Submission guidelines
Submit manuscript
Please read the guidelines in full before submitting your manuscript.
Manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.
This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics.
The 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).
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 author responsibilities section on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.
We also encourage you to familiarize yourself with our Editorial Policies and our Publication Ethics Policies.
Sage Publishing disseminates high-quality research and engaged scholarship globally, and we are committed to diversity and inclusion in publishing. We encourage submissions and peer review from a diverse range of authors and reviewers from across all countries and backgrounds. Read our diversity, equity, and inclusion pledge.
There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this journal. Open access options are available – see below.
Please read the guidelines below then submit your manuscript here.
Access: Subscription
Accepts preprints? No
Identity transparency: Double anonymized
There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this journal.
Figures submitted in color will be published in color in the online version of the journal at no cost. For specifically requested colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Sage after receipt of your accepted article.
Optional open access publishing is available for a fee via the Sage Choice program, and Open Access agreements, where authors can publish open access either discounted or free of charge depending on the agreement with Sage. Find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. Open Access agreement eligibility is determined by the corresponding author’s affiliation matching an agreement at acceptance. For more information on Open Access publishing options at Sage please visit Sage Open Access.
For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines and Publishing Policies.
Open access fees do not cover page or color charges and are charged separately.
Your article must be within the scope of the journal and be of sufficient quality. If not, it will not be reviewed. Please read the journal’s Aims and Scope to see if your article is appropriate.
The manuscript must be your original work, you must have the rights to the work, and you must have obtained and be able to supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, including figures, illustrations, tables, lengthy quotations, or other material previously published elsewhere.
Article types
Please visit the Sage Journal Author Gateway for guidance on producing visual and/or video abstracts.
Articles submitted to the journal are normally 7000 to 9500 words in length. This word limit includes all text in the article (abstract, title page, keywords, acknowledgements, references, and any appendices - Abstracts should be a maximum of 250 words.) as well as visual aids such as maps, images, or figures. Visual aids are calculated based on their size relative to a journal page, which is 500 words (eg, a half-page figure would count as 250 words). Submissions that exceed this word limit may be returned for reduction prior to review.
A title page with full contact details (including email addresses) of all authors, author biographies and any acknowledgements you would like to make should be uploaded separately from the main document. Identifying information should not be included in your main document or any other uploaded file besides the title page.
Theme Issue and Short Symposium Proposals
Politics & Space publishes a limited number of innovative and distinctive theme issues and short symposia each year. Please send proposals to Katie Nudd (katie.nudd@fl.nudd.org.uk). Note that we do not consider proposals that are also being considered by other journals.
There are two proposal submission deadlines per year for theme issues: June 1st and November 1st (symposia proposals can be submitted any time). The editors will review the proposals and return a response in approximately two weeks. We receive many more proposals that we can publish, so we will normally accept one proposal in each review period.
Theme issues usually consist of 5-8 regular-sized papers and an introduction. We hope to publish high quality, coherent, and innovative theme issues that clearly fit the journal’s aims and scope. Moreover, we are looking for theme issues where the collections amount to more than the sum of their parts. Ideally, we would like our theme issues to be future reference points in relevant debates. We hope they will make an impact and help people think differently.
For theme issues, we strongly encourage authors to submit manuscripts of 8,000 words, including references (slightly shorter than our typical manuscripts). (In the rare event that fewer than four papers are eventually accepted, they will be published as ‘regular’ papers.)
Short symposia usually consist of 3-5 short contributions and an introduction, with a total length being roughly 9,500 – 11,000 words. Symposia proposals can be submitted at any time.
Proposal Details: Proposals for both theme issues and symposia should be 2-3 pages in length and should include the following in this order:
- A title (including a clear indication of whether it is a theme issue or short symposium).
- The names and affiliations of the guest editors and the email address of the corresponding guest editor.
- A 150-200 word summary abstract describing the theme issue or short symposium as a whole. (This abstract will be sent to referees so they understand the ‘big picture’.)
- A more detailed overview that explicitly discusses the proposal’s distinctiveness, central contribution, and how the papers or short commentaries contribute to and engage with the chosen theme and with the remit of the journal, specifically its focus on the nexus of politics and the spatial (see our Aims and Scope and also our 2017 editorial for details).
- An indication of the expected word length.
- A note that the proposal is not being considered by another journal or book publisher.
- A list of each of the individual contributions, including:
- A title
- The name and brief affiliation (department and institution) of each author.
- A 150-200 word abstract for each proposed contribution
- A list of 10 key citations that sum up the theme issue or symposium as a whole.
Guest editors need not submit their introduction at the submission stage. This will be requested once the review process is complete and the final line-up of papers is known.
Important notes:
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We value diversity and will question proposals that lack diversity in terms of the gender composition of the authorship, the appropriate range of regional coverage, given the questions addressed by the theme issue or symposium, etc.
- The editors reserve the right to suggest changes to a proposed theme issue or symposium before making a final decision on its acceptance.
- We have a general guideline of one lead-authored contribution per contributor, which does not include the editorial introduction.
Upon acceptance
If proposals are accepted, one of the Politics & Space editors will be assigned to handle the theme issue or symposium. A deadline for submission will be agreed with the guest editors.
Theme issues: After a proposal for a theme issue is accepted, guest editors assemble contributions, and organize their timely submission. Guest editors are strongly encouraged to review drafts of the papers, prior to submission, and to give feedback to the authors, particularly with an eye to coherence among the contributions. Guest editors must provide the journal with at least 6 referee names per submission prior to the submission of individual papers (with the exception of submissions authored by the editors). These should not simply be names provided by the authors and they should not include names of referees with clear conflicts of interest or who are at the same institutions as the authors. Papers are reviewed individually according to our standard review procedures for original paper submissions. Those that are accepted are published online first, then eventually collected in a print issue of the journal. Given the individual evaluation of the papers, theme issues are sometimes smaller than originally proposed, when all papers do not make it through the process. Theme issues will be scheduled for print publication once the final paper in the collection is accepted and the editors have submitted an introductory essay.
Short symposia: After a proposal for a symposium is accepted, guest editors assemble contributions, and organize their timely submission (as a single, anonymized document, e.g., by numbering the individual contributions, rather than including authors’ names). This document should include the editors’ introduction. Guest editors are strongly encouraged to review drafts of the contributions, prior to submission, and to give feedback to the authors, particularly with an eye to coherence among the contributions. Guest editors must provide the journal with at least 6 referee names (referees will review the symposium as a whole). The names should not simply be ones provided by the authors and they should not include names of referees with clear conflicts of interest or who are at the same institutions as the authors or guest editors. The Guest Editors and all authors included in the Short Symposium will be listed (in an order decided by the authorship group) under the overarching title of the Short Symposium. This will be assigned a DOI. Therefore, all authors will be associated with that DOI. The introductory essay in the Short Symposium will, presumably, be authored by the Guest Editors (and they can be designated as such in the authorship list for that piece). The rest of the contributions will be listed with the names of their respective authors.
**Note that, for both theme issues and short symposia, guest editors are not involved in assessing reviews or making decisions. This is done by the handling editor. Guest editors will be copied on handling editors’ decision letters for their information and so they can consult with the authors, if they so choose.
Clinical trial registration
The journal conforms to the ICMJE requirement that clinical trials are registered in a WHO-approved public trials registry at or before the time of first participant enrollment as a condition of consideration for publication. The trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract.
Reporting guidelines
Your manuscript must follow the relevant EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines, depending on the type of study. The EQUATOR wizard can help identify the appropriate guideline. You will need to upload the appropriate checklist with your submission.
Other resources can be found at NLM’s Research Reporting Guidelines and Initiatives.
Formatting your manuscript
Accepted file types
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. 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.
Mathematical Equations should be submitted using Office Math ML and Math type.
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
Please include an unstructured abstract of 250 words between the title and main body of your manuscript that concisely states the purpose of the research, major findings, and conclusions. If your research includes clinical trials, the trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract. Submissions that do not meet this requirement will not be considered.
For clinical trials, the trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract.
This journal includes video abstracts. For more information on how to prepare a plain language summary, please see this page.
Keywords
Please include a minimum of 2 keywords, listed after the abstract. 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 regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in color in the printed version. If you have requested color reproduction in the print version, we will advise you of the costs on receipt of your accepted article.
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.
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.
Acknowledgments
If you are including an Acknowledgements section, this will be published at the end of your article. The Acknowledgments section should include all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship. Per ICMJE recommendations, 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.
Author contributions
You will be asked to list the contribution of each author as part of the submission process. Please include the Author Contributions heading within your submission after the Acknowledgements section. The information you give on submission will then show under the Author Contributions heading later at the proofing stage.
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.
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.
Data availability
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, use the statement to confirm why it cannot be shared.
- Cite this data in your research
Reference style and citations
The journal follows the Sage Harvard reference style. View the Sage Harvard 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.
Authors should update any references to preprints when a peer reviewed version is made available, to cite the published research. Citations to preprints are otherwise discouraged.
EndNote
If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the Sage Harvard EndNote output file.
Supplemental material
This Journal can host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc.) alongside the full text of the article. Your supplemental material must be one of our accepted file types. For that list and more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files.
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 Author Services. Visit Sage Author Services for further information.
As part of the submission process you will need to confirm that this is your original work, that you have the rights in the work, that this is for first publication in this Journal, that it is not being considered for/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.
Please see our guidelines on prior publication
Preprints
The journal does not accept submissions of manuscripts that have been posted on preprint servers.
Submission site
Submit your manuscript online via Sage Track.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in Sage Track 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.
Manuscripts should only be submitted with the consent of all contributing authors. The individual responsible for submitting the manuscript should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the manuscript are listed as authors.
Ensure you upload all relevant manuscript files, including any additional supplemental files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).
Authorship
Please view our authorship policies, which includes information on criteria for authorship, who should be the corresponding author and more.
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.
Files
- A more detailed overview that explicitly discusses the proposal’s distinctiveness, central contribution, and how the papers or short commentaries contribute to and engage with the chosen theme and with the remit of the journal, specifically its focus on the nexus of politics and the spatial (see our Aims and Scope and also our 2017 editorial for details).
- An indication of the expected word length.
- A note that the proposal is not being considered by another journal or book publisher.
- A list of each of the individual contributions, including:
- A title
- The name and brief affiliation (department and institution) of each author.
- A 150-200 word abstract for each proposed contribution
- A list of 10 key citations that sum up the theme issue or symposium as a whole.
Other information required for submission
-
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.
- Complete list of authors, with their institutional affiliations.
- The author information you enter at submission must exactly match what is included on your manuscript and/or title page, including full names, academic affiliations, and corresponding author contact details.
- 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.
- All listed authors must meet the criteria for authorship (above).
- All persons eligible for authorship must be included at the time of submission.
- All authors must have given consent for the manuscript to be submitted in its current form.
- Keywords: During submission, you may be asked to select or enter keywords for your manuscript. These keywords are used to match appropriate reviewers to your manuscript.
- The number of figures, tables, and words in your manuscript.
- Funder information: Name, grant/award number.
- You may be required to enter your declaration of conflicting interest as part of the submission process, in addition to listing it on your manuscript and/or title page. Please have it on hand.
The following summary describes the peer review process for this journal:
Identity transparency:Double-anonymized
Reviewer interacts with: Editor
Review information published: None
Your manuscript will undergo an initial evaluation. If it does not conform to the requirements laid out in these guidelines, it will be returned to you for amendments prior to peer review. Manuscripts may be desk rejected without peer review at this point if they are out of scope for the journal or otherwise unsuitable.
After passing the initial evaluation, your manuscript will then be peer reviewed. You can log in at any time to check the status of your manuscript. We will notify you when a decision has been reached.
Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space adheres to a rigorous double-anonymized reviewing policy in which the identity of both the reviewer and author are always concealed from both parties. Two independent reviews are required for a manuscript to reach a Revise or Accept decision.
The following manuscript types may not require two independent reviews to be accepted: Editorials, proposals.
To ensure the integrity of the peer review process we assign reviewers and cannot accept author recommendations.
All manuscripts are reviewed as rapidly as possible, while maintaining rigor. Reviewers make comments to the author and recommendations to the Editor who then makes the final decision on all manuscripts, including those appearing in a special issue or special collection. 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.
Read Sage's complete peer review policy.
Plagiarism
The journal and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. Please read Sage's complete policy on plagiarism and the actions we may take.
Contributor’s Publishing Agreement
Before publication, we require the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive license agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and license to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than Sage. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information please visit the Sage Journal Author Gateway.
Production
Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be made available to the corresponding author via our editing portal, Sage Edit, or by email, and should be returned promptly to avoid delaying publication. 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. This is the final opportunity to make changes to your manuscript. Further corrections will not be possible after publication. Changes to the author list are not permitted at this stage.
Publication
OnlineFirst publication: This enables us to publish final articles online immediately, without waiting for assignment to a future issue of the Journal. This usually significantly reduces publication lead time. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite OnlineFirst articles.
Access to your published article: We provide you with online access to your published article. The online access link is provided to the corresponding author for sharing with their co-authors.
Promoting your article
Publication is not the end of the process. Between us, we can ensure that your article is found, read, downloaded and cited as widely as possible. Many of the most effective tactics are those you can do quickly and easily to your network of contacts and peers. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway for numerous resources to help you promote your work.
The Sage Journal Author Gateway has some general advice on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance your article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.
If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journals Solutions Portal.
You can view our complaints and appeals procedure.
Contact us
You can direct any questions to the journal’s editorial office:
Katie Nudd
katie.nudd@fl.nudd.org.uk