Science as Culture Editorial Guidelines

Queries regarding submissions should be sent to the Editor, Les Levidow, email L.Levidow@open.ac.uk.

Submitted articles should follow the editorial and stylistic guidance, available here to download. Authors are expected to correct proofs of accepted articles.

Structure of articles

Keeping in mind the journal's aims above, submissions should follow this guidance.
Overall structure: Introduction, Conceptual Approach, Analysis (of a case), Conclusion.  

Substantive and structural features:

• SaC readers are by definition non-specialists but interested in critical perspectives on potentially any topic. The Introduction should be written to draw in such readers. 
• The article should start with a publicly important issue, relating to people's experience of science, technology, expertise, etc. − i.e., not a merely academic issue. Regarding that issue, the Introduction should pose key questions (not dependent upon analytical concepts) which will be answered in the overall article and so give it coherence.
• Those questions become a rationale for bringing in analytical perspectives relevant to a cultural analysis of technoscience. At least one concept should clearly relate to SaC themes, e.g. perspectives from STS literature and/or cultural studies. It is important to explain the concepts and to quote the original authors, so that readers can judge how appropriately the article uses them. The author should explain just a few analytical concepts that will be used, rather than give a long literature survey.
• The Conclusion should clearly answer the questions posed in the Introduction. The overall argument should be summarised by bringing together key points which already appeared in the article (rather than assume that readers remember them). The conclusion should also explain how analytical perspectives have illuminated the case. These tasks may sound obvious, but many first-draft articles neglect them.   
• Abstract (max 250 words): This should mainly summarise the argument – rather than say what you or the article does (e.g. ‘The article argues/examines/discusses' etc., ‘It is argued that…').
• Keywords: approx. 3-6 key words should be listed after the Abstract.

Referees' criteria should explain the following:

• Overall recommendation: acceptance with minor/major revisions, resubmission, reject.
• How the article addresses a general issue through a specific case
• How it relates to the thematic focus of SaC
• What overall argument the article makes (or perhaps how/why this is unclear)
• How (well) it does so, in terms of citing empirical material and relating this to analytical frameworks.
• What weaknesses should be remedied, e.g. in order for the article to warrant publication, or optionally in order to improve it.

Stylistic guidelines

Before an article is accepted in final form, it must follow the stylistic guidelines below.

Easy reading: Minimize the length of each sentence and paragraph, in order to make the reading easier. Maximum of 6-7 sentences per paragraph.

Headings: Please insert several subheadings (upper&lower-case letters in boldface), within which you can also use sub-subheadings (upper&lower-case letters in italics). As a rough guide, use 3-5 headings for every thousand words. Each one should start on a new line. 

Notes: Numbered notes should be used only for making substantive points and should be minimized, by integrating essential points into the main text. The published article will put all the notes at the end, just before the Bibliography/References section, so your manuscript should do likewise.

Quotations: Short quotations should be enclosed with single quote marks, or with double marks for quotes within quotes. Long quotations should be indented and not enclosed in quote marks.

Citations/references: All citations should use the Harvard style (author, year, page). 
Each one should refer to an item in the alphabetical References.  For easier reading, try to put citations at the end of a sentence, not in the middle.

Bibliography/references: Standard format is similar for articles in books or journals, as follows:
Surname, Initial. (year) Title of article, Journal/Book Title, vol.(no.) pp.ii-xx (City: Publisher [if a book]).  

Other information needed: Biographical note of a couple sentences for the 'Contributors' section, placed at the end of the article (or sent separately).

Illustrations: If possible, please suggest some illustrations, e.g. photos, cartoons, advertisements, diagrams, etc. See previous SaC issues for examples. Ideally, you would send us a good, reproducible copy of each illustration, with a permissions letter – or at least some guidance about how we can obtain a good original and permission. If you request permission on our behalf, then please explain that we are a relatively small-circulation journal, in order to minimize any reproduction fee. If the proposed fee is more than nominal, then we will judge whether the picture warrants the payment.

For each illustration, please suggest a caption, which may be informative and/or satirical.

The text should indicate the position, caption and credit for each illustration.

Supplementary material (e.g., animations, movie files, sound files and text files)

Such material can be included in the online edition of SaC. Such files should be supplied after acceptance of the final manuscript, to a special email address provided for that purpose.

Electronic files

We welcome figures sent electronically, but care and attention to these guidelines are essential as importing graphics packages can often be problematic.

• Figures must be saved individually and separate to text. Please do not embed figures in the paper file.
• Avoid the use of colour and tints for purely aesthetic reasons.
• Figures should be produced as near to the finished size as possible.
• All figures must be numbered in the order in which they appear in the paper (e.g. figure 1, figure 2). In multi-part figures, each part should be labelled (e.g. figure 1(a), figure 1(b)).
• Figure captions must be saved separately, as part of the file containing the complete text of the paper, and numbered correspondingly.
• The filename for the graphic should be descriptive of the graphic, e.g. Figure1, Figure2a.
• Files should be saved as one of the following formats: TIFF (tagged image file format), PostScript or EPS (encapsulated PostScript), and should contain all the necessary font information and the source file of the application (e.g. CorelDraw/Mac, CorelDraw/PC).

Please note that it is in the author's interest to provide the highest quality figure format possible. Please do not hesitate to contact our Production Department  if you have any queries.