Sociation is the first web-based sociological journal sponsored by a professional society. This journal is dedicated to publishing articles on human behavior with a strong focus on sociology. We publish twice yearly, a Fall/Winter issue and a Spring/Summer issue. Each issue contains between five and seven articles. Work submitted to Sociation for publication should be original, meaning that the manuscript should not be previously published or under consideration for publication elsewhere.
How to Submit a Manuscript: All manuscripts should be submitted as a Microsoft Word document via our manuscript submission portal. When you enter the submission portal, you will need to create an account. Please follow these instructions to create account and submit your manuscript. Alternatively, you can submit via e-mail to sociation@appstate.edu.
Types of Submissions: We encourage a diversity of contributions in terms of style and content. This includes original quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method research articles, short research notes, teaching notes and lesson guides, review articles, policy papers, and replications and reanalysis of existing work. We also accept book reviews that focus on academic books published by North Carolina-based authors and/or presses that have not been adequately reviewed in major sociological publications.
General Formatting Guidelines: Double-space and left justify all parts of the manuscript and use Times New Roman 12-point font/type with 1-inch margins. Because Sociation is published online, there is not a strict word or page limit. Authors are encouraged to submit concisely written manuscripts, but not at the expense of clarity. Footnotes should be minimal all relevant information should be included in the text, tables, or figures. All manuscripts should be submitted in English.
Title Page: The title page should omit the author(s) names and include an abstract of 150-200 words. Following the abstract, list six keywords. The keywords assist the editors of Sociation in selecting appropriate reviewers for the manuscript, and the keywords influence the visibility of the manuscript through search engines.
Section Headings: Manuscripts should be divided using first-level headings, and second and third-level headings as needed. First-level headings are in all caps (THIS IS A FIRST-LEVEL HEADING), second-level headings are italicized, using title case (This is a Second-Level Heading), and third-level headings are italicized, only capitalizing the first word (This is a third-level heading).
Reference and In-Text Citation Format: Sociation follows American Sociological Association’s formatting guidelines. Please refer to fifth edition of the ASA Style Guide for more information. Here is a sample reference for an article: Stack, Steven. 1983. “The Effect of Religious Commitment on Suicide: A Cross-National Analysis.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 24: 362-74. This is an example of an in-text citation (Stack 1983) or “According to Stack (1983) …”
Tables and Figures: Tables and Figures should be numbered consecutively and use descriptive titles or captions. In the text, indicate placement of the table(s) (e.g., Table 1 approximately here). All tables should be included in an editable format at the end of the manuscript.
Replication Data & Code: As an open access journal, Sociation is dedicated to the principles of open science. Authors of quantitative articles are strongly encouraged to share replication data and code as part of their submissions and, upon publication, on the journal’s website. In lieu of this, authors should provide information on third party repositories where data and reproduction code are stored (e.g. Open Science Framework, GitHub), provide justification for why the data cannot be made readily available, and/or provide information regarding how scholars can inquire about gaining access to the data.
Review Policy: We are committed to a timely and expedited review process where initial editorial review and decisions (e.g. desk reject) occurs within 2 weeks of submission. Final decisions will be made in as timely a manner as possible with the stated goal of 12 weeks from the original date of submission. Manuscripts that are reviewed externally will be sent to two a minimum of two reviewers for evaluation. Sociation has a policy of double-blind peer review.
Copyright Submission: Copyright for all articles published in Sociation are licensed under Creative Commons. Specifically, the work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. This allows for the reprinting of an article from Sociation for no charge. However, we do ask that you inform us of any interest in reprinting and it requires that the author and the journal are given credit.
The author(s) also agrees that all copyrights shall be transferred to Sociation upon acceptance You may not modify or rewrite an article. Authors are free to use their own article in any way they wish but are required to mention that it was first published in Sociation. We do not accept articles that have been previously published, but authors are encouraged to deposit drafts and/or preprints of articles eventually published in Sociation into various online open-access repositories with the appropriate link to the final peer-reviewed version (e.g. SocArXiv, Open Science Framework, Social Science Research Network).
Publication Charges: Sociation does not charge authors for submission or publication. We also do not charge readers to access the content.