Submissions

Author Guidelines

Submission Guidelines

NJSTS welcomes the following types of papers:

1) Research article: (6,000–9,000 words included references)

NJSTS welcomes empirical, theoretical, and methodological research articles about science, technology and society. Articles should follow general conventions of scientific publishing and engage with STS scholarship to fit with the journal’s profile.

The manuscript cannot be published previously or be under consideration for publication in other journals. NJSTS uses a double-blind peer review process for research articles. 

2) Book review (1,000–2,000 words)

Book reviews are meant to review a single published work, a theme issue, collected volume, exhibitions, or other related outputs. NJSTS also accepts review essays on a specific topic, where several works can be reviewed under one heading. Book reviews should start with the title of the work, names of authors or editors, publisher and year. Please read more here.

3) Commentary (1,000–4,000 words)

Commentaries are shorter texts covering contemporary issues that are relevant to the journal's scope, for example opinion pieces, theoretical discussions, critical reflections on research experiences or short essays addressing new or desired developments in the field. As the most open format of the journal, we welcome submissions in different styles and modalities that cover experiences, perspectives and lines of critical inquiry that may not fit in the format of a standard journal article.

These will not be peer-reviewed but can be subject to editorial editing and treatment.

Original work

NJSTS only publishes original work, and the submitted manuscript cannot be published, or be under consideration for publication, in other journals. To submit, you must have rights to the work, and you must have obtained and be able to supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, for example for figures, illustrations etc.

In the cover letter authors must disclose if other versions of the manuscript have been published anywhere previously, for example as conference paper, PhD course essay, uploaded to preprint sites or similar. Please describe changes made between the previous publication and current submission.

Use of AI

Authors may use generative AI to improve readability and language. Authors must review and edit any output resulting from the use of generative AI tools and are responsible for all submitted materials. 

AI models may not be listed or cited as a source and cannot be an author or co-author.

All authors must disclose all use of AI used in the submitted paper, both in the cover letter and under a subheading “Declaration of Generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process” listed prior to references.

Declaration of competing interests and funding sources

Authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence or bias their work. Examples of potential competing interests; employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications or registrations, grants or any other funding, affiliation with the journal as an Editor or Advisory Board Member.

Furthermore, authors are required to disclose any funding sources who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article. If the research was conducted without any external financial support, this should be stated in your submission.

Cover letter

Please enclose a short cover letter that outlines:

• A short statement about the importance of your paper and why you believe readers of the journal would be interested in it
• Previous versions published of the manuscript and changes made to current submission
• Use of AI in the manuscript
• At least three suggestions for potentials reviewers

Submission guidelines

Please follow the author guidelines below in order to have your paper considered for peer-review and publication:

1. Create an author account

In order to submit through our online submission system, you need to register to create an author account. Use the Register link at the top of the home page. All communication, revisions, and submissions will go through the system.

2. Preparing the manuscript

Please ensure that the following guidelines have been followed in your paper:

• The submission file is in .doc or .docx format.
• The text is double-spaced, uses a 12-point font.
• All illustrations, figures, and tables are placed appropriately within the text with captions. Please also enclose high resolution versions of all illustrations and figures.
• Manuscript must be anonymized for peer review. This includes removing meta data from the document, and if needed, anonymization of research projects and institutions described in the manuscript.
• Manuscripts must be proofread before submission. The journal does not provide proof reading services.
• Research articles should have an abstract of maximum 300 words and a list of up to five keywords that will be entered during the online submission process. 

To avoid unnecessary work and respect research time, NJSTS does not require authors to follow journal reference and style guidelines during peer review process. You may submit using your preferred reference style and will be asked to update to APA 7 if accepted for publication.

3. Submitting the manuscript

Please submit the manuscript using the online submission system. Each step in the process is detailed in the submission system.

4. Style and Format Guidelines for authors
   The manuscripts should follow the APA Publication Manual, 7th Editionfor grammar, punctuation, and presentation. We accept articles using either American or British English spellings and punctuations, even when the British variants deviate from APA style. However, please be consistent in your article. 

Before submitting your article for publication please be sure that it follows the following APA guidelines. These are only a few examples of the most common situations; refer to the full APA guide for a complete list:

• Define all acronyms, abbreviations, and jargon, unless they are well-known (such as FBI). 
• Use a serial comma (also called an Oxford comma) between all elements (including the last one) in a series of three or more items.
• Use a hyphen (-) in hyphenated words, an en dash (–) for page or date ranges, and an em dash (—) without spaces when using an embedded clause. 
• Spell out numbers one to nine; use numerals for 10 and above. Always use "%" instead of "percent."
• Be sparing in the use of footnotes. When necessary, use footnotes rather than endnotes.

5. References and citations

All references and in-text citations should follow the APA Publication Manual, 7th Edition. Additional examples of APA formatting can be found at the Purdue Online Writing Lab. Please use these resources for detailed instructions regarding citations. The most common forms of citations are below.

Copyright Notice

All content in NJSTS is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. This means that anyone is free to share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) or adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the material as they like, provided they give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.

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