You are here

SAGE Open

SAGE Open


eISSN: 21582440 | ISSN: 21582440 | Current volume: 13 | Current issue: 4 Frequency: Quarterly

Sage Open is an open access publication from Sage. It publishes peer-reviewed, original research and review articles in an open access format. Articles may span the full spectrum of the social and behavioral sciences and the humanities.

Sage Open seeks to be the world’s premier open access outlet for academic research. As such, unlike traditional journals, Sage Open does not limit content due to page budgets or thematic significance. Rather, Sage Open evaluates the scientific and research methods of each article for validity and accepts articles solely on the basis of the research. This approach allows readers greater access and gives them the power to determine the significance of each article through article-level usage metrics. Likewise, by not restricting papers to a narrow discipline, Sage Open facilitates the discovery of the connections between papers, whether within or between disciplines.

This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Why publish in Sage Open:

  1. Global distribution of your research via the award-winning Sage Journals online platform
  2. Professional copyediting and typesetting of your article will ensure quality
  3. Continuous-publication online format ensures rapid publication upon acceptance

Who should submit manuscripts to Sage Open?

  • Authors who want their articles to receive free, broad, and global distribution on a powerful, highly discoverable publishing platform
  • Authors who want their articles branded and marketed by a world-leading social science publisher
  • Authors who want or need their articles to be open access because of university or government mandates
  • Authors who want their articles to receive quality reviews and efficient production

To view Sage Open’s list of Editorial Board members please visit http://sgo.sagepub.com/editorial-board.

Manuscript submissions will be handled online through Sage Track, Sage’s web-based peer review and submission system, powered by ScholarOne ManuscriptsTM. Visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/sageopen for full manuscript submission guidelines.

Please direct any inquiries to sageopen@sagepub.com.

This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Open access article processing charge (APC) information

The article processing charge for this journal is 1600 USD. The article processing charge for Monographs is 5000 USD.

The APC is payable when a manuscript is accepted after peer review, before it is published. The APC is subject to taxes where applicable. Please see further details here.
 

Sage Open publishes peer-reviewed, original research and review articles in an open access format. Accepted articles span the full extent of the social and behavioral sciences and the humanities.

Sage Open aims to be the world's most important social science journal. The journal evaluates the research methods of each article for validity and accepts articles solely on the basis of the research. Likewise, by not restricting papers to a narrow discipline, SAGE Open facilitates the discovery of the connections between papers, whether within or between disciplines.

Sage Open offers authors a continuous-publication format and global distribution for their research via Sage Journals Online. All articles are professionally copyedited and typeset to ensure quality.

Those who should submit to Sage Open include:

  • Authors who want their articles to receive quality reviews and efficient production.
  • Authors who want their articles to receive free, broad, and global distribution on a powerful, highly discoverable publishing platform.
  • Authors who want their articles branded and marketed by a world-leading social science publisher.
  • Authors who want or need their articles to be open access because of university or government mandates.
  • Clarivate Analytics: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI)
  • Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
  • ERIC (Education Resources Information Center)
  • ProQuest
  • SCOPUS
  • This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics.

    This Journal recommends that authors follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

    Please read the guidelines below then visit the journal’s submission site https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/sageopen to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.

    For additional guidance, please refer to our Sage Open Author Guidelines.

    Sage Open will only consider up to five articles submitted by the same author at one time. Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Sage Open will be reviewed.

    Sage Open will reject any manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves or where any systematic manipulation of the peer review or publication process has been suspected. The journal reserves the right to enforce this policy at any point of the peer review or publication process.

    As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you. 

    An article processing charge (APC) of $1600 USD will be payable on acceptance if the manuscript is accepted after peer review.

    Please Read the Manuscript Submission Guidelines below before submitting your manuscript here:
    SUBMIT MANUSCRIPT

     

    1. Open Access
    2. Article processing charge (APC)
    3. What do we publish?
      3.1 Aims & scope
      3.2 Article types
      3.3 Writing your paper
      3.3.1 Making your article discoverable 
      3.4 Plain Language Summaries
    4. Editorial policies
      4.1 Peer Review Policy
      4.2 Authorship
      4.3 Acknowledgements
      4.4 Funding
      4.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
      4.6 Research ethics and patient consent
      4.7 Research data
    5. Publishing policies
      5.1 Publication ethics
      5.1.1 Plagiarism
      5.1.2 Prior publication
      5.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
    6. Preparing your manuscript
      6.1 Word processing formats
      6.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
      6.3 Supplemental material
      6.4 Reference style
      6.5 English language editing services
    7. Submitting your manuscript
      7.1 How to submit your manuscript
      7.2 Title, keywords and abstracts
      7.3 Information required for completing your submission
      7.4 ORCID
      7.5 Information required for completing your submission
      7.6 Permissions
    8. On acceptance and publication
      8.1 Sage Production
      8.2 Continuous publication
      8.3 Promoting your article
    9. Further information

    1. Open Access

    Sage Open is an open access, peer-reviewed journal. Each article accepted by peer review is made freely available online immediately upon publication, is published under a Creative Commons license and will be hosted online in perpetuity. Publication costs of the journal are covered by the collection of article processing charges which are paid by the funder, institution or author of each manuscript upon acceptance. There is no charge for submitting a paper to the journal.

    For general information on open access at Sage please visit the Open Access page or view our Open Access FAQs.

    Back to top

    2. Article processing charge (APC)

    If, after peer review, your manuscript is accepted for publication, a one-time article processing charge (APC) is payable. This APC covers the cost of publication and ensures that your article will be freely available online in perpetuity under a Creative Commons license.

    An article processing charge (APC) of $1600 USD (plus tax where applicable) will be payable on acceptance if the manuscript is accepted after peer review. The article processing charge for Monographs is $5000 USD. The APC is based on the date of original peer review submission regardless of the article’s date of acceptance. 

    Back to top

    3. What do we publish?

    3.1 Aims & scope

    Before submitting your manuscript to Sage Open, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.

    3.2 Article types

    Sage Open welcomes the submission of original research articles and literature reviews.

    3.3 Writing your paper

    The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice and on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance their article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.

    3.3.1 Making your article discoverable 

    When writing up your paper, think about how you can make it discoverable. The title,keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article through search engines such as Google. For information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords, have a look at this page on the Gateway: How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online

    3.4 Plain Language Summaries

    A plain language summary (PLS) is an optional addition that can be submitted for any article type that requires an abstract. The plain language title (approx. 50 words) and plain language summary (approx. 300 words) should describe the article using non-technical language, making it accessible to a wider network of readers. More information and guidance on how to write a PLS can be found on our Author Gateway.

    The PLS publishes directly below the scientific abstract and are open access making it available online for anyone to read. Peer review of the PLS will be conducted following our PLS reviewer guidelines. When submitting, authors should enter their plain language title and plain language summary into the box provided in the submission system when prompted. The PLS does not need to be provided in the manuscript text or as a separate file. If you are not submitting a PLS with your submission, please enter “N/A” in each box.

    If you need professional help writing your Plain Language Summary, please visit our Author Services portal.

    Back to top

    4. Editorial policies

    4.1 Peer review policy

    The journal’s policy is to have manuscripts reviewed by two expert reviewers. Sage Open utilizes a double-anonymized peer review process in which the reviewer and authors’ names and information are withheld from the other. In order to facilitate an anonymized review process, we request that there not be any author identifying information within the main document of an "in progress" submission. Rather than removing citations, we recommend that authors change their names to "anonymized" within the in-text citations and references section. Articles that are accepted for publication with anonymized information will be corrected during the production stage of this process. The title page and author information also will be added before the article is published. All manuscripts are reviewed as rapidly as possible,while maintaining rigor. Reviewers and Article Editors submit comments and recommendations to the Sage Open Editorial Office who then make the final recommendation.

    The approach of Sage Open's peer review process differs from that of traditional journals. Rather than assessing the relative 'importance' of a given article to its respective field, peer review will instead focus solely on determining the quality of research methodology, that is, determining whether the research was conducted properly, the discussion accurately summarizes the research, and the conclusion follows logically from the research. Readers and the academic community at large will then have the power to continue the peer review process after online publication, helping to determine the significance of each article through the ability to share a discuss articles freely and through article-level usage metrics.

    The Editor or members of the Editorial Board may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for possible publication in the journal. In these cases, the peer review process will be managed by alternative members of the Board and the submitting Editor / Board member will have no involvement in the decision-making process.

    Sage Open is committed to delivering high-quality peer review for your paper, and as such has partnered with Publons. Publons is a third-party service that seeks to track, verify and give credit for peer review. Reviewers for Sage Open can opt in to Publons in order to claim their reviews or have them automatically verified and added to their reviewer profile. Reviewers claiming credit for their review will be associated with the relevant journal, but the article name, reviewer’s decision and the content of their review is not published on the site. For more information visit the Publons website.

    4.2 Authorship

    All parties who have made a substantive contribution to the article should be listed as authors. Principal authorship, authorship order, and other publication credits should be based on the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their status. A student is usually listed as principal author on any multiple-authored publication that substantially derives from the student’s dissertation or thesis.

    Sage Open will only consider up to five articles submitted by an author or author group at one time. Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Sage Open will be reviewed.

    Sage reserves the right to reject articles that can be found for sale online.

           Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.

    4.3 Acknowledgements

    All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help or a department chair who provided only general support.

    4.3.1 Third party submissions

    Sage Open will reject any manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves or where any systematic manipulation of the peer review or publication process has been suspected. The journal reserves the right to enforce this policy at any point of the peer review or publication process.

    4.4 Funding

    Sage Open requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

    4.5 Declaration of conflicting interests

    Sage Open encourages authors to include a declaration of any conflicting interests and recommends you review the good practice guidelines on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.

    Please include any declaration in file separate from the main text, after any acknowledgements, under the heading 'Conflicts of Interest.' If no declaration is made the following will be printed under this heading in your article: ‘None declared’. Alternatively, you may wish to state that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’.

    When making a declaration the disclosure information must be specific and include any financial relationship that all authors of the article has with any sponsoring organization and the for profit interests the organization represents, and with any for-profit product discussed or implied in the text of the article.

    Any commercial or financial involvements that might represent an appearance of a conflict of interest need to be additionally disclosed in the covering letter accompanying your article to assist the Editor in evaluating whether sufficient disclosure has been made within the Declaration of Conflicting Interests provided in the article.

    4.6 Research ethics and patient consent

    Research involving human subjects must be conducted according to the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki.

    Submitted manuscripts should conform to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, and all papers reporting animal and/or human studies must state in the methods section that the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board provided (or waived) approval. Please ensure that you have provided the full name and institution of the review committee, in addition to the approval number.

    For research articles, authors are also required to state in the methods section whether participants provided informed consent and whether the consent was written or verbal.

    Information on informed consent to report individual cases or case series should be included in the manuscript text. A statement is required regarding whether written informed consent for patient information and images to be published was provided by the patient(s) or a legally authorized representative. Please do not submit the patient’s actual written informed consent with your article, as this in itself breaches the patient’s confidentiality. The Journal requests that you confirm to us, in writing, that you have obtained written informed consent but the written consent itself should be held by the authors/investigators themselves, for example in a patient’s hospital record. The confirmatory letter may be uploaded with your submission as a separate file.

    Please also refer to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Protection of Research Participants

    4.7 Research Data

    The journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages

    Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:

    • share your research data in a relevant public data repository
    • include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, we encourage you to consider using the statement to explain why it cannot be shared.
    • cite this data in your research

    Sage Open is running a trial with Code Ocean. Authors can upload the code associated to their published article so that readers can view and execute it. The platform, which is based on Docker, hosts the code and data in the necessary computational environment and allows users to re-run the analysis in the cloud and reproduce the results, bypassing the need to install the software. A link to the code, data, and computational environment will be included in the journal article enabling readers to seamlessly access and reproduce the code or rerun it against their own inputs. Please visit this page for more information and instructions for how to utilize this service for your article. If you wish to use this service, please upload your code as soon as possible after receiving an acceptance letter, to ensure the code can be linked to your article during the production process.

    Back to top

    5. Publishing policies

    5.1 Publication ethics

    Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway. Journal policy prohibits an author from submitting the same manuscript for consideration by another journal and does not allow publication of a manuscript that has been published in whole or in part by another journal.

    5.1.1 Plagiarism

    Sage Open and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarized other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.

    5.1.2 Prior publication

    If material has been previously published, it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.

    5.2 Contributor's publishing agreement

    Before publication Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage Open publishes manuscripts under Creative Commons licenses. The standard license for the journal is Creative Commons by Attribution (CC BY), which allows others to re-use the work without permission as long as the work is properly referenced. For more information, you are advised to visit Sage's OA licenses page.

    Alternative license arrangements are available, for example, to meet particular funder mandates, made at the author’s request. 

    Back to top

    6. Preparing your manuscript

    6.1 Word processing formats

    The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. Templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.

    6.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics

    For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines.

    Figures supplied in color will appear in color online.

    6.3 Supplemental material

    This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full-text of the article. These will be subjected to peer-review alongside the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files, which can be found within our Manuscript Submission Guidelines page.

    6.4 Reference style

    Sage Open adheres to the APA reference style. Please review the guidelines on APA to ensure
    your manuscript conforms to this reference style.

    If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the APA output file here.

    6.5 English language editing services

    Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Language Services. Visit Sage Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information. 

    Back to top

    7. Submitting your manuscript

    7.1 How to submit your manuscript

    Sage Open is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/sageopen to login and submit your article online.

    IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.

    7.2 Title, keywords and abstracts

    Please supply a title, short title, an abstract and keywords to accompany your article. The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article online through online search engines such as Google. Please refer to the information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords by visiting the Sage Journal Author Gateway for guidelines on How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.

    Please be sure to write your titles and abstracts with a global, interdisciplinary audience in mind.

    Articles should not exceed 10,000 words (excluding references) and may present original research or literature reviews. The word count (which includes all text including the abstract, manuscript, notes, tables, figures, etc.) should appear on the title page.

    Manuscripts should include an abstract of approximately 150 words, and, beneath the abstract, 4-5 keywords. When preparing your abstract, we suggest you describe the purpose of your research, the methods or approaches you used, your results, and your conclusions.

    All manuscripts should follow the style guidelines set forth in the sixth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. 

    7.3 Information required for completing your submission

    Provide full contact details for the corresponding author including email, mailing address and telephone numbers. Academic affiliations are required for all co-authors. These details should be presented separately to the main text of the article to facilitate anonymous peer review.

    You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).

    7.4 ORCID

    As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.

    The collection of ORCID IDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this journal. If you already have an ORCID iD you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID iD will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID iD is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.

    If you do not already have an ORCID ID please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.

    We are not able to add ORCID ID's after acceptance.

    7.5 Information required for completing your submission

    You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. The affiliation listed on the manuscript should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a manuscript note at the end of the paper. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).

    7.6 Permissions

    Authors are responsible for obtaining permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please visit our Frequently Asked Questions on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.

    Back to top

    8. On acceptance and publication

    If your paper is accepted for publication after peer review, you will first be asked to complete the contributor’s publishing agreement. Once your manuscript files have been checked for Sage Production, the corresponding author will be asked to pay the article processing charge (APC) via a payment link. Your article will be prepared for publication and can appear online within 5-6 weeks. 

    8.1 Sage Production

    Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will made available to the corresponding author via our editing portal Sage Edit, or by email to the corresponding author and should be returned promptly.  Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.

    8.2 Online publication

    One of the many benefits of publishing your research in an open access journal is the speed to publication. With no page count constraints, your article will be published online in a fully citable form with a DOI number as soon as it has completed the production process. At this time it will be completely free to view and download for all. 

    8.3 Promoting your article

    Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.

    Back to top

    9. Further information

    Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the Manuscript Submission process should be sent to the Sage Open editorial office as follows:

    sageopen@sagepub.com

    Back to top