Information for the Authors

Our intent is to provide an interdisciplinary forum for a worldwide qualitative researchers community. All researchers for whom interpretative paradigm and qualitative methodology constitute the basic perspective for further analysis of social life as it occurs in specific social contexts are warmly invited to submit their papers and to partake, therefore, in our open access to scientific knowledge initiative. The editors of Qualitative Sociology Review welcome empirical, methodological and theoretical articles devoted to all fields and specializations within qualitative sociology.

In order to facilitate our cooperation and to shorten the time needed for publishing your article, we recommend that you take the time to read the sections below before submitting a contribution to Qualitative Sociology Review.

 Article Publication Guidelines

        I. General Guidelines for Authors

1. Manuscripts submitted to Qualitative Sociology Review should represent original work not previously published. They should not contain previously published materials and must not be under consideration for publication elsewhere.
2. The article, or any part thereof, is in no way a violation of any existing original or derivative copyright. It is the authors’ responsibility to obtain appropriate written copyright permission for the reproduction of any copyrighted material, including images.
3. All manuscripts must be submitted to Qualitative Sociology Review via email: submit.qsr@gmail.com . All references that explicitly reveal the identity of the authors should be removed from the article. A separate document including name and email address of all contributors should accompany the submitted article.
4. Texts are to be saved in Word format with a .doc, .docx or .rtf extension. All illustrations, graphics, photographic images, and other figures should be included in a separate file (saved in the following formats: JPEG, TIF, GIF, BMP, PNG). Title and number of the figure (in Arabic numerals, e.g., Figure 1, 2, etc.) should be included in the figure legend. All figures must be listed in the order in which they are mentioned in the text.
5. An electronic cover letter must accompany each manuscript submitted to Qualitative Sociology Review. It must state that the material for which the authors have exclusive rights is original and has not been submitted for publication elsewhere (including websites). In order to prevent the practice of ghostwriting and guest authorship, the letter must also include a statement attesting and indicating the specific contribution each author made to the manuscript. Submitting a manuscript accompanied by the cover letter is interpreted as indicating that each author participated in the preparation of the article, and have reviewed and approve the manuscript as submitted to take public responsibility for it. The corresponding author(s) should email the cover letter to: submit.qsr@gmail.com .
6. All sources of financial support for the work contained should be disclosed in the covert letter.
7. Articles should be written in English only.

Authors are kindly asked to comply fully with these requirements, as well as with the general construction of the article and style requirements listed below. Failure to do so may constitute grounds for the rejection of an article at any time during the editorial process.

Potential authors who have questions about these issues should contact the editorial office at: office.qsr@gmail.com.


        II. General construction of the Article and Style Guide

8. The article should include an abstract followed with keywords (5-10) at the beginning of the manuscript, an introduction involving theoretical inspiration in the proposed analysis, a paragraph in which the applied methodology is presented, a research study or the main theoretical argument, and a conclusion. Authors are asked to follow the accepted norms of academic writing, including the provision of accurate and complete references.
9. The style requirements of Qualitative Sociology Review are modeled on American Sociological Association Style Guide (4th ed.), 2010.
10. Citations in Text
1. If the author's name is in the text, it should be followed with the publication year in parentheses, e.g., "When Znaniecki (1934) studied…;"
2. If the author's name is not in the text, the last name and year should be enclosed in parentheses, e.g., "… (Blumer 1969);"
3. If the page number is to be included, it should follow the year of publication, with no space between the colon and the page number, e.g., "… (Goffman 1959:44)." Page numbers are to be mentioned only when directly quoting from a work;
4. When a parenthetical citation includes two or more works, a series of references should be organized in chronological order and separated by semi-colons, e.g., "… (Becker 1967; Geer 1970; Turner 1981);"
5. For joint authors, both last names must be given, e.g., "… (Glaser and Strauss 1967);"
6. For three authors, all last names in the first citation in the text should be used. Afterwards, the first name and "et al." should be given, e.g., "… (Anderson, Hughes and Sharrock 1986)," later in-text citation: "… (Anderson et al. 1986);"
7. For more than three names, the first author's last name and "et al." in the first and later in-text citations should be used;
8. If the author’s name is repeated, both the first name and the year of publication in parentheses should be given in the first and later in-text citation;
9. If the author is an organization or a government agency, the organization should be mentioned in a signal phrase or the parenthetical citation each time the source is cited;
10. If no date is given, the abbreviation "n.d." (for "no date") should be used instead of a year of publication;
11. For unpublished materials, "forthcoming" should be used to indicate material scheduled for publication, e.g., "… (Smith forthcoming)." For dissertations and unpublished papers, the date should be cited.
12. If there are two sources by the same author in the same year, the lower-case letters (a, b, c, etc.) with the year to order the entries in the reference list should be used, e.g., "… (Prus 2007a, 2007b)."
13. If a source cited in another source is quoted, the name, date and page reference of the work in which information originated should appear first, followed by "as cited in" and the secondary source, e.g., "… (Mead 1934:78 as cited in Prus 1997:39)." Only the secondary source should appear in the reference list.
14. Direct quotations longer than 50 words should be placed in a free-standing block of text. Full quotation (started on a new line) should be indented from the left margin and one blank double-spaced line should be entered before and after the block-indented quotation, quotation marks are not necessary. The parenthetical citation should come after the closing punctuation mark, e.g.,

According to Becker (1963),


[o]ne of the most crucial steps in the process of building a stable pattern of deviant behavior is likely to be the experience of being caught and publicly labeled as a deviant…[B]eing caught and branded as a deviant has important consequences for one's further social participation and self image. The most important consequence is a drastic change in the individual's public identity. (p. 32)

11. Reference List
1. All references cited must be listed in the reference list and vice-versa;
2. Reference list entries should be alphabetized by the last name of the first author of each work;
3. Multiple items by the same author should be arranged in order by year of publication, earliest year first;
4. Works by the same author in the same year should be distinguished by adding lower-case letters;
5. Title of a book (ending with a period) should be followed with edition number if 2nd. ed. or later;The last and first names for all authors of a particular work should be given for up to and including three authors. If the work has more than three authors, the first three authors should be listed and then "et al." should be used;
6. The state abbreviation should only be included if the city of publication is not well-known. New York, Chicago and Los Angeles do not need a state abbreviation.
7. Books;
• Mead, George H. 1934. Mind, Self and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Mannheim, Karl. 1936. Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. Translated by L. Wirth, E. Shils. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
• Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The social construction of reality. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
• Belenky, Mary F., Blythe M. Clinchy, Nancy R. Goldberg, et al. 1997. Women's Ways Of Knowing: The Development Of Self, Voice, And Mind. 10th Anniversary Edition. New York: Basic Books.
8. Collected Works/Chapters in Books;
• Rose, Arnold M., (ed.). 1962. Human Behavior and Social Processes. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
• Sacks, Harvey. 1972. "On the analyzability of stories by children." Pp. 325-345 in Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication, edited by J. Gumperz, D. Hymes. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Natanson, Maurice. 1962. "Introduction." Pp. XXV-XLVII in Alfred Schutz: Collected Papers, Vol. 1, edited by M. Natanson. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
9. Print Journal/Newspaper Articles;
• Blumer, Herbert. 1967. "Reply to Woelfel, Stone and Farberman." American Journal of Sociology 72(4):411-412.
• Strauss, Anselm. 1982. "Interorganizational Negotiation." Urban Life 11(3):350-367.
• Greenberg, Daniel S. 1991. "«Soft» Sciences Grow Up." The Washington Post, November 13, p. A19.
10. Electronic Articles;
• Smith, Herman W. and Takako Nomi. 2000. "Is Amae the Key to Understanding Japanese Culture?" Electronic Journal of Sociology 5(1). Retrieved May 5, 2000 (http://www.sociology.org/content/vol005.001/smith-nomi.html).
• Scheff, Thomas J. 2006. "Concepts and Concept Formation: Goffman and Beyond." Qualitative Sociology Review 2(3):48-64. Retrieved January 12, 2007 (http://www.qualitativesociologyreview.org/ENG/Volume5/QSR_2_3_Scheff.pdf).
11. Unpublished Manuscripts;
• Garfinkel, Harold. 1952. “The perception of the other: A study in social order.” Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Social Relations. Harvard University, Boston.
• Stepick, Alex and Carolyn D. Stepick. 1990. “What's In It For Me? What’s In It For You? Ethnographic Research On The Possible Undercount of Haitians in Miami.” Research Report No. EX90/11, Center for Labor Research, Florida International University, Miami.
• Glaser, Barney. 2005. “The World-Wide Adoption of Grounded Theory.” Paper presented during the 37th World Congress of the IIS, July 6, Stockholm, Sweden.
12. Footnotes and Endnotes
1. Footnotes are used to explain or amplify text, cite materials of limited availability, or append information presented in a table or figure;
2. Endnotes should be replaced with Footnotes.
13. Foreign words used in the text should be italicized. Commonly used foreign words or terms (e.g., ad hoc, per se, et al.) should, however, appear in regular type.
14. When using an acronym the first time, the phrase should be spelled out and followed with the acronym in the parentheses. Then the acronym may be used by itself, e.g., "…Qualitative Sociology Review (QSR)…"
15. Abbreviations such as etc., e.g., or i.e., should not be used in the text. They may only be used in parenthetical comments, e.g., "For example, some terms used in specific areas of sociology are not readily understood by the general sociologists (e.g., cultural capital, etc.)."

We kindly ask authors to submit only carefully prepared manuscripts that are adjusted to these requirements. Articles that do not conform to the QSR Style Guide may be sent back to the author without review or put on hold until the submission is deemed in compliance with the requirements.


        III. Reviewing and Publishing Procedures

16. Once the submitted manuscript is received, the author gets an email notification informing that the article in question entered the review process. Further communication and agreements will proceed via email.
17. All articles submitted to Qualitative Sociology Review enter a two-step unbiased review process – only the manuscripts accepted by the QSR internal reviewers will enter a regular double blind review process. The editors will try to make a preliminary decision concerning the potential suitability of a manuscript for QSR within a few days. Manuscript decisions are based on editorial discretion and/or input from the peer review process.
18. Once the submitted manuscript is reviewed, the corresponding author is informed about the process’ outcome, and gets the Reviewers Report on the article in question. All data that may reveal the identity of reviewers is removed from the Report. If recommendations regarding the current version of a manuscript are included in the Report, the author(s) is/are required to improve the paper according to the reviewers’ suggestions.
19. The publication proceeds once the manuscript is improved and accepted by the editors.
20. Decisions concerning the acceptance or rejection of the manuscript submitted to Qualitative Sociology Review are based on the following aspects of the paper:
1. is the subject of the article adjusted to the profile of the Journal (e.g., does it refer to the qualitative analysis, does it pertain to interpretative sociology, etc.)?;
2. does the article contribute any innovative or important ideas into the analyzed subject?;
3. does it include indispensable and the latest publications in the references? Does it also include classic literature of the subject field?;
4. does it have correct spelling and style, is it intelligible?;
5. how can the article improve the Journal? Is it for example, elicit, controversial or important enough in any other way for social science to raise a discussion or inspire further research/considerations?
21. The Journal strongly opposes the practice of ghostwriting and guest authorship. Therefore, the editors of Qualitative Sociology Review inform that all discovered instances of scientific unreliability will be revealed. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the manuscript preparation. All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an acknowledgments section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include individuals who provided purely technical and writing assistance, or a department chairperson who provided only a general support.
22. The editors of Qualitative Sociology Review reserve the right to correct minor stylistic and/or orthographic errors without consulting the author(s).


        IV. Submission Preparation Checklist


As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission’s compliance with all of the following items. Please note that submissions that do not adhere to these guidelines may be returned to authors.


23. The manuscript represents original work not previously published and is not being considered for publication elsewhere.
24. All references that explicitly reveal the identity of the author have been removed from the manuscript.
25. The cover letter indicating the specific contribution each author made to the manuscript accompany the submitted article.
26. Appropriate written copyright permissions have been secured for republication of any copyrighted material included in the manuscript.
27. The manuscript adheres to Qualitative Sociology Review style requirements and/or the authors recognize that it is their responsibility to make the manuscript adhere to the QSR Style Guide as a condition of acceptance.


        V. Copyrights

28. The main purpose of Qualitative Sociology Review is to foster development of science and to enhance human knowledge. Therefore, the Journal and all published articles constitute a contribution to the contemporary social sciences. Since this will support the concept of an open access to scientific knowledge, the source should be mentioned if any materials published in QSR were cited elsewhere.
29. By virtue of its appearance in this open access Journal, it is understood that the article is freely available for use without any special permission, with proper attribution, for cognitive, educational, scientific, and other non-commercial purposes. It is thus, forbidden to charge for access to this Journal or to put any limitations on the accessibility of released papers.
30. Making use of the resources included in the Journal for commercial or marketing purposes requires special permission from the publisher.
31. Authors submitting a manuscript to Qualitative Sociology Review do so on the understanding that published articles are freely available for non-commercial purposes. Possible commercial use of any published article will be consulted with the author beforehand.
32. Publication of the article proceeds once the appropriate written copyright permissions for republication of any copyrighted material included in the manuscript have been secured. It is the authors’ responsibility to obtain written permission for publication of materials, which are protected by copyrights owned by a third party.


        VI. Thematic Issues

33. Qualitative Sociology Review can publish up to one thematic issue a year. The release date will be decided once the draft of your thematic proposal is initially accepted to be processed.
    
34. If you are interested in serving as a Guest Editor for a thematic issue, please provide us with the following information at office.qsr@gmail.com
    
• Thematic issue proposed title
• Guest editor(s) names & affiliations
• Overview
  Describe the scope of the proposed issue (theoretical & methodological premises), emphasizing the significance and current relevance of the topic
• List of authors & articles (title, abstract, keywords)
  Please provide a list of authors whose papers you plan to accommodate and their affiliations, as well as proposed titles, abstracts, and keywords. We would appreciate it if this list is constructed to ensure diversity, including, for example, affiliations.
35. The Editorial Board of QSR will assess the fit of your draft, considering the journal’s scope. Once the editorial board accepts the draft, the review process will commence. Each article will be evaluated by two reviewers (double-blind peer review). One of the reviewers will be appointed by the Journal. As to the second, guest editor(s) are requested to provide a list of potential reviewers for each article and disclose any potential conflict of interest. The second reviewer is to be appointed by the guest editor(s) in agreement with the Journal. Should guest editor(s) be submitting an article of their authorship or accommodating a paper by an author from the same institution, the Journal will appoint both reviewers. If one of the reviews recommends rejection, the Journal will appoint a third reviewer. Decisions concerning each of the articles to be included in the thematic issue will be made jointly—by the Journal and guest editor(s)—and based on the recommendations offered by reviewers. It is the guest editor(s) responsibility to provide any permission (including the decisions of the ethical or bioethical committee) necessary to publish the articles they envision accommodating in a thematic issue.