Submissions

Author Guidelines

Submission types 

We welcome contributions addressing all aspects of open research, for example open access, research data management, open research tools and support mechanisms, training and indicators. We use Open Journal Systems (OJS) for the submission of manuscripts. Submissions will not be accepted by email correspondence. A broad range of article types will be considered, including editorials, research articles, discussions, perspectives on open research practice and culture, reports of developments in the field, book reviews, registered reports, opinion pieces and meeting reports. For more information on the scope of our journal please refer to https://journals.gla.ac.uk/SJOR/about 

Submissions can be made here: https://journals.gla.ac.uk/SJOR/about/submissions  

Open Access 

SJOR is a peer-reviewed open access journal with no submission charges or article processing charges. The default licence for all journal content is Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. 

Authors may select a more restrictive open access licence by exception and following discussion with the editorial team (e.g. if necessitated by the inclusion of third-party material or other preexisting contractual arrangement). 

Preparing your manuscript 

We follow a format-free submission policy. There are no requirements on style and reference formatting; however, we kindly ask to submit articles as Word files (.doc/.docx), use grammar and spell check (in UK spelling), font size 12 and preferably font style Calibri, Aptos or Arial. We welcome any contribution from 500 to 5000 words. 

Please list all authors with their affiliations and ORCID. If you don’t have an ORCID, you can sign up here https://orcid.org/: It’s easy, quick and free. Please indicate the corresponding author. 

Guidelines 

These guidelines serve as guidance if authors appreciate suggestions on how to structure their submission and references.  

Structure of your submission:

As part of the submission process, you will be asked for the following information: 

• Title
• Abstract
• Authors (including ORCIDs) 
• Contribution statement 
• Data availability statement
• Conflict of interest statement (if applicable) 

 The submission could follow this general pattern:  

• Main text (or, for research articles: Introduction - Material and methods – Results – Discussion) 
• Conclusion (if applicable) 
• Funding statement 
• Acknowledgments 
• Ethical approval (if applicable) 
• References

More detailed information:

1. Title page: You will be asked for information to complete a title page during submission. Please note that you will need to include an abstract at this point, but it can be very brief for article types other than research articles. You will also be asked to provide contribution information for any authors – please see 8. below. 
2. Abstract & keywords: You will be requested to submit an abstract and keywords during the submission process. If you are submitting a longer article, you can consider providing an abstract of up to 250 words. 
3. Abbreviations: If applicable, please define abbreviations at first mention and use consistently. If you have multiple field-specific terms and abbreviations, please include a glossary. 
4. Data, graphics and supplementary material: Should your submission include tables, figures, graphics or supplementary material, please get in touch with the SJOR editorial team for formatting guidance. Please note that if your submission presents original research data, you must include a data availability statement. Depending on your research, an ethical compliance statement may be compulsory as well. 
5. Copyright: If any third party copyrighted material is used, you must ensure that permission to reuse has been obtained. Please get in touch with the SJOR editorial team for more detailed guidance if needed. 
6. Prior publication: Submissions must be original work by the author. By making a submission to SJOR you agree, should it be accepted for publication, for your work to be assigned the following copyright license: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. However, your article may be based on previously published work in, for example, a blog post. SJOR will not be held legally responsible for any compensation claims arising from prior publication.  
7. Preprints: SJOR will consider articles for review previously available as preprints. Authors may also post the submitted version of a manuscript to a preprint server at any time. Authors are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article. 
8. Contribution statement (CRediT): Each author’s contribution must be acknowledged using CRediT (Contributor Role Taxonomy, https://credit.niso.org/). A free and open-source tool called Tenzing may be used to easily list contributions of multiple authors: https://rollercoaster.shinyapps.io/tenzing/ . Please upload your contribution statement as an additional document.
9. Acknowledgements: If you are including an acknowledgements statement, please place it as a separate section before the references.  
10. Funding statement: If your submission was financially supported by any funding agencies, you must include the funder name and grant number. 
11. Conflict of interest: If any potential conflict of interest might arise in relation to the publication, a statement to this effect must be included.
12. Reference style: We follow a format-free submission policy. If you’re not sure what referencing style to use, we suggest following “Cambridge A”: 

In-text citations: 

• In-text citations are formatted in author-date style: “Bascompte 2009” 

• Two authors: “Geiser and Ruf 2023”, more than two authors: “Bellard et al 2012” 

• In-text citations can either be phrased as part of a sentence: “Geiser and Ruf discuss the differences between daily torpor and hibernation (2023)” or the citation can be added at the end of a statement: “There are distinct differences between daily torpor and hibernation (Geiser and Ruf 2023).” 

Reference list:  

• All references mentioned in the text should be listed at the end of the text in a separate section titled “References”. This reference list is ordered alphabetically according to surname and initials.  

• Multiple publications by the same author are listed chronologically. 

• Hyperlinks are also be added to the reference list. 

Examples for the reference list: 

Article: 

Geiser F and Ruf T (2023) Long-term survival, temperature, and torpor patterns. Scientific Reports 13, 6673. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-33646-6 

Book: 

Ingold T, Gibb R, Tonner P and Malara DM (2024) Conversations with Tim Ingold. Edinburgh: Scottish Universities Press. 

Website: 

Nash J (2024) 5 Common data-sharing myths in humanities and social sciences. EuropeOpenResearch blog. Available at https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/blog/5-common-data-sharing-myths-in-humanities-and-social-sciences (accessed 24 January 2025) 

For examples on how to cite other sources please visit: Cambridge Style guide