Instructions for Authors

• Scope of the Journal
• Preparing your manuscript
• Publishing agreement and charges
• Publication and research ethics
• Additional information
• Book reviews
• Changes to published papers
• Self-archiving
• Promoting your work
• Contact us

Scope of the journal

Published in partnership with the Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Social Forces is recognized as a global leader among social science research journals. The journal emphasizes cutting-edge sociological inquiry and explores realms the discipline of sociology shares with psychology, anthropology, political science, history and economics.

How we publish

Social Forces is a peer reviewed journal publishing four issues per year online. After copyediting and review of the final proof, papers are published on the journal’s Advance Articles page in their Version of Record, and eventually assigned to an issue.

Peer review process

The Journal operates double-anonymized peer review, meaning that the identity of the authors is hidden from reviewers, and the reviewers’ identities are hidden from the authors. The editors know the identity of both the reviewers and the authors.

All submissions to the journal are initially reviewed by the editor and their associates. Manuscripts that pass this initial editorial review are sent out for peer review to at least two independent reviewers. Based on the feedback from these reviewers and the editor’s judgment, a decision is given on the manuscript. Decisions on submitted manuscripts will be made in a timely manner. For full details about the peer review process, see Fair editing and peer review or OUP author FAQs.

Screening for misconduct

Manuscripts may be screened using iThenticate to help detect publication misconduct including plagiarism and redundant publication.

Appeals and complaints

Authors may appeal an editorial decision. To do so, please contact the editorial office at [email protected], providing as much specific detail as possible about why the original decision should be reconsidered. You should only appeal if: a) you feel the reviewer made an obvious error of interpretation as to what you did; and b) the editor’s letter indicates that this error played an important part for the decision. Appeals are not justified if: a) you think a reviewer was biased or unfair; b) you think the reviewers were supportive of publication (sometimes reviewers make comments to the author that are more positive than their comments to the editor); or c) a reviewer of a revised manuscript finds errors that were not caught in initial submission. Every appeal will receive a response within a reasonable timeframe. Please do not resubmit your manuscript in the interim.

Preparing your manuscript

Social Forces has a streamlined submission process designed to avoid unnecessary work.  At first submission, it is not necessary to apply formatting to adhere to journal style. A very basic formatting guide for first submissions appears below.

At provisional acceptance stage, you will be asked to supply editable files that match journal formatting requirements, and high-resolution figures. For more details, please consult the section on submitting your final manuscript.

Social Forces accepts only electronic submissions using the Scholar One Manuscript Central system. There is a non-refundable processing fee of $50 ($20 for manuscripts written solely by students), and this may be paid by Visa or MasterCard. We do not store credit card details nor do we share customer details with any 3rd parties. Manuscripts are not reviewed until this fee is paid. The charge is incurred regardless of whether the submission is eventually accepted or not, including desk rejections.

Basic Formatting of Manuscripts at First Submission

Social Forces manuscripts can be submitted without being formatted into journal style. Authors will be required to format manuscripts for revision after acceptance.

Follow the basic guidelines for first submission:

1. Main documents should be submitted as Word or OpenDocument Text (ODT) files. 
2. Articles submitted to Social Forces may not exceed 10,000 words (including text, endnotes, and references), and may not contain more than 10 tables and figure panels.
3. The journal operates double-anonymized peer review. Submit all identifying information on a separate Title Page: Manuscript title, names and affiliation of all contributing authors, full address for correspondence (including telephone, email address and postal address), Acknowledgements, Abstract.

Abstracts should summarize the article’s quest with or without conclusions. Abstracts should not include references.

When submitting your paper on the ScholarOne Manuscript Central site, please identify the Title Page as such by ticking the correct box.

Please note: If you have used the "track changes" feature at any point during the composition of your submission, make sure to accept all of the changes before saving the final version. If you do not do this, reviewers may be able to see your name and comments, compromising the double-blind review system. This could significantly delay the review process.

3. Number tables and figures consecutively by appearance and provide a legend for each. Avoid overcrowding in tables and unnecessary clutter in figures. Note that the journal has a strong preference for tables and figures to be presented in-line with text at first submission, as this greatly aids the review process. Upon request, please be prepared to provide high-resolution figures separately, in a common image format (e.g. eps, tif, jpg).
4. References and in-text citations can be formatted in any readable style at submission. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of the references. If an article is accepted for publication, authors will be asked to comply with the journal’s citation style (The Chicago Manual of Style, 17^th edition).
5. DO NOT include acknowledgements, details of funding sources and grant numbers in the manuscript, but please ensure that these are included in the Title page (Acknowledgements) and in the relevant entry fields in the ScholarOne Manuscripts submission system (Funding sources).
6. Please include at submission all files containing supplementary material/appendices cited in the text. These should primarily contain tables/figures, rather than supplementary text and cannot exceed 10 pages. See also notes on supplementary data under Additional Information.

At provisional acceptance stage, you will be asked to supply editable files that match journal formatting requirements as well as high-resolution figures, if applicable. For more details, please consult the section on submitting your final manuscript.

You may wish to use a language-editing service before submitting to ensure that editors and reviewers understand your manuscript. Please see more information about those options under the Additional Information heading below.

Submitting your final manuscript

If your article is accepted for publication after the peer review process, you will be asked to submit a final version of the paper that fully conforms to the journal’s formatting requirements.

Formatting of Manuscripts at Final Submission

Abbreviations

Nonstandard abbreviations should be defined at the first occurrence and introduced only where multiple use is made. Do not put standard abbreviations in parentheses following first reference, but use on second and subsequent references. Do not use any abbreviations in headings or in tables or figures.

Notes

Use only for substantive comments bearing on content. Citations should be formatted according to The Chicago Manual of Style’s author-date system.

Citations and References

Citations and references follow The Chicago Manual of Style ’s author-date system.

Alphabetize by author. References must NOT be formatted with any sort of field codes. If you used EndNote or a similar program to organize your references, you must unlink the document by removing the field codes.

Use the following formats for citations and references:

• List authors alphabetically by surname. Spell out first names of all authors and editors.
• When naming the author in the text, give the year of publication in parentheses: Lipset (1960) says . . .
• When not naming the author in the text, give the author and year in parentheses: (Lipset 1960). Do not put a comma between the author’s name and the date.
• Use page numbers only for direct quotations or specific notes or tables: (Braudel 1969, 213-14).
• For more than three authors, use et al.
• With more than one reference to an author in the same year, distinguish references by using letters (a, b, c) with the year of publication (e.g., 1975a).
• For reprints, the earlier publication should follow a later publication in brackets within parentheses: (Tocqueville [1835] 1956).
• For a series of references, in parentheses list alphabetically the references separated by semicolons: (Adler 1975; Adler and Simon 1979; Anderson, Chiricos, and Waldo 1977; Bernstein et al. 1977; Chesney-Ling 1973a, 1973b).
• For authors with more than one work cited, list works earliest to latest.

Examples of full references:

• Wildeman, Christopher. 2010. "Paternal Incarceration and Children's Physically Aggressive Behaviors: Evidence from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study." Social Forces 89 (1): 285–309.
• Elder, Jr., Glen H. 1975. "Age Differentiation and the Life Course." In Annual Review of Sociology, Volume 1, edited by Alex Inkeles, James Coleman, and Neil Smelser. Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews.
• Myrdal, Gunnar. (1944) 1962. An American Dilemma. New York: Harper & Row.
• Ritzer, George. 1975a. Sociology: A Multiple Paradigm Science. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
• ______.1975b. “Sociology: A Multiple Paradigm Science.” American Sociologist 10 (3):156-67.
• Kana‘iaupuni, Shawn Malia. 1995. Women and Migration. Ph.D. diss., Department of Sociology, University of Chicago.

For questions regarding style, spelling, formatting, etc., please refer to The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition.

Tables

All tables must be editable and should be placed at the end of the article on separate pages. Each table should be accompanied by a table title and table footnotes where necessary. The tables should be numbered consecutively using Arabic numerals. The format of tables should be in keeping with that normally used by the journal; in particular, vertical lines should not be drawn. Please be certain that the data given in tables are correct.

Figures

General guidance on the preparation of figures and illustrations for publication. 

Figure types allowed are .eps, .ai, .pdf, .tiff, and .png, if editable; .eps files will be converted for online publication. Figures prepared as .doc/.docx or .jpeg/.jpg files will not be accepted.

DPI requirements for figures:

• Minimum resolution for electronic images (i.e., for on-screen viewing): 72dpi

Figures may be supplied using RGB or CMYK color-space: figures submitted in CMYK will be converted to RGB for online publication.

Please also consider accessibility when designing your figure, so that your images can be easily understood by color-blind and visually-impaired readers. Guidelines for preparing different image-types, including recommendations for color palettes, color contrast, image layout, and text accessibility.

Figure accessibility and alt text

Incorporating alt text (alternative text) when submitting your paper helps to foster inclusivity and accessibility. Good alt text ensures that individuals with visual impairments or those using screen readers can comprehend the content and context of your figures. The aim of alt text is to provide concise and informative descriptions of your figure so that all readers have access to the same level of information and understanding, and that all can engage with and benefit from the visual elements integral to scholarly content. Including alt text demonstrates a commitment to accessibility and enhances the overall impact and reach of your work.  

Alt text is applicable to all images, figures, illustrations, and photographs. 

Alt text is only accessible via e-reader and so it won’t appear as part of the typeset article. 

Detailed guidance on how to draft and submit alt text. 

Funding

Details of all funding sources for the manuscript should be included in the acknowledgments. Please give the full official funding agency name, no acronyms, complete grant numbers in parentheses and the recipient of the grant, if necessary.

For example: This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grant numbers P50 CA098252 and CA118790 to the first author), and a grant from the Alcohol & Education Research Council (HFY GR667789) awarded to the second author.

Crossref Funding Data Registry

In order to meet your funding requirements authors are required to name their funding sources, or state if there are none, during the submission process. For further information on this process or to find out more about CHORUS, visit the CHORUS initiative.

Publishing agreements and charges

Publishing agreements

After your manuscript is accepted, you will be asked to sign a license to publish through the Journals Licensing and Online Payments portal. The Journal offers the option of publishing under either a non-open access (standard) license or an open access (Creative Commons) license. There is a charge to publish under an open access license, which allows your paper to be freely accessible to all readers immediately upon online publication. Editorial decisions occur prior to this step and are not influenced by payment or ability to pay. The standard license makes your paper available only to Journal subscribers and there is no license charge. This license grants OUP an exclusive license to publish and distribute the content. There is no transfer of ownership of the copyright. You, the author, retain copyright for the content.

Please note that some funders require open access publication as a condition of funding. If you are unsure whether you are required to publish open access, please check with your funder or institution before selecting your license.

Papers can be published under the following:

• Standard license to publish (Oxford University Press (OUP) Journals, Standard Publication Model)
• Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY)
• Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license (CC BY-NC)
• Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives license (CC BY-NC-ND)
• United States Government License
• Crown Copyright License

Please see the OUP guidance on Licenses, copyright, and re-use rights for more information regarding these publishing agreement options.

Complying with funder mandates

Please note that some funders require open access publication as a condition of funding. If you are unsure whether you are required to publish open access, please do clarify any such requirements with your funder or institution before selecting your license.

Further information on funder mandates and direct links to a range of funder policies.

Charges

Open access

Please see the details of open access licenses and charges. If you select an open access license, you must pay the open access charge or request to use an institutional agreement to pay the open access charge through the Journals Licensing and Online Payments portal.

OUP has a growing number of open access agreements with institutions and consortia, which provide funding for open access publishing (also known as Read and Publish agreements). This means corresponding authors from participating institutions can publish open access, and the institution may pay the charge. Find out if your institution has an open access agreement.

To be eligible for one of OUP’s Read and Publish agreements, the corresponding author must provide their qualifying institution as their primary affiliation when they submit their manuscript. After submission, changing the corresponding author in order to access Read and Publish funding is not permissible.

Publication and research ethics

Authorship

Authorship is limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the design and execution of the work described. Any contributors whose participation does not meet the criteria for authorship should be acknowledged but not listed as an author. For a detailed definition of authorship, please see the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) definitions of authors and contributors.

Ghost Authorship and AI Tools

The Journal does not allow ghost authorship, where an unnamed author prepares the article with no credit, or guest/gift authorship, where an author who made little or no contribution is listed as an author. The Journal follows Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidance on investigating and resolving these cases. For more information, please see the OUP Publication Ethics page.

Natural language processing tools driven by artificial intelligence (AI) do not qualify as authors, and the Journal will screen for them in author lists. The use of AI (for example, to help generate content or images, write code, process data, or for translation) should be disclosed both in cover letters to editors and in the Methods or Acknowledgements section of manuscripts. Please see the COPE position statement on Authorship and AI for more details.

Changes to Authorship or Author Role

After manuscript submission, no authorship changes (including the authorship list, author order, and who is designated as the corresponding author) should be made unless there is a substantive reason to do so. The editor and all co-authors must agree on the change(s), and neither the Journal nor the publisher mediates authorship disputes. If individuals cannot agree on the authorship of a submitted manuscript, contact the editorial office at [email protected]. The dispute must be resolved among the individuals and their institution(s) before the manuscript can be accepted for publication. If an authorship dispute or change arises after a paper is accepted, contact OUP’s Author Support team. COPE provides guidance for authors on resolving authorship disputes.

After submission, changing who is designated as the corresponding author will be permitted only where there is a substantive reason to do so. For the avoidance of doubt, changing the corresponding author in order to access Read and Publish funding is not permissible. For more information on Read and Publish funding, see the Open access charges section.

ORCiD

Authors are encouraged to provide their ORCID iDs (Open Researcher and Contributor IDs) at submission and take advantage of the benefits of participating in ORCID. If you do not already have an ORCID iD, you can register for free via the ORCID website.

As ORCID identifiers are collected, they are included in papers and displayed online, both in the HTML and PDF versions of the publication, in compliance with recommended practice issued by ORCID.

ORCID functionality online allows users to link to the ORCID website to view an author’s profile and list of publications. ORCID iDs are displayed on web pages and are sent downstream to third parties in data feeds, where supported.

If you have registered with ORCID, you can associate your ORCID iD with your submission system account by going to your account details, entering your ORCID iD, and validating your details. Learn more about ORCID and how to link it to your account.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

Authors

The Journal requires all authors to disclose any potential conflict of interest at the point of submission. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure that conflicts of interest of all authors are declared to the Journal.

A conflict of interest exists when the position, activities, or relationships of an individual, whether direct or indirect, financial or non-financial, could influence or be seen to influence the opinions or activities of the individual. For more information, refer to OUP’s definition of conflict of interest. The Journal follows the COPE guidance for any undisclosed conflict of interest that emerges during peer review, production, or after publication.

Reviewers

Individuals that have a conflict of interest relating to a submitted manuscript should recuse themselves and will not be assigned to oversee, handle, or peer review the manuscript.

If during peer review an editor, reviewer, or author becomes aware of a conflict of interest that was not previously known or disclosed they must inform the Editor-in-Chief immediately.

Editors and editorial board members

At initial submission, the corresponding author must declare if the Editor-in-Chief, an editor, or an Editorial Board Member of the Journal is an author of or contributor to the manuscript. Another editor without a conflict of interest will oversee the peer review and decision-making process. If accepted, a statement will be published in the paper describing how the manuscript was handled.

Previously published material

You should only submit your manuscript(s) to the Journal if:

• It is original work by you and your co-author(s).
• It is not under consideration, in peer review, or accepted for publication in any other publication.
• It has not been published in any other publication.
• It contains nothing abusive, defamatory, derogatory, obscene, fraudulent, or illegal.

The submitting author must disclose in their cover letter and provide copies of all related or similar preprints, dissertations, manuscripts, published papers, and reports by the same authors (i.e., those containing substantially similar content or using the same, similar, or a subset of data) that have been previously published or posted electronically or are under consideration elsewhere at the time of manuscript submission. You must also provide a concise explanation of how the submitted manuscript differs from these related manuscripts and papers. All related previously published papers should be cited as references and described in the submitted manuscript.

The Journal does not discourage you from presenting your findings at conferences or scientific meetings but recommends that you refrain from distributing complete copies of your manuscripts, which might later be published elsewhere without your knowledge.

For previously published materials including tables and figures, please see the Reusing copyrighted materials section.

Preprints

As an author, you retain the right to make an Author’s Original Version (preprint) available through various channels and this does not prevent submission to the Journal. If accepted, the authors are required to update the status of any preprint, including adding your published paper’s DOI. For full details on allowed channels and updating your preprint, please see our Author self-archiving policy.

Reusing copyrighted material

As an author, you must obtain permission for any material used within your manuscript for which you are not the rightsholder, including quotations, tables, figures, or images. In seeking permissions for published materials, first contact the publisher rather than the author. For unpublished materials, start by contacting the creator. Copies of each grant of permission should be provided to the editorial office of the Journal. The permissions agreement must include the following:

• nonexclusive rights to reproduce the material in your paper in Social Forces
• rights for use in print and electronic format at a minimum, and preferably for use in any form or medium
• lifetime rights to use the material
• worldwide English-language rights

Our publisher, Oxford University Press, provides detailed Copyright and Permissions Guidelines, and a summary of the fundamental information.

Misconduct

Authors should observe high standards with respect to research integrity and publication ethics as set out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Falsification or fabrication of data including inappropriate image manipulation, plagiarism, including duplicate publication of the author's own work without proper citation, and misappropriation of work are all unacceptable practices. Allegations of ethical misconduct, both directly and through social media, are treated seriously and will be investigated in accordance with the relevant COPE guidance.

If misconduct has been established beyond reasonable doubt, this may result in one or more of the following outcomes, among others:

• If a submitted manuscript is still under consideration, it may be rejected and returned to the author.
• If a paper has already been published online, depending on the nature and severity of the infraction, either a correction notice will be published and linked to the paper, or retraction of the paper will occur, following the COPE Retraction Guidelines.
• The relevant party’s institution(s) and/or other journals may be informed.

Manuscripts submitted to the Journal may be screened with plagiarism-detection software. Any manuscript may be screened, especially if there is reason to suppose that part or all the of the manuscript has been previously published.

COPE defines plagiarism as “when somebody presents the work of others (data, words or theories) as if they were their own and without proper acknowledgment.”

COPE defines redundant/overlapping publication as “when a published work (or substantial sections from a published work) is/are published more than once (in the same or another language) without adequate acknowledgment of the source/cross-referencing/justification, or when the same (or substantially overlapping) data is presented in more than one publication without adequate cross-referencing/justification, particularly when this is done in such a way that reviewers/readers are unlikely to realize that most or all the findings have been published before.”

COPE defines citation manipulation as “behaviors intended to inflate citation counts for personal gain, such as: excessive self-citation of an authors’ own work, excessive citation to the journal publishing the citing article, and excessive citation between journals in a coordinated manner.”

Data fabrication is defined as intentionally creating fake data or misrepresenting research results. An example includes making up data sets.

Data falsification is defined as manipulating research data with the purpose of intentionally giving a false representation. This can apply to images, research materials, equipment, or processes. Examples include cropping of gels/images to change context and omission of selected data.

If notified of a potential breach of research misconduct or publication ethics, the Journal editor and editorial office staff may inform OUP and/or the author’s institutional affiliation(s).

Ethical research

The Journal follows Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines on ethical oversight. We take research integrity seriously, and all research published in the Journal must have been conducted in a fair and ethical manner. Wherever appropriate, the Journal requires that all research be done according to international and local guidelines.

Human subjects

When reporting on human subjects, you should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Helsinki Declaration, which were developed by the World Medical Association. For non-interventional studies, where ethical approval is not required or where a study has been granted an exemption by an ethics committee, this should be stated within the manuscript with a full explanation. Otherwise, manuscripts must include a statement in the Methods section that the research was performed after approval by a local ethics committee, institutional review board and/or local licensing committee, or that such approval was not required. The name of the authorizing body and any reference/permit numbers (where available) should also be stated there. Please be prepared to provide further information to the editorial office upon request.

Human subjects must give written informed consent, or if they are minors or incapacitated, such consent must be obtained from their parents or guardians. Consent forms should cover not only study participation but also the publication of the data collected. Also, any patient or provider information should be anonymized to the extent possible; names and ID numbers should not be used in the text and must be removed from any images (X-rays, photographs, etc.). Please note blanking out an individual’s eyes in a photograph is not an effective way to conceal their identity. In studies where verbal, rather than written, informed consent was obtained, this must be explained and stated within the manuscript. If informed consent is not required or where a study has been granted an exemption, this must be included in the Methods section along with the name of the authorizing body. The Journal does not routinely collect consent forms, but authors should be prepared to provide written consent forms signed by the participants or other appropriate documentation to the editorial office upon request. For further guidance and examples, please refer to COPE’s guidance on consent.

C4DISC partnership

The Journal and OUP aim to create a community that fosters diversity, equity, and inclusion. As part of our commitment to these principles, OUP is a proud partner of the Coalition for Diversity & Inclusion in Scholarly Communications (C4DISC). C4DISC works with organizations and individuals within the scholarly communications landscape to foster equity, inclusion, diversity, and accessibility across the publishing industry and its published outputs.

Accessibility

Written, visual, and audio content in your submission should be accessible to all. Please see the C4DISC guidelines for making text, images, charts, tables, and audio and video accessible.

Additional Information

Pre-submission language editing

You may wish to use a language-editing service before submitting to ensure that editors and reviewers understand your manuscript. Our publisher, Oxford University Press, partners with Enago, a leading provider of author services. Through the OUP-Enago partner page, prospective authors are entitled to a discount for language editing and a range of other services.

Enago is an independent service provider, which will handle all aspects of this service, including payment. As an author you are under no obligation to take up this offer. Language editing and other services from Enago are optional and do not guarantee that your manuscript will be accepted. Edited manuscripts will undergo the regular review process of the Journal. For more details and a list of additional resources, please see OUP’s page on language services.

Supplementary data

Supporting material that is not essential for inclusion in the full text of the manuscript but would nevertheless benefit the reader, can be made available by the publisher as content linked to the online manuscript. The material should not be essential to understanding the conclusions of the article, but should contain data that is additional, complementary and relevant. Such information might include more detailed methods, extended datasets/data analysis or additional figures.

All material to be considered as supplementary data must be submitted at the same time as the main manuscript for peer review. It cannot be altered or replaced after the article has been accepted for publication. Please indicate clearly all material intended as supplementary data upon submission and name the files: “Supplementary Figure 1,” “Supplementary Data,” etc. Also ensure that the supplementary data is referred to in the main manuscript where necessary, for example as “(see supplementary data)” or “(see Supplementary Figure 1).” Please note that supplementary material will not be copyedited, so ensure that it is clearly and succinctly presented and that the wording and style conforms to the rest of the paper.

The maximum size per file should not exceed 2 MB, and files must be as small as possible, so that they can be downloaded quickly. An HTML index page is usually created to link the supplementary material to the article. Please provide short (2-4 word) titles for each individual file; these will be used to create links to the files from the index page.

The following formats are acceptable for supplementary material only:

• Plain text (.txt)
• HTML (.html, htm)
• Jpeg (.jpg, .jpeg)
• GIF (.gif)
• QuickTime video (.mov)
• MPEG Movie (.mpg)
• Microsoft AVI Video (.avi)
• Adobe PDF (.pdf)
• Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet (.xls)

If your preferred format for supplementary material is not on this list, you may still be able to upload it as single files or in a zip file. Please contact the Social Forces editorial office ([email protected]) for assistance. Supplementary material may not exceed 10 pages.

Availability of data and materials

Where ethically feasible, the Journal strongly encourages authors to make all data and software code on which the conclusions of the paper rely available to readers. Authors are required to include a data availability statement in their paper. When data and software underlying the research article are available in an online source, authors should include a full citation in their reference list. For details of the minimum information to be included in data and software citations see the OUP guidance on citing research data and software.

Whenever possible, data should be presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files or deposited in a public repository. Visit OUP’s Research data page for information on general repositories for all data types, and resources for selecting repositories by subject area.

Data availability statement

The inclusion of a data availability statement is a requirement for papers published in the Journal. Data availability statements provide a standardized format for readers to understand the availability of original and third-party data underlying the research results described in the paper. The statement should describe and provide means of access, where possible, by linking to the data or providing the required unique identifier.

More information and example data availability statements.

Book Reviews

The Book Review section of Social Forces aims to provide fresh, useful information on books of significant interest to sociologists and other social scientists. Some principles that inform this goal include:

• Books are selected for review based on their inherent interest to Social Forces ' audience. Books are never rejected for review due to lack of space. Book reviews are published online.
• Periodic review essays, review symposia, and the like are scheduled to offer space for consideration of books that, for one reason or another, deserve special treatment.
• The core list of books to be reviewed includes books by sociologists, published by prominent university and academic presses, containing new research or theory. Such books are virtually always sent out for review, although occasionally we cannot recruit a suitable reviewer.
• The peripheral list of books consists of books to be reviewed if the editor considers them of interest to the readership. These include books by social scientists, non-sociologists with links to sociological questions, and books in the public discourse of special interest to sociologists.
• These are guidelines. If you think a book deserves review in Social Forces, we're always happy to take a look.

Frequently Asked Questions about Book Reviews

How can I become a reviewer for Social Forces?

We're always looking for qualified reviewers. Send a curriculum vitae and a short letter or statement of interest to Social Forces via e-mail to the Book Editor ([email protected] ). We do not consider unsolicited reviews.

How can I arrange to have my book reviewed in Social Forces?

The necessary condition is that we receive the book itself. We do not commit to reviewing any book without first having it in the office. Still, we discard a majority of all books we receive. To submit a book for review, send it to:

Tania Jenkins
Social Forces Book Reviews
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
CB#3210, Hamilton Hall
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3210 USA

How do you choose reviewers for books?

We look for qualified experts in a related field to offer insight into the book's strengths and weaknesses. We often seek reviewers whose work is tangential to the book's theme, in order to generate reviews that are of interest to the widest possible social scientific audience. Books by sociologists may sometimes be reviewed by non-sociologists; books by non-sociologists should generally be reviewed by sociologists.

Have you received my book for review?

If you send a book without confirmed receipt or tracking information, email the Book Editor ([email protected] ).

I submitted my solicited review a while ago. When will it be published?

Reviews are published online in the order in which they complete the production process. This takes approximately 6 to 8 weeks from arrival of the review in production.

What are you looking for in a review?

The typical book review is approximately 800 words and offers a serious evaluation of the book's strengths and weaknesses. We prefer pithy, original reviews that raise interesting questions, offer serious praise and critiques, and demonstrate the book's utility (or lack thereof) for other social scientists.

Will reviewing a book for Social Forces increase or decrease my chances of having my research published in the journal? How about of being asked to review manuscripts?

No. The book review and manuscript sections of the journal are completely separate.

Changes to published papers

The Journal will only make changes to published papers if the publication record is seriously affected by the academic accuracy of the published information. Changes to a published paper will be accompanied by a formal correction notice linking to and from the original paper.

As needed, we follow the COPE guidelines on retractions.

For more information and details of how to request changes, including for authors who wish to update their name and/or pronouns, please see OUP’s policy on changes to published papers.

Digital preservation

Content published in the Journal will automatically be deposited into digital preservation services, including CLOCKSS, the Global LOCKSS Network, and Portico. This ensures the long-term preservation of your work. Through LOCKSS, participating institutions can sustain access to content if the Journal were to otherwise be unavailable, even for a short period of time. Should the Journal ever cease to publish, or content would otherwise become permanently unavailable, long-term access to the archives of CLOCKSS and Portico would be triggered. Until such a trigger event were to occur, this content is not available to the public through CLOCKSS and Portico.

Self-archiving

Self-archiving refers to posting a copy of your work on a publicly accessible website or repository. Under certain circumstances, you may self-archive versions of your work on your own webpages, on institutional webpages, and in other repositories. For information about the Journal's policy, and to learn which version(s) of your paper are acceptable for self-archiving, please see our Author self-archiving policy.

Promoting your work

As the author, you are the best advocate for your work, and we encourage you to be involved in promoting your publication. Sharing your ideas and news about your publication with your colleagues and friends could take as little as 15 minutes and will make a real difference in raising the profile of your research.

You can promote your work by:

• Sharing your paper with colleagues and friends. If your paper is published open access, it will always be freely available to all readers, and you can share it without any limitations. Otherwise, use the toll-free link that is emailed to you after publication. It provides permanent, free access to your paper, even if your paper is updated.
• Signing up for an ORCID iD author identifier to distinguish yourself from any other researchers with the same name, create an online profile showcasing all your publications, and increase the visibility of your work.
• Using social media to promote your work. To learn more about self-promotion on social media, see our social media guide for authors.

Find out how Oxford University Press promotes your content.

Contact Us

The Editorial Office can be contacted by email: [email protected]