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SAGE OPEN

Impact Factor: 2.032 / 5-Year Impact Factor: 2.100
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SAGE OPEN GUIDE FOR AUTHORS

SAGE Open’s Author Guidelines are informed by APA 7th Edition as well as SAGE’s
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Pledges. These guidelines are meant to offer
transparency in our decision making, but they cannot describe every situation we
encounter. SAGE Open will evaluate each manuscript on a case-by-case basis.


CONTENTS

What types of research does SAGE Open publish?

What research quality standards must SAGE Open articles meet?

Clear, Specific, and Unbiased Academic Approach

Cohesive Structure

Connected to Related Literature

Additional Expectations by Article Type

What ethical standards must SAGE Open manuscripts meet?

What are SAGE Open’s language quality expectations?

What should my abstract include? Why does it matter?

How do I create and update my author list?

How should I prepare my manuscript files?

Should I select a section when submitting my manuscript?

What happens after I submit my manuscript?

What is the fee for publication (Article Processing Charge)?

How can I increase the impact of my research?

Where can I go for more information?


WHAT TYPES OF RESEARCH DOES SAGE OPEN PUBLISH?

Thematic Scope: SAGE Open publishes research spanning the humanities, social
sciences, and behavioral sciences. We do not publish engineering, chemistry,
physics, biology, or medical research. Please visit our list of sections for
more on the disciplines SAGE Open covers.

Types of Articles: SAGE Open publishes the following types of articles:
empirical articles (qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods), replication
articles, meta-analyses, literature reviews, theoretical articles, and
methodological articles. SAGE Open does not consider the following types of
articles: brief reports, essays, case studies, and book reviews. For monographs,
consider SAGE Open Long Form. 


WHAT RESEARCH QUALITY STANDARDS MUST SAGE OPEN ARTICLES MEET?

Bar for Publication: Our goal is to publish research done well. This means we
look for research that contributes to the academic record in a way that allows
other scholars to connect that research to their own work and build on it. We
care more about the clarity and quality of the contribution an article makes
than we do the size of that contribution. SAGE Open evaluates manuscripts based
on how the research was conducted and reported.

To be published in SAGE Open, manuscripts must pass double-anonymized peer
review. Under double-anonymized peer review, authors and reviewers cannot know
each other’s identities. Research on sensitive topics often undergoes additional
review by our Section Editors and Editorial Board. The SAGE Open Editorial
Office has final approval over publication decisions.

Overall expectations are described below followed by additional expectations by
article type.


CLEAR, SPECIFIC, AND UNBIASED ACADEMIC APPROACH

It is important that we are mindful of our biases when performing and writing
academic research. Explain how you accounted for alternate explanations and
different perspectives. Specify the positionality of the researcher if it
informed the study design and reporting. Be mindful of any assumptions you make
in your research or about your audience. Give citations for information that is
not general knowledge. If you are presenting material that is controversial
within your field, please say so for any readers who may be outside of your
field, as SAGE Open has a global, interdisciplinary audience. Consider which
parts of your manuscript may be confusing to people who are not from the same
geographic, religious, or cultural background as you and re-write them
accordingly. Define terms that are important or unique in the context of your
study.

Avoid generalizations and sweeping statements. These are inappropriate for
journal articles and make it difficult for readers to understand your findings.
Introductory sentences should not offer broad statements that are not supported
by the rest of the article. Be careful not to overextend your findings when
describing conclusions, limitations, and implications. Be clear about how you
manage mediating, moderating, and confounding variables in your research. Avoid
implying causation without adequate evidence. Be cautious of absolutes like
always and never, especially when applied to a broad group of cases.

Additionally, avoid generalizations about people, especially generalizations
about groups of people that are based on one aspect of their identities, such as
gender, age, disability, neurodiversity, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation,
socioeconomic status, and religion. Keep in mind that people can have many
identities and shared identities do not necessarily mean shared experiences. 

Be sensitive to labels used to describe people. Use appropriately specific and
up-to-date terms. When more than one good option exists, consider the words
members of that group prefer when describing themselves. Please see APA’s
Bias-Free Language Guidelines for more support.  

Please also review the following terms which are defined in APA’s Inclusive
Language Guidelines:

bias: APA defines bias as partiality: an inclination or predisposition for or
against something. Motivational and cognitive biases are two main categories
studied in decision-making analysis. Motivational biases are conclusions drawn
due to self-interest, social pressures, or organization-based needs, whereas
cognitive biases are judgments that go against what is considered rational, and
some of these are attributed to implicit reasoning (APA, 2021b).

positionality: our social position or place in a given society in relation to
race, ethnicity, and other statuses (e.g., social class, age, gender identity,
sexual orientation, nationality, ability, religion) within systems of power and
oppression. Positionality refers to our individual identities and the
intersection of those identities and statuses with systems of privilege and
oppression. Positionality shapes our psychological experiences, worldview,
perceptions others have of us, social relationships, and access to resources
(Muhammad et al., 2015). Positionality therefore means actively understanding
and negotiating the systemic processes and hierarchy of power and the ways that
our statuses affect our relationships because of power dynamics related
to privilege and oppression (APA, 2019b).

generalization: the process of deriving a concept, judgment, principle, or
theory from a limited number of specific cases and applying it more widely,
often to an entire class of objects, events, or people (APA, n.d.)


COHESIVE STRUCTURE

The goals of the research should be clear throughout, and it should be clear how
they guided the study design. Focus your article by avoiding tangents and
keeping to one problem or a small set of closely related problems. Avoid
introducing new material in the discussion that is not covered in the earlier
sections of the manuscript, and make sure your conclusions are well supported by
the rest of the article.


CONNECTED TO RELATED LITERATURE

Make sure your article is connected to relevant and recent academic research in
addition to any news sources, blogs, or government sources. Submissions should
have at least 10-15 academic references. At least 5 references should be from
the last 5 years.


ADDITIONAL EXPECTATIONS BY ARTICLE TYPE

Empirical articles may use qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods. SAGE
Open asks authors to follow APA Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) for
each type of method.

               Quantitative Methods Journal Article Reporting Standards

               Qualitative Methods Journal Article Reporting Standards

               Mixed Methods Journal Article Reporting Standards

Replication articles must specify what research was replicated and how it was
replicated, including the ways in which the current study differed from the
original. Please address how deviations from the original study design may have
affected the results of the current study. Please see APA’s JARS glossary for
the types of replication studies.

Meta-analyses synthesize results from a collection of related studies and may
use quantitative and/or qualitative approaches to do so. Please review the
corresponding JARS below.

Quantitative Meta-Analysis Journal Article Reporting Standards

Qualitative Meta-Analysis Journal Article Reporting Standards

Literature review articles may follow a more narrative structure than
meta-analyses, but they should still provide a clear, well-defined purpose; a
summary of previous research; a discussion of any patterns, gaps, or
inconsistencies; and conclusions that indicate limitations and next steps. SAGE
Open prefers literature reviews that have a grounding in theory, a clear
organizing framework, and an explanation of how you chose which studies to
include or exclude, as literature in most fields is increasingly vast and
interdependent. As noted above, SAGE Open does not consider book reviews. If a
single work is the focus of the article, the article should also have strong
ties to related literature; for example, the article could include other works
by the author of the single work or their contemporaries and secondary sources
about their work.

Theoretical articles and methodological articles should specify what
advancements they propose to existing theory or methods. They should discuss
alternate theories or methods as well as the strengths and weaknesses of their
proposed contributions.


WHAT ETHICAL STANDARDS MUST SAGE OPEN MANUSCRIPTS MEET?

Authors must adhere to ethical standards in the way they conduct their research
and report their findings.

Ethical Principles: SAGE Open asks you to follow the general principles and
human relations guidance in APA 7. Please pay special attention to the section
on avoiding harm.

Accurate Reporting of Research Results: You should represent your methods and
results fully and accurately. Do not modify data or visual images to suit a
theory or omit troublesome observations. Please follow the reporting standards
by article type (see above).

Obtaining Ethical Approval: For empirical research with human or animal study
participants, be sure to submit your research protocol for ethical approval
prior to conducting your research. Usually, ethical approval is granted by
ethical review committees at the authors’ institutions, but we understand that
in some cases approval may be granted by other bodies, such as the
administration at the hospital where the research was conducted. Your manuscript
should state what ethical approval was obtained and why it was sufficient. You
can temporarily replace the name of the institution that granted ethical
approval with [Anonymized] if doing so is necessary to protect your anonymity
during peer review.  

Obtaining Informed Consent: For original empirical research with human or animal
study participants, you must gain informed consent prior to conducting their
study. There should be a section in your manuscript explaining how informed
consent was requested and obtained. Please see the APA Ethics Code, Section
8 for informed consent requirements. SAGE Open also recommends study
participants are informed that they are participating in research that will be
published in an online, open access format available to anyone with an internet
connection. This is especially important if personal information is used and if
identities could be inferred by any potential readers.

Anonymizing Participant Information: Upon publication, SAGE Open articles are
free for anyone in the world to read online and share in news outlets or on
social media. Make sure you have appropriately anonymized your data and gained
permission from your study participants to publish images, interviews, and
personal data online. Be careful when writing about individuals within small
communities. Consider whether members of those communities can discern the
identities of study participants with the information you have provided. We
recommend that you not include anything that could identify individuals by not
including images with faces, tattoos, etc. If this is not possible, then please
blur faces and other identifiable aspects of the images.

Image Permissions: As the author, you are responsible for making sure you have
permission to use images that are not your own in your article. For details,
please review this APA Style Blog post on Navigating Copyright for Reproduced
Images.

Avoiding Plagiarism: Take care to give credit for both ideas and the words used
to describe them. Please do not copy word-for-word what someone else has written
without proper attribution. Use quotations or block quotes when you must use
someone’s exact words and follow with an in-text citation. When paraphrasing,
avoid patchwriting or simply replacing a few words. The full section should be
in your own words, so you may need to take a broader look at what needs to be
reworked. Here are examples. SAGE Open runs all submissions through a plagiarism
software called iThenticate. We will return your manuscript to you if we find
continuous overlap with other published sources without proper attribution. We
also re-check articles following revisions and before publication to ensure no
new issues were introduced.

Previously Published Material: SAGE Open does not publish material that has been
previously published. This includes material that has been published in another
language. For our purposes, theses, dissertations, preprints, and working papers
are not previously published, but they should still be cited in your SAGE Open
submission. Please note an exception to this rule: some dissertations have ISBNs
and we consider these to be published. If you are submitting research that was
previously included in conference proceedings, please review the copyright
information. If there is an ISSN, ISBN, and/or indication that copyright has
been transferred to the publisher, then SAGE Open will be unable to consider
this material.

When building upon your previously published research in your SAGE Open
submission, you must properly paraphrase and cite your previous research. Avoid
piecemeal publication, which occurs when the findings of one study are
unnecessarily split into multiple articles. In addition to raising copyright
concerns, piecemeal publication can distort the academic record, making it seem
like there is more evidence to support a set of findings. For this reason, SAGE
Open is more likely to allow careful reuse of your previous research in your
introduction, literature review, and methods sections than in your results,
discussions, and conclusions.    


WHAT ARE SAGE OPEN’S LANGUAGE QUALITY EXPECTATIONS?

SAGE Open is an English language journal, but many of our authors, reviewers,
and readers are not native English speakers. When writing for SAGE Open, please
write clearly and concisely. Avoid passive voice, run-on sentences, and
unnecessary jargon or idioms. Use active voice, appropriate transitions, and
parallel construction where possible. 

SAGE Open receives research from all over the world, and we do our best to help
authors prepare their manuscripts. However, we only provide light copyediting
after acceptance. This means that upon submission, manuscripts must be clear
enough for peer reviewers to understand. If your manuscript is sent back to you
before peer review for language editing, please check it against the APA Style
and Grammar Guidelines. Consider using websites like Purdue Owl and free
programs like Grammarly to help you edit your writing. You can also use SAGE
Author Services and receive a 20% discount with the code SGO20. However, please
note that use of this language editing service does not guarantee publication.

SAGE Author Services English site: https://languageservices.sagepub.com/en/
SAGE Author Services Chinese site: https://languageservices.sagepub.com/cn/


WHAT SHOULD MY ABSTRACT INCLUDE? WHY DOES IT MATTER?

Please take care when writing your abstract. Potential peer reviewers will use
your abstract to decide whether they want to work on your manuscript. A strong
abstract helps us recruit relevant reviewers in a timely manner. Then, once your
article is published, your abstract will help readers find your article and
decide whether and how to incorporate it in their own research. Consider the
following:

Length: Your abstract should be concise. The 7th Edition of the APA Publication
Manual recommends a 250-word limit for abstracts. While SAGE Open does not
currently enforce this limit, we encourage you to keep it in mind.

Content: Your abstract should offer a clear and comprehensive summary of your
article. Please specify the problem under investigation, how your study builds
upon similar research, what methods or theoretical framework guided your
research, and what your findings, conclusions, and limitations are. Please
specify how your findings can inform future research and be careful not to
overstate the significance of your research. Be as specific and accurate as
possible. Please see the above section on our expectations for a Clear,
Specific, and Unbiased Academic approach for more guidance.

Language: Use shorter sentences and active voice where possible. Use relevant
keywords throughout your abstract, especially words that indicate the location,
methods, and themes of your research. Here are examples of how to use keywords
in your abstract. At the same time, be mindful of how you use jargon and define
any acronyms that might be unfamiliar to a general audience. SAGE Open is a
global and interdisciplinary journal. If your abstract is only written for
specialists in your field, you may limit the impact of your research.


HOW DO I CREATE AND UPDATE MY AUTHOR LIST?

When you submit a manuscript to SAGE Open, you will have an opportunity to
create an author list for your article (this is separate from your title page,
but it should match your title page). Make sure all author names and
affiliations are written as they should appear on the contributor form and
published article. For example, if your co-author wants to include their middle
initial or ORCID, please be sure to include this information in your author list
at submission. ORCIDs cannot be added after acceptance. Affiliations should
reflect the institutions authors were at when the research was conducted.

For changes to your author list, such as adding authors, removing authors, or
changing the order of authors, we need all authors to complete an authorship
change form. Authorship change forms must be individually and electronically
signed by all co-authors. Email us at sageopen@sagepub.com with your request and
completed form. You may also change your author list directly in our peer review
system when you upload a revision, but be sure to include a completed authorship
change form in your supplementary files. SAGE Open may decline to change an
author list after an article has been accepted, though we make exceptions for
certain name changes described in SAGE’s name change policy.

SAGE Open uses the ICMJE definition of authorship, which has 4 criteria:

“Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the
acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work;1

AND Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual
content;

AND Final approval of the version to be published;

AND Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that
questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part”

SAGE Open does not consider third-party submissions. Your manuscript can be
submitted by one of your co-authors but not by an assistant or a submission
service. SAGE Open will consider up to 5 manuscripts from the same author or
author group at a time or within one year. If you exceed this limit, you will be
notified and may be asked to choose which manuscripts you would like us to
review. Authors who consistently submit an excessive number of manuscripts will
not have their research considered by SAGE Open for a period of one year. SAGE
Open monitors unusual activity, especially related to third-party submissions.
SAGE Open may reject a manuscript that is flagged for unusual activity that
indicates the manuscript was submitted by a third party.


HOW SHOULD I PREPARE MY MANUSCRIPT FILES?

Author Anonymity: To ensure author anonymity for peer review, please move any
author-identifying information to files separate from the main manuscript. This
means that your author list and affiliations should be on a title page, not in
the main document. Any funding information, acknowledgements, or conflict of
interest statements should similarly be moved to appropriately named, separate
files. Any author-identifying information that must be left in the main document
(such as citations or statements of ethical approval) should be anonymized. To
do this replace the author-identifying text with [Author] or [Anonymized] until
after peer review.

Word Limit: SAGE Open has a limit of 10,000 words. This excludes the abstract
and references but includes any tables that are part of the main document and
are meant to be included in peer review. Revisions can be slightly longer
(100-200 words) if the reviewers specifically request material be added. Our
stronger submissions tend to have more than 2,000 words.

Headers: Please use standard headers to help readers quickly navigate your
article. Common headers for empirical research are: Introduction, Literature
Review, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion.

Footnotes: Please do not use footnotes. SAGE Open publishes articles online in
HTML and PDF formats. Footnotes are not compatible with the HTML format, but we
allow endnotes.

APA Style: Please refer to the APA Style recommendations for references, in-text
citations, and labeling of tables and figures.

Supplementary Material: Supplementary material like large data tables and blank
survey forms should be uploaded as separate files. Supplementary material are
not counted towards word limits, but they do not undergo copyediting. SAGE Open
encourages you to share data through SAGE’s partnerships with Figshare and CODE
Ocean. Please read more about SAGE Open’s data sharing policy and SAGE’s data
sharing FAQs.

Adapting a Dissertation/ Thesis: Please review APA guidance on adapting your
dissertation or thesis into a journal article and follow SAGE Open’s guidelines
for previously published material.


SHOULD I SELECT A SECTION WHEN SUBMITTING MY MANUSCRIPT?

Please select a section when submitting your manuscript. The main SAGE Open
sections and examples of the articles published in each can be found here.  For
interdisciplinary articles, please select the section that best fits your
methods and data. Then, when providing keywords later in the submission process,
select strong keywords that describe the other disciplines your article falls
under.


WHAT HAPPENS AFTER I SUBMIT MY MANUSCRIPT?

To ensure quality and consistency, SAGE Open articles undergo a multi-layered
review process that includes peer reviewers, Article Editors, and our Editorial
Office. Section Editors and Editorial Board Members may act as Article Editors
or may be called on to check an article before a publication decision is issued.
Please see additional details below:

Initial Checks: When manuscripts are submitted, we check them for scope, ethics,
language quality, plagiarism, clarity of figures, number of references (usually
at least 10-15), age of references (at least 5 references from the last 5 years,
with some exceptions for certain disciplines), author list changes, and
authorship concerns (for example, no more than 5 submissions from a single
author in one year). Your manuscript may be unsubmitted back to you for edits or
rejected at this stage if we identify any issues.

Double-Anonymized Peer Review: After initial checks, your manuscript undergoes
peer review. At this stage, we invite reviewers for your manuscript until we
have 2-3 completed evaluation forms. Our peer review is double-anonymized, which
means our authors and reviewers cannot know each other’s identities. The peer
review stage can take varying amounts of time based on the subject of the
manuscript and the availability of reviewers. If a reviewer declines to review a
manuscript, they can give us feedback as to why (for example, whether the
abstract of the article indicates poor language or study quality or whether they
simply do not have time). If enough reviewers decline and indicate the abstract
as the reason, we may choose to reject your manuscript. This is one reason why
your abstract is important. [See What should my abstract include?]

First Decision: After peer review, your review team will recommend a decision to
our Editorial Office. Once the decision is approved, you will receive a decision
letter. Sometimes reviewers leave confidential comments to the Editor that are
not shared with authors.

Revision: To facilitate a faster review, indicate any changes you have made in a
letter to the review team as well as in your revised manuscript. Both your
letter to the reviewers and your revised manuscript should be anonymized. If you
chose not to make some of the requested changes, be sure to explain why. You may
use track changes or a different colored font, but please avoid excessive
highlighting. Large sections of highlighting can make your manuscript difficult
to read. When you upload your new manuscript files to our peer review site,
please delete the old version(s). Be sure to upload a clean copy of the revised
manuscript for us to send to our Production team if your manuscript is accepted
for publication. Some reviewers also prefer to read a clean copy of the
manuscript. If you need an extension on your revision deadline, please email our
Editorial Office at sageopen@sagepub.com. Do not submit your revision as a new
submission. New reviewers may be invited if your manuscript needs additional
reviewer feedback and/or the original review team is no longer available. The
SAGE Open Editorial Office aims to get critical feedback to you as early as
possible, but the revision process may reveal issues that our office and/or your
review team did not previously notice.

Most accepted articles have undergone revisions, but revisions do not guarantee
acceptance.

Publication Decision: If your manuscript does not yet have an assigned Article
Editor, we assign a member of your manuscript’s peer review team or one of our
Section Editors to act as Article Editor. The Article Editor will review your
revision and determine if it needs to be evaluated by the rest of the review
team and/or additional reviewers. Once the Article Editor submits their
recommendation to our Editorial Office, we review their work and issue a final
decision. The SAGE Open Editorial Office has final approval on all publication
decisions.

Pre-Production: After your manuscript is accepted, we will run it through our
plagiarism software one more time to make sure no issues were introduced during
the revision process. If we do not have a clean copy of your manuscript, we will
request one at this stage. Please let our Editorial Office know if you have any
discounts or waivers to apply to your article’s publication fees
(sageopen@sagepub.com) as soon as possible.

Production: Once your manuscript is with Production, you will be able to pay the
Article Processing Charge and complete your contributor form. If you have
questions about either, please contact openaccess@sagepub.com. Please note that
SAGE Open only uses CC-BY licenses, and different license types cannot be
requested through this inbox. Production will send you proofs for your final
approval. This is your final chance to make any minor edits to your manuscript
prior to publication. You should not make any major edits to your manuscript as
it has already completed peer review.

Post-Publication Changes: The version of your article that is first published on
our site is the version of record. Readers should be able to re-visit your
article at a later date and see the same version that was originally published.
If you need to make a small correction and can show sufficient reason for the
correction, a note will be added to the top of your article explaining the
correction (the article itself will not be changed). If there is a more serious
issue with your article, we can consider a retraction. This will also be a note
at the top of your manuscript. We would only consider removing an article from
our journal website if there is a serious privacy concern and removing the
article is the only way to address it. For more information please reach out to
sageopen@sagepub.com.


WHAT IS THE FEE FOR PUBLICATION (ARTICLE PROCESSING CHARGE)?

SAGE Open follows a gold open access model, which means articles are free for
anyone to read online but authors must pay a $1,500 fee after acceptance to
cover the costs of review and publication. SAGE Open does not have a submission
fee. Authors often pay the post-acceptance Article Processing Charge (APC) with
the help of their institutions or research funding organizations. Please
consider asking your institution about open access funding options.

SAGE Open offers 50% discounts for former Article Editors. To use this discount,
please email sageopen@sagepub.com immediately after your manuscript is accepted
and specify which manuscript you worked on as an Article Editor. Unfortunately,
we cannot stack discounts, so if you were an Article Editor more than once, you
can spread your discounts across different articles, but you cannot apply them
to the same article. 

SAGE participates in Research4Life and automatically grants full waivers to
articles whose contact authors reside in Research4Life groups A and B.

If you do not qualify for a waiver through Research4Life and you are unable to
afford the publication fee, please email sageopen@sagepub.com immediately after
acceptance. SAGE Open can consider need-based discounts and waivers.


HOW CAN I INCREASE THE IMPACT OF MY RESEARCH?

Help other researchers find your article by using keywords in your title and
abstract. [See What should my abstract include?]

When writing your keyword list, consider including keywords that describe the
methods you used or the places where you carried out your research.

At the revision stage, you will be asked for a plain language summary that we
can use to promote your article. Take this opportunity to describe your findings
and their relevance in simple language that non-specialists will understand.

Once your article is published, we encourage you to tweet about your article and
tag us @sageopenjournal so we can share your tweet.


WHERE CAN I GO FOR MORE INFORMATION?

For more information, please review the full SAGE Open Manuscript Submission
Guidelines and the SAGE Open Knowledge Base.


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