This journal uses ScholarOne Manuscripts (previously Manuscript Central) to peer review manuscript submissions. Please read the guide for ScholarOne authors before making a submission. Complete guidelines for preparing and submitting your manuscript to this journal are provided below.

Submission of an article will be held to imply that it contains original, unpublished work and is not being submitted for publication elsewhere. Articles will be evaluated by referees (anonymously). The Journal has an article section, a debate column and a book review section.

Manuscript standard
When preparing the final version of the article, an author will be expected to conform closely to the journal's style requirements. Absolute technical requirements in the first round are: legible copy, numbered pages, ample line spacing throughout (1.5 or double), an abstract (articles only), an alphabetical reference list, and a word count on the front page (include all elements in the word count). British spelling throughout.

Biographical statement
The biosketch in FDS is intended as an aid to identify the author and to facilitate communication with him or her. It will appear in a separate section in the back of the edition. It should be brief and include year of birth, highest academic degree, year achieved, where obtained, position and current institutional affiliation. In addition authors may indicate their present main research interest or recent (co-)authored or edited books as well as other institutional affiliations that have occupied a major portion of their professional lives.

Articles
Articles should not exceed 10,000 words including all elements (title page, abstract, notes, references, tables, biographical statements etc). The final version of the manuscript should contain:
• Title page with name(s) of the authors(s), affiliation and a word count
• Abstract and 5-7 keywords (200-250 words)
• Main text
• Tables and figures on separate pages
• List of references
• Biographical statement
• Notes (footnotes)

Debates
Articles in this section should not exceed 5000 words. The final version of the manuscript should contain the same elements as for the articles section, except for an abstract and keywords.

Book review
There are two formats for articles in this section: book reviews and book essays. Reviews succinctly present and discuss a particular book, and should be about 1000 words. The essay format involves a more elaborate presentation and allows for polemic discussion to excite debate. Essays can involve review of one or several related volumes, and should not exceed 4000 words. The final version of the manuscript should contain: author's full name, book title, edition/year, publisher, place of publication and pages.
 
Quotations
For quoted words, phrases and sentences run into the text, FDS style is to use ‘single' quotation marks. “Double” quotation marks should be used only for ‘quotations “within” quotations'. Longer quotations (more than 40 words) should be indented without quotation marks and double-spaced in the manuscript.

References
Bibliographical references should be given in parentheses in the standard author/date (and pages) format in the body of the text, e.g. (Lee 2009: 238). A complete list of references cited, arranged alphabetically by author's surname (or name of sponsoring body where there is no identifiable author), should be included at the end of the article.

Book titles and name of journals should be italicised, titles of articles/chapters should be placed in inverted commas.

Style should be as follows:
Author's surname, name, date of publication, title of publication, place of publication and publisher.

Book:
Bond, Patrick (2000), Elite transition: from apartheid to neoliberalism in South Africa, London: Pluto Press. 

A book or article with two authors:
Chabal, Patric and Daloz, Jean-Pascal (1999), Africa works: disorder as a political instrument, Oxford: James Currey.

Three or more authors:
When there are three authors or more ‘et al.' is used in text references, but not in the reference list. Thus, in the text the reference would appear as (Evans et al. 1985), while the full reference would be given in the reference list:
Evans, Peter B., Rueschemeyer, Dietrich and Skocpol, Theda (1985) Bringing the State Back In, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Journals:
Simon, Davis (2006), ‘Separated by common ground? Bringing (post)development and (post)colonialism together', Geographical Journal, Vol. 172, No. 2, pp. 10-21.

Chapters in books:
Gellner, Ernest (1978) Scale and Nation, in Fredrik Barth (ed), Scale and Social Organization, Oslo: Norwegian University Press, pp. 133-149.

Newspaper articles:
Polgreen, Lydia (2007), ‘Raid on African Union Imperils Darfur Talks', International Herald Tribune, 3 October, p. 2.

Online database:
OECD (2004), Social Expenditure Database (SOCX). Internet access: http://www.oecd.org/els/social/expenditure. Date: 10.10.2008.

Articles from an electronic publication:
SADR Petroleum Authority (2006), ‘SADR Offshore Oil & Gas License Awards: Successful Conclusion of the 2005 Western Sahara Licensing Oil and Gas Initiative'. Internet access: http://www.sadroilandgas.com/pdfs/permits06.pdf. Date: 10.11.2008.
 
Notes
Should be kept to a minimum and be included as footnotes, not endnotes. Notes (comments etc) should be indicated consecutively by superscript numerals corresponding to the footnotes.  

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