the text and the original quotation in a numbered note. You can indicate in the Preface your general editorial policy in regard to translations.

Capitalisation

  • Keep capitalisation to a minimum and use only for proper nouns and formal names of organisations, etc.

Numbers and dates

  • Spell out numbers up to but not including 10.
  • Elide numbers to minimum digits, e.g. 233-4; dates, e.g. 1993-4. Do not elide in titles and headings.
  • Centuries should be written as words not numbers, e.g. eighteenth century. Hyphenate if used as an adjective, e.g. eighteenth-century masterpiece.
  • Dates as British usage: 18 August 2015.

Quotations

  • Quotations should be indicated by single quotation marks but use double quotation marks for quotations within quotations.
  • Indent quotations of more than 50 words.
  • Quotations should remain exactly as they are in the original.

Acceptable language

Please be sensitive to the use of terms that might cause offence or be interpreted as racist or sexist. Please also avoid gender-specific pronouns where possible. Here are some examples of how to do this:

  • Use plural rather than singular pronouns in examples, e.g. ‘when children play, they…’ rather than ‘when a child plays, he…’
  • Alternate ‘he’ and ‘she’ throughout the manuscript when using a singular pronoun in examples, such that the reader perceives no bias.
  • Use ‘they’ as a singular pronoun in examples, e.g. ‘when a child plays, they…’