Manuscript file

Manuscripts should be typed in a 12-point font and double spaced. Every page in the manuscript should contain a short running head. Pages should have standard measures (21.0 by 29.7 centimetres or 8.5 by 11 inches), and include regular 2,54 centimetres (1 inch) margins. Manuscript length should be usually limited to 40 pages inclusive of references, non-supplementary appendices, tables, and figures. Manuscripts that do not align with these guidelines will be returned to the authors without review.

The preferred format for your manuscript is MSword. You do not need to follow a template, but please ensure your heading levels are clear, and the sections clearly defined.

The LaTeX files are also accepted. A LaTeX template is available on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.

Your article title, keywords, and abstract all contribute to its position in search engine results, directly affecting the number of people who see your work. For details of what you can do to influence this, visit How to help readers find your article online.

Title

Your manuscript’s title should be concise, descriptive, unambiguous, accurate, and reflect the precise contents of the manuscript. A descriptive title that includes the topic of the manuscript makes an article more findable in the major indexing services.

Abstract

You do NOT need to include an abstract in your manuscript file; however, you will be prompted to provide an abstract in the online submission form during the manuscript submission process. Please include an unstructured abstract of 150 words that concisely states the purpose of the research, major findings, and conclusions.

Keywords

You do NOT need to include key words in your manuscript file; however, you will be prompted to provide a minimum of 3-5 keywords in the online submission form during the manuscript submission process. Keywords should be as specific as possible to the research topic.

Artwork, figures, and other graphics

For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures, and graphs in electronic format, please read Sage’s artwork guidelines.

Figures supplied in color will appear in color online.

Please ensure that you have obtained any necessary 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 see the Frequently Asked Questions page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.

Tables and figures Useful tables and figures do not duplicate the text; they supplement and clarify it. Because tables and figures are considerably more expensive to prepare for publication than text, please carefully consider what they add to your manuscript’s impact.

Place each table or figure on a separate page. Number tables and figures consecutively (one series for tables, one for figures) from the beginning to the end of the article. 

Table checklist:

• Center the word Table (in title case) and the number of the table (Arabic numeral) at the top of the page.
  Center the title (in title case) under the table heading.
  Report the results of only one type of analysis in each table.
• Range headings across the top of the table. Do not add new headings in the body of the table.
• Do not use abbreviations or computer code names for variables. Also, please do not use table notes. Use the same names you used in the text.
• Use only two decimal places for statistics (except p-values, see next).
• All reported statistical estimates (e.g., regression weights, mean differences) must have corresponding standard errors, and inferential statistics (t, z, or F, depending on which is most pertinent) with precise p values reported (e.g., p = .072, rounded to the third decimal place) rather than in star notation (*) or statistical significant cutoff bands (e.g., p < .05).
• For most articles, the first table should report descriptive statistics, including means, standard deviations, and a full correlation matrix. Correlations should fill the lower-left corner of the page.
• To distinguish some numerals (for instance, to indicate which loadings define a factor), boldface type can be used. Do not use this option when other conventions, such as footnotes, are sufficient.
• Use plain type in capital and small letters—no italic or bold, except as noted above.
• Designate a general footnote that explains the whole table or a column, row, or item with a superscript small letter (a, b, c).

Figure checklist:

• Center the word Figure (in title case) and the number of the figure (Arabic numeral) at the top of the page.
• Center the title (in title case) under the Figure heading.
• Spell out all words in the body of the figure.
• Use the same variable names you used in the tables and text.
• Avoid stacking words or numbers (listing characters vertically).
• Make sure lines and graphic elements are crisp and clear.
• Use letters for footnotes, as in tables.

Title page

To ensure fair and anonymous peer review, your manuscript must be fully anonymized. Please ensure any identifying information is removed from the main manuscript document and included on the Title Page instead. Do not include any author names in the manuscript file name and remove names from headers and footers. This version of the manuscript will be sent to the peer reviewers. The Title Page will not be sent to peer reviewers. See the Sage Journal Author Gateway for detailed guidance on making an anonymous submission.

The Title Page should include:

• Article title
• The full list of authors including names and affiliations of each
• The listed affiliation 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 note at the end of the manuscript – please indicate this on the title page.
• All persons eligible for authorship must be included at the time of submission (please see the authorship section for more information).
• Contact information for the corresponding author: name, institutional address, phone, email
• Acknowledgments section
• Declaration of conflicting interest
• Funding statement
• Ethical approval and informed consent statements
• Data availability statement
• Any other identifying information related to the authors and/or their institutions, funders, approval committees, etc, that might compromise anonymity.

Acknowledgements

Do not place acknowledgements into the manuscript, as these could compromise the blind review process. If authors wish to acknowledge the contribution of individuals or institutions that are not authors, they are encouraged to do so. At the time of submission the website offers a place in which acknowledgements can be directly typed. Furthermore, you are invited to include that info in the title page. It is best practice to obtain consent from non-author contributors who you are acknowledging in your manuscript.

Writing assistance and third party submissions: if you have received any writing or editing assistance from a third-party, for example a specialist communications company, this must be clearly stated in the Acknowledgements section and in the covering letter. Please see the Sage Author Gateway for what information to include in your Acknowledgements section. If your submission is being made on your behalf by someone who is not listed as an author, for example the third-party who provided writing/editing assistance, you must state this in the Acknowledgements and also in your covering letter. Please note that the journal editor reserves the right to not consider submissions made by a third party rather than by the author/s themselves.

Statements and declarations

To ensure proper anonymization, please include a section with the heading ‘Statements and Declarations’ on your title page, after the Acknowledgements section [and Author Contributions section if applicable] including each of the sub-headings listed below. If a declaration is not applicable to your submission, you must still include the heading and state ‘Not applicable’ underneath. Please note that you may be asked to justify why a declaration was not applicable to your submission by the Editorial Office. This information will be added to the end of your published paper.

Ethical considerations

Please include your ethics approval statements under this heading, even if you have already included ethics approval information in your methods section. If ethical approval was not required, you need to explicitly state this. You can find information on what to say in your ethical statements as well as example statements on our Publication ethics and research integrity policies page.

All papers reporting studies involving human participants, human data or human tissue must state that the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board approved the study, or waived the requirement for approval, providing the full name and institution of the review committee in addition to the approval number. If applicable, please also include this information in the Methods section of your manuscript.

A submitted manuscript should not be under review for publication in another outlet (e.g., book chapter, journal) while it is under review at BRQ. However, BRQ does accept submissions of papers that have been accepted for publication in a shortened form in Best Papers Proceedings (or similar). Authors should also use the cover letter to disclose their papers published in other journals and under review that are related to the current submission. Please, describe in detail in your cover letter the precise nature of the overlap.

BRQ acknowledges the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in academic research and writing. Please check the Sage Artificial Intelligence Policyfor any doubts here. While AI may significantly aid the research process, authors must take full responsibility for their manuscripts.

Consent to participate

Please include any participant consent information under this heading and state whether informed consent to participate was written or verbal. If the requirement for informed consent to participate has been waived by the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board (i.e. where it has been deemed that consent would be impossible or impracticable to obtain), please state this. If this is not applicable to your manuscript, please state ‘Not applicable’ in this section. More information and example statements can be found on our Publication ethics and research integrity policies page.

Consent for publication

Submissions containing any data from an individual person (including individual details, images or videos) must include a statement confirming that informed consent for publication was provided by the participant(s) or a legally authorized representative. Non-essential identifying details should be omitted. Please do not submit the participant’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 to publish 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 in addition to the statement confirming that consent to publish was obtained within the manuscript text. If this is not applicable to your manuscript, please state ‘Not applicable’ in this section.

Declaration of conflicting interest

The journal requires a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors so that a statement can be included in your article. For guidance on conflict of interest statements, see our policy on conflicting interest declarations and the ICMJE recommendations.

If no conflict exists, your statement should read: ‘The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article’.

Funding statement

All articles need to include a funding statement, under a separate heading, even if you did not receive funding. You’ll find guidance and examples on our Funding page.

Reference style, citations and appendices

Citations 

Giving proper credit to the sources of original ideas and previous work is an important aspect of good scholarship. Inappropriate or inaccurate citations do not do justice to the authors cited and can be misleading to readers.

A tendency and a desire to cite one's own previous or current work is understandable. However, excessive use of self-citations is frowned upon. When submitting your manuscript for publication consideration, use self-citations cautiously. Minimize references that would reveal the manuscript's authorship. Doing this is important for protecting the double-blind review process.

Citations should be made in the text by enclosing the cited authors' names and the year of the work cited in parentheses. The journal follows the APA reference style. View the APA guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms. Every in-text citation must have a corresponding citation in the reference list and vice versa. Corresponding citations must have identical spelling and year. Citations to online first versions of manuscripts (manuscripts already accepted after a review process) are completely ok; however, citation to working papers (without review process) are generally discouraged.

References 

Include an alphabetically ordered list of the works you have cited in your article. This list should begin on a separate page headed REFERENCES. As this is a major heading, the word “REFERENCES” should be centered, in all capital letters, and bold-faced.

Appendices

Non-supplementary appendices present lengthy but essential methodological details. Presentation should be concise but not abbreviated. Each appendix should be treated as a major heading. The title of each appendix should be typed in all capital letters, centered, and bold-faced. Multiple appendices are APPENDIX A, APPENDIX B, etc. A single appendix does not require a letter.

Online Supplement / Online Appendix

Supplements and online appendices (i.e. appendices that are not to appear as part of the main article) should be uploaded as “Supplemental Material” (separate files in the submission process).

Label the online supplement as such so it can be easily identified. Upload the online supplement as a separate file and designate it as the main document to appear at the end of the paper.

The journal will consider submissions of manuscripts that have been posted on preprint servers.

Please enter the preprint DOI in the designated field when submitting your manuscript. We advise that you inform the Journal Editorial office about your posted preprint at submission.

Note that you should not post an updated version of your manuscript on a preprint server while it is being peer reviewed.

Learn more about our preprint policy.

• ORCID ID of the submitting author.
  • It is strongly encouraged that all co-authors ensure their ORCID IDs are linked to their accounts in the submission system prior to article acceptance, as this is the only way to have their ORCID ID present on the published article. ORCID IDs cannot be added to manuscripts after acceptance/publication. Please note that each co-author must log in to the submission system to add their own ORCID ID to their account. To add an ORCID ID, edit your account, click the link when prompted, and sign into your ORCID account to validate your ID. You will then be redirected back to the submission system and your ORCID ID will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata.
  • Please create an ORCID ID if you do not already have one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.