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Journal information

The Journal of Biosocial Science publishes original papers, short reports, and debates dealing with social aspects of human biology, including reproduction and its control, gerontology, ecology, genetics and applied psychology, with biological aspects of the social sciences, including sociology, social anthropology, and education, with social and biological elements of nutrition, growth and development, health and epidemiology, and with biosocial aspects of demography. Preference is given to material that is clearly interdisciplinary.

Contents

Submission of papers
Types of JBS articles
---- Research articles
---- Short reports
---- Debate articles
---- Opinion
Style guidelines
---- General style
---- Cover Letter
---- Title page
---- Abstract
---- Tables
---- Figures
---- Equations
---- References
Acknowledgments
Disclosure Statements
Copyright
ORCID

Submission of papers

Manuscripts should be submitted to JBS via ScholarOne. The following files should be uploaded to the Journal of Biosocial Science ScholarOne site:

  • A single Word file (Word 2010 or newer) comprising the text and tables (the Main Document). The tables should be placed after the text in the Main Document.
  • The figure files (separate file for each figure).

To submit your manuscript please use the manuscript submission system here.

Suggested reviewers

As part of the submission process you will be ask to provide three or more potential peer reviewers for your manuscript. The editorial team will not necessarily invite your suggested reviewers, but these suggestions can help speed up the peer review process. When suggesting potential peer reviewers:

  • Suggest individuals in your field whose opinion on your manuscript you would value
  • Make sure that your suggestions are not current or recent colleagues of you or your co-authors, or individuals who may have some other form of conflict of interest
  • Suggest researchers who know the subject well and are willing to invest the time
  • Suggestions of reviewers from traditionally underrepresented groups is encouraged

Types of JBS articles

Research articles

There is no word limit for research articles, but papers should be succinct; verbosity is strongly discouraged.

A short (up to about 350 words), single-paragraph Abstract should precede the text. Subsequent text is then generally divided into Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion and Reference sections, but deviations from this format are acceptable. Note that Appendices are not allowed. Section headings and subheadings are not numbered.

Short reports

Manuscripts for publication as Short Reports should be of an overall maximum length of 2000 words, including Abstract and References. This is equivalent to approximately four printed pages of the Journal.

If tables and/or figures are included (maximum of one page), the text should be limited to 1500 words.

The report should have a short Abstract (up to about 350 words), followed by a single text section that is not divided into Introduction, Results and Discussion sections (as in research articles).

Debate articles

A section is reserved for publishing comments (maximum 500 words) on papers appearing in previous issues. Authors whose papers are involved will be given the opportunity for simultaneous response, and the authors of the original comment will be invited to respond.

Opinion

The journal accepts Opinion pieces of up to 2000 words (excluding references), with flexible format but including an Abstract of up to 300 words.

Style guidelines

General style

Papers should be written in English using British spelling (as in the Oxford Concise Dictionary), except for quotations, which should follow the original.

The use of the past tense is preferred when describing methods and findings; the present tense is acceptable when generalizing findings.

Papers in poor English will not be accepted for peer review. Non-native English speakers should have their manuscripts checked by a native English speaker before submission. If this is not possible, Cambridge University Press recommends the language editing services here.

The following are not used in the journal:

  • Personal pronouns (I, we, our etc.)
  • Endnotes
  • Footnotes
  • Appendices
  • Supplementary material

Please add line numbers to the Main Document.

Cover Letter

In the space provided in the submission process, please provide a brief explanation of your submission and why it is suitable for the journal. Please also provide brief answers to the following questions (300 words maximum for each):

  1. How does the study advance scientific knowledge or thought?
  2. What are the novel findings of the study?
  3. How does the study inform policy (if applicable)?
Title page

The Main Document should include a title page bearing the title of the paper, authors’ names, a brief address (not full postal address) for each co-author, name, full postal address and email address of the corresponding author and up to three keywords.

The keywords you select for your manuscript play an important part in the discovery of your article after publication. Since many researchers rely on search engines such as Google to find content relevant to their field, keywords should be selected with care. We do not have a list of preferred keywords, but will advise authors if we think their chosen keywords are unsuitable. See the following links for guidance:


Abstract

The Abstract section should comprise a single paragraph (without subsections or subheadings) of up to around 350 words. This should summarize succinctly the aims and objectives, sample, methodology, results and conclusions of the study. See also the first link above for further guidance.

Tables

Tables should be in Word or Excel files embedded in the Word file. Those constructed in Word should have a new row of cells for each line of data; do not separate data within columns with paragraph returns.

Tables should be referred to in the text by Arabic numerals, e.g. Table 3. Each table should have its own self-explanatory title.

Tables should be placed after the text in the Main Document. Do not insert table positions instructions in the text, but ensure that each table is cited.

Figures

Simple charts can be sent in Excel. On acceptance, these will be edited by the journal office to produce a consistent style within the journal. Other figures can be sent as TIFF (minimum resolution 300 dpi) or EPS files, or PDFs with embedded fonts.

For more detailed guidance on preparing figures see the Cambridge Journal Artwork Guide.

The journal uses both colour and black/white/grey tones, but simple charts should preferably be in the latter.

Figures should not be enclosed by boxes. Do not use gridlines or upper and right-hand axes. The font for legends and labels should be san-serif (such as Arial) and the font size chosen such that this is approximately 9 point when reduced to the size when printed in the journal.

Figures captions should not be included with the figure files: please put the text for these at the end of the Main Document Word file.

Do not insert figure position instructions in the text, but ensure that each figure is cited.

Equations

Simple mathematical equations should be set by inserting special symbols in the text in Word. Complex equations should be set using Microsoft Equations Editor. Please ensure that single-letter variables are in italics.

References

References in the text should be given by author(s)’ name(s) and date in parentheses. Where several references are given together they should be in date order, separated by semicolons. When a paper written by two authors is cited, both names are given; for three or more authors only the first name is given, followed by ‘et al.’.

An alphabetical list of references should be given at the end of the text. Each journal article entry should include, in order: author(s)’ name(s) (in regular case [not upper case], bold typeface), initials, year of publication in parentheses, article title, journal name in full (italic typeface, not abbreviated), volume number (bold typeface) and first and last page numbers separated by an en rule (dash):

Miller WB, Barber JS and Schulz P (2016) Do perceptions of their partners’ childbearing desires affect young women’s pregnancy risk? Further study of ambivalence. Population Studies 71(1), 101—116.

If the paper is not yet assigned to a specific issue (incremental publishing) and the Digital Object Identifier (doi) is known, it can be given at the end of the citation entry:

Kleinman JC, Pierre MB, Madans JH, Land GH and Schramm WF (1988) The effects of maternal smoking on foetal and infant mortality. American Journal of Epidemiology 127(2), 274—282. doi: 10.1017/S0021932003001615.

For books and conference proceedings (try to avoid citing the latter in the main text: cite peer-reviewed primary publications instead), editor(s)’ names, publisher and place of publication should be included:

Pennington RL (2002) Economic stratification and health among the Herero of Botswana. In Leonard, WR and Crawford, MH (eds) Human Biology of Pastoral Populations. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 183–205.

Leonard WR and Crawford MH (eds) (2002) Human Biology of Pastoral Populations. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

For references that include a URL add the date accessed.

Unpublished material may be referred to sparingly in the text, by giving the authors’ initials and names followed by ‘unpublished observations’ or ‘personal communication’.

Acknowledgments

An acknowledgments section may be included at the end of the main text.

Disclosure statements

Ethical approval, Conflicts of interest and Funding statements should be added before the Reference section of the submitted paper.

Ethical Approval

The Journal of Biosocial Science publishes the results of research involving human subjects only if fully compliant with the ethical principles set out in the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki of 1975, as revised in 2008 (http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/17c.pdf) and with the additional requirements, if any, of the country in which the research was carried out. Submitted manuscripts must contain a clear statement to this effect and should specify that the free and informed consent of the subjects or their legal guardians was obtained and that the relevant institutional or national ethics review board approved the investigation.

For studies based on secondary data the following example wording may be used:

The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008.

Cambridge University Press is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE; see: http://publicationethics.org), an organization that provides advice and resources on all aspects of publication ethics and research and publication misconduct. Issues involving publication ethics may be referred to this committee by the editors.

Conflicts of interest

Public trust in the scientific process and the credibility of published articles depend in part on how transparently conflicts of interest are handled during the planning, implementation, writing, peer review, editing, and publication of scientific work. A conflict of interest arises when a professional judgement concerning a primary interest (such as patients’ welfare or the validity of research) may be influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain or personal rivalry). Authors are asked to disclose at the time of submission any competing interests that they may have. Conflicts may include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, funding sources for the reported study, personal or family financial interest in a method/product or a competing method/product.

Please provide, for each co-author, details of all known financial, professional and personal relationships with the potential to bias the work. Where no known conflicts of interest are known to exist, please include the statement:

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Funding

Authors should identify the sources that funded the work undertaken. Please provide details of the sources of financial support for all authors, including grant numbers. Grants held by different authors should be identified using the authors’ initials. If no specific funding was provided for the research please provide the following statement:

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial entity or not-for-profit organization.

The policy of the Journal of Biosocial Science is that authors (or in some cases their employers) retain copyright and grant Cambridge University Press a licence to publish their work. In the case of gold open access articles this is a non-exclusive licence. Authors must complete and return an author publishing agreement form as soon as their article has been accepted for publication; the journal is unable to publish the article without this. Please download the appropriate publishing agreement here.

For open access articles, the form also sets out the Creative Commons licence under which the article is made available to end users: a fundamental principle of open access is that content should not simply be accessible but should also be freely re-usable. Articles will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC-BY) by default. This means that the article is freely available to read, copy and redistribute, and can also be adapted (users can “remix, transform, and build upon” the work) for any commercial or non-commercial purpose, as long as proper attribution is given. Authors can, in the publishing agreement form, choose a different kind of Creative Commons license (including those prohibiting non-commercial and derivative use) if they prefer.

ORCID

Journal of Biosocial Science now requires that all corresponding authors identify themselves using their ORCID iD when submitting a manuscript to the journal. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript submission and grant applications, provides the following benefits:

  • Discoverability: ORCID increases the discoverability of your publications, by enabling smarter publisher systems and by helping readers to reliably find work that you’ve authored.
  • Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your iD or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID record, and will enable you to share this information with other systems and platforms you use, saving you re-keying information multiple times.
  • Keeping track: Your ORCID record is a neat place to store and (if you choose) share validated information about your research activities and affiliations.

If you don’t already have an iD, you’ll need to create one if you decide to submit a manuscript to Journal of Biosocial Science. You can register for one directly from your user account on Scholar One or via https://ORCID.org/register.

If you already have an iD, please use this when submitting, either by linking it to your Scholar One account or supplying it during submission by using the “Associate your existing ORCID ID” button.

Last updated 9 August 2021