Submissions

Authors Guidelines

• Submission and Peer Review Process
• Preparing the Manuscript
• After Acceptance

Submission and Peer-review policy

Once the submission materials have been prepared following the Author Guidelines, manuscripts should be submitted online at the ScholarOne platform.

Please note that PS&P uses Urkund to screen articles for unoriginal material. By submitting a manuscript to Public Sciences & Policies, authors agree to originality checks during the peer-review and production processes.

For help with submissions, please contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

This journal is free of charge for submission and production. 

Peer-review Process

All research articles in this journal have undergone rigorous double-blind peer review, based on initial editor screening and anonymized refereeing by two anonymous referees.

Papers will only be sent to review if the Editorial Collective board or Associate Editors determine that the paper meets the appropriate quality and relevance requirements.

Ethics Responsibilities

Public Sciences & Policies is committed to ethics and high standard quality in its publications. We support standards of expected ethical behaviour for all parties involved in publishing in our journal. PS&P publishing policies are inspired by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines on appeals to editorial decisions and complaints about the journal´s editorial management of the peer-review process.

Duties of the Related Parties

Editor Duties:

Publication decision: The journal’s editor is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. The editor is guided by the policies of the journal’s editorial collective board and constrained by legal requirements. The editor may consult with the editorial board or reviewers in decision making.

Fair play: The editor should evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.

Confidentiality: The editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest: The editor must not use unpublished information in his/her research without the author's express written consent. The editor should refuse manuscripts in which the editor has conflicts of interest.

Involvement and cooperation in the investigation: The editor should take reasonable responsive measures when presented with ethical complaints concerning a submitted manuscript or published paper.

 

Reviewers Duties:

Contribution to editorial decisions: Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions, and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper.

Promptness: Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process.

Confidentiality: Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others.

Standards of objectivity: Reviews should be conducted objectively, and referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Acknowledgement of source: Peer reviewers should identify relevant published work that the authors have not cited. The peer reviewer should also call to the editor’s attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest: Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest.

 

Authors Duties:

Reporting Standards: Authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed and an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain enough detail and references to permit others to continue the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable for Public Sciences & Policies.

Originality and Plagiarism: The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used secondary sources, the work and/or words of others, this has been appropriately cited or quoted. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable for Public Sciences & Policies.

Duplicate Submission/Publication: Authors are required to declare upon submission that the manuscript is not under consideration elsewhere. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal or publishing the same article in different journals constitute unethical publishing behaviour, and it is unacceptable for Public Sciences & Policies.

Acknowledgement of Sources: Proper acknowledgement of the work of others must always be provided. Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work. Information obtained privately, as in conversation, correspondence, or discussion with third parties, must not be used or reported without explicit, written permission from the source. Information obtained in confidential services, such as refereeing manuscripts or grant applications, must not be used without the author's explicit written permission of the work involved in these services.

Authorship of the Paper: Authorship should be limited to those who have significantly contributed to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where others have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors are included in the paper, have seen and approved the paper's final version, and have agreed to its submission for publication.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest: All authors should disclose any conflict of interest that might influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be mentioned.

Fundamental errors in published works: When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her published work, the author must promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.

 

Preparing the Manuscript

PS&P now offers a template to simplify the submission process.

Structure:

- Your manuscript: this should be an editable file including text, figures, and tables.

- The article should contain the title, abstract up to 250 words, introduction, methods and materials, results, conclusions, and references.

- Figures and tables should have legends. Figures should be uploaded in the highest resolution possible—place figures and tables in the text rather than at the end of the manuscript.

- Supporting information should be submitted in separate files.

Word Limits

Please include a word count for your article.

The word limits include all the words in your main document, including the title, tables, and references. Appendices to be published online only can be excluded from the word count.

The word limits are:

- Articles: 8 000 words

- Review Articles: 6 000 – 8 000 words

- Essays: 3000 words

- Book review: 1 000 – 2000 words

Articles

Original work is a theoretical or empirical-based manuscript reporting new research findings according to the aims & scope of this journal and making a significant contribution to knowledge in social sciences and policy studies.

Review Articles

Also known as a literature review, a review article must provide critical insights on the existing literature from a field of research. It should clearly state the research gap in the field based on the foundations of existing data available. It includes diverse methodologies, but not only: scoping review, systematic review, literature review, snowball review, among others.

Essays

We also publish critical essays covering social and political issues in concise, informed, topical commentaries on recent events relevant to the study and understanding of public policy. This offers an ideal forum for a critical discussion of notable theoretical or methodological advances in the field.

Book Reviews

It is a descriptive, critical and evaluative review of a book.

Languages

The journal publishes original work in Portuguese, English, and Spanish.

- Speeling can be US or UK English so long as the usage is consistent

- Spelling of Portuguese and Spanish can be either European or Latin American so long as the usage is consistent

Please, do not mix language usage.

 

References

Please use this reference guide when preparing your article.

References may be submitted in the APA seventh edition format. Please review the citations policy.

EXAMPLES OF APA 7th edition:

Type of Document	Example
BOOK:	Pollitt, C. & Bouckaert, G. (2004). Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis. Oxford University Press.
BOOK CHAPTER:	Pereirinha, J. A. & Pereira, E. (2021). Os custos, a eficácia e a eficiência dos mínimos sociais em Portugal. In J. A. Pereirinha & E. Pereira (coord.), Regime de Mínimos Sociais em Portugal (pp. 431-475). Almedina.
SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE:	Sebastião, S. P. (2012). O ativismo like: as redes sociais e a mobilização de causas. Sociedade e Cultura, 15(1), https://doi.org/10.5216/sec.v15i1.20673
NEWSPAPER ARTICLE:	Carey, B. (2019, March 22). Can we get better at forgetting? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/health/memory-forgetting-psychology.html
REPORT:	National Cancer Institute. (2019). Taking time: Support for people with cancer (NIH Publication No. 18-2059). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health. https://www.cancer.gov/publications/patient-education/takingtime.pdf
WEBSITE CONTENT:	Bologna, C. (2019, October 31). Why some people with anxiety love watching horror movies. HuffPost. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/anxiety-love-watching-horror-movies_l_5d277587e4b02a5a5d57b59e

 

NOTE: If the manuscript, figures, or tables are difficult for you to read, they will also be difficult for the editors and reviewers, and the editorial office will send it back to you for revision. Your manuscript may also be sent back to you for revision if the quality of the language, in either Portuguese, English, or Spanish, is poor.

Important: the journal applies a double-blind peer-review process. Please anonymize your manuscript and supply a separate title, author’s information, and contact page file.

After Acceptance

First Look

If not in the submission, an editable version of the manuscript must be supplied after acceptance. The editorial office will assess your files to ensure they are ready for production. You may be contacted if any updates or final files are required. Otherwise, your paper will be sent to the production team.

Copyright

1. The content of the research is from the total responsibility of the authors.
2. The works published at Public Sciences & Policies can be reproduced totally or partially since the source is cited.
3. The works sent to Public Sciences & Policies must be original and unpublished.
4. The author has the copyright of the articles published in the journal. The rights for the first publication belong to Public Sciences & Policies.
5. The journal may reproduce the works published in other media for greater dissemination.
6. The authors accept the open-access policy by submitting papers to this journal since Public Sciences & Policies publishes in free open access.
7. The work will not be accepted if any illegality, fraud or unethical behaviour is detected.
8. The personal data provided by the authors will only be used for the respective publication

Proofs

Author(s) will receive a proofreading version of the manuscript with queries for correction. Once accepted, author(s) may only change what is required from the queries and return to the editorial assistance for production and online publication of the article.

Article Promotion Support

Some best practices recommendations for science dissemination.

Options for Sharing	Descriptions
Email	Add your latest publication with the link in your email signature
Social Media	Post about your article on social media. Be sure to keep alert for conversations on your post. Add your institution, research centre, and keywords hashtags or tags. Ask your institution to reshare the post in their official account.
Blog	If you have a blog, consider posting about your article. A brief indication of the main argument can motivate a reader.
Online	Update your online profiles by adding the link to the publication. Upload the published article in your profiles.