Submission guidelines

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Please read the guidelines in full before submitting your manuscript.
Manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.

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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.

Please read the guidelines below then submit your manuscript here.

Access: Open Access
APC: See article processing charge information below
Accepts preprints? Yes
Identity transparency: Single anonymized

High-quality editing service: Every manuscript provisionally accepted by the Editor-in-Chief will receive a high-quality edit. This will follow a standard editing approach that focuses on clarity, grammar, structure and follows the style guide of the journal. This level of editing is ideal for ensuring readability and correctness of your published paper.

Please note that this journal is online-only and does not offer print copies.

Journal of International Medical Research is an open access, peer-reviewed journal. All accepted articles are made freely available online immediately upon publication, are published under a Creative Commons license, and hosted online in perpetuity.

If, after peer review, your manuscript is accepted for publication, a one-time page charge is payable to cover the cost of publishing, paid by the funder, institution, or author. There is no charge for submitting a manuscript.

For all submissions after January 1st 2026, the APC will be $3400 per article. The APC includes a high-quality editing step for all accepted papers.

The article processing charge (APC) is payable when a manuscript is accepted after peer review, before it is published. The APC is subject to taxes where applicable. Tax-exempt status can be indicated by providing appropriate registration numbers when payment is requested. Please see further details on tax-exempt status here.

For general information on open access at Sage please visit the Open Access page.

Authors may be eligible for discounts to their page charge via open access agreements that Sage has with participating institutions. Discounts depend on the terms of the agreement, find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. Eligibility is determined by the corresponding author’s affiliation at acceptance matching an agreement.

Your article may be eligible for a full or partial waiver due to our participation in initiatives to increase accessibility to publication across the international academic community. More information about discounts and eligibility.

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

View our topical sections currently accepting submissions

View our Special Collections currently accepting submissions.

Journal of International Medical Research welcomes original manuscripts that demonstrate strong evidence of clinical applicability, are scientifically robust and highly appropriate for an international general medical readership. Please see the list of article types below.  

Chinese (and other herbal) medicine studies will be considered but only if you are studying a single active ingredient. It must have been shown to be effective/safe before being given to humans. 

All studies must be reported according to the relevant EQUATOR network guideline: https://www.equator-network.org/. Please see our Reporting Guidelines for further information.  

Randomised Clinical Trials 

  • Abstract: Structured (200-400 words) 
  • Word count: 4,000-6,000 words 
  • Figure/Table limit: 6 
  • Reference limit: 70 
  • Reporting guidelines: CONSORT. In your manuscript, you need to state in the Methods section that you have followed CONSORT. Include your completed CONSORT checklist when you submit your manuscript (upload this as ‘Research Data’). 
  • Registration: your trial must have been registered in a publicly accessible database. State this in your Methods section (include the registration number/doi) and also add it to your Abstract.  
  • Declarations: Author contributions, Declaration of conflicting interests, Funding, Acknowledgements, Data availability statement 

Notes: Randomised trials will require Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval: add the name of your review board, its location, approval number, and date of approval to your manuscript. Include a copy of the IRB approval document with your submission (upload this as ‘Research Data’). Signed consent is mandatory and needs to be mentioned in the Methods section. 

Observational Studies 

  • Abstract: Structured (200-300 words) 
  • Word count: 3,000-5,000 words 
  • Figure/Table limit: 5 
  • Reference limit: 50 
  • Reporting guidelines: STROBE or Equator guideline relevant for your study. In your manuscript, you need to state in the Methods section the guideline you have followed. Include your completed checklist when you submit your manuscript (upload this as ‘Research Data’). 
  • Declarations: Author contributions, Declaration of conflicting interests, Funding, Acknowledgements, Data availability statement 

Notes: Prospective studies will require Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval: add the name of your review board, its location, approval number, and date of approval to your manuscript. Include a copy of the IRB approval document with your submission (upload this as ‘Research Data’). Signed consent is required for prospective studies (state this in your Methods section). Signed consent may not be possible/required for retrospective studies, but state this if you did get it. Studies of many-times reported similar research, and/or with low patient numbers, with no hope of showing significance or of being of any interest to readers will not be considered. 

Systematic Reviews or Meta-analyses 

  • Abstract: Structured (200-300 words) 
  • Word count: 3,000-5,000 words 
  • Figure/Table limit: 6 
  • Reference limit: 100 
  • Reporting guidelines: PRISMA 2020, PRISMA-S, PRISMA-ScR or MOOSE. In your manuscript, you need to state in the Methods section the guideline you have followed. Include your completed checklist when you submit your manuscript (upload this as ‘Research Data’). 
  • Registration: your study must have been registered with PROSPERO or INPLASY. State this in your Methods section (include the registration number/doi) and also add it to your Abstract.  
  • Declarations: Author contributions, Declaration of conflicting interests, Funding, Acknowledgements, Data availability statement 

Notes: Studies of recently or many-times reported similar research will not be considered. 

Case Reports or Case Series 

  • Abstract: Unstructured (150-250 words) 
  • Word count: 2,000-4,000 words 
  • The upper word limit is for cases where authors have added an extensive literature review (this is still published as a case report).
  • Figure/Table limit: 3 
  • Reference limit: 30 
  • Reporting guidelines: CARE. In your manuscript, you need to state in the Methods section the guideline you have followed. Include your completed checklist when you submit your manuscript (upload this as ‘Research Data’). 
  • Declarations: Author contributions, Declaration of conflicting interests, Funding, Acknowledgements, Data availability statement  

Notes: Case reports do not need to be approved by a review board, but state if you did get board approval for publication. Signed patient consent to publish is not required if you have de-identified the details such that the identity of the patient may not be ascertained in any way. Use an age range rather than a specific age (e.g. ‘early 60s’, rather than ‘62 years old’). If you have done this, you should add a statement to your case report section that you have de-identified all patient details. (If complete de-identification is not feasible, you must obtain signed consent to publish from the patient and state this in your manuscript.) Case reports should be novel or important cases that add to the literature. Cases that have been reported many times by others or are unremarkable will not be considered. 

Preclinical Studies 

  • Abstract: Structured (200-300 words) 
  • Word count: 3,000-5,000 words 
  • Figure/Table limit: 5 
  • Reference limit: 50 
  • Reporting guidelines: ARRIVE 2.0 for animal studies. In your manuscript, you need to state in the Methods section the guideline you have followed. Include your completed checklist when you submit your manuscript (upload this as ‘Research Data’). 
  • Declarations: Author contributions, Declaration of conflicting interests, Funding, Acknowledgements, Data availability statement.  

Notes: you must follow agreed principles and guidelines for reporting your preclinical research. Most studies will require Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval: add the name of your review board, its location, approval number, and date of approval to your manuscript. Include a copy of the IRB approval document with your submission (upload this as ‘Research Data’). If your research is not on human tissue/samples, you may not need Ethics/Review board approval, but you should include a statement that you have checked this with your review board and received their exemption. Research on human tissue/samples require consent. State this in your manuscript. In vivo studies should have potential for future clinical research. In vitro cell lines manuscripts should also have in vivo validation studies. Other in vitro studies are acceptable providing they have potential for future clinical research. In silico studies should not be similar to recently or many-times reported similar research and must include some clinical interpretation (ideally, with external validation such as in vivo validation or data from the author’s own patient cohort).  

Western blots: you must supply original unedited western blot strips so that the peer reviewers may verify your results. You should upload this as ‘Research Data’ when you submit your manuscript. You also need to state the number of technical/biological replicates in your Methods section. 

Narrative Reviews 

  • Abstract: Unstructured (150-250 words) 
  • Word count: 3,000-5,000 words 
  • Figure/Table limit: 3 
  • Reference limit: 50 
  • Declarations: Author contributions, Declaration of conflicting interests, Funding, Acknowledgements, Data availability statement 

Notes: Narrative reviews should not be similar to recently or many-times reported similar reviews. State the rationale for your review and your aim in the Introduction section. State your search strategy so that readers know the scope of your review. Check that you do not overstate any conclusions bearing in mind this is a narrative review. 

Editorials

Editorials are by invitation only: contact JIMR.admin@sagepub.com for enquiries.

Clinical trial registration

The journal endorses the ICMJE requirement that clinical trials are registered in a WHO-approved public trials registry at or before the time of first participant enrollment. However, consistent with the AllTrials campaign, retrospectively registered trials will be considered if the justification for late registration is acceptable. 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.

If your research involves animals, you will be asked to confirm that you have carefully read and adhered to the ARRIVE guidelines.

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.

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

For Randomised Clinical Trials, Observational Studies, Systematic Reviews, Meta-analyses and Preclinical Studies, please include a structured abstract of 200-400 words (depending on manuscript type) between the title and main body of your manuscript that concisely states the purpose of the research, major findings, and conclusions. Please include the following headings: OBJECTIVE, METHODS (include type of study/experimental design and type of participant), RESULTS, CONCLUSIONS.

Summaries of Narrative Review articles, Case Reports and Case Series should be unstructured and include a brief overview of the main points.

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.

Keywords

Please include a minimum of 5 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.

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.

Statements and declarations

Please include a section with the heading ‘Statements and Declarations’ at the end of your submitted article, 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.

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.

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.

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 Vancouver reference style. View the Sage Vancouver 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 Vancouver 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.

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.

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 and note that the journal may accept submissions of manuscripts that have been posted on preprint servers.

Preprints

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.

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

  • Cover letter. To help the Editor in their preliminary evaluation, please indicate why you think the manuscript suitable for publication. Please also include a list of your recent publications as an active link to PubMed, Google Scholar or a similar public database. This will help us assess your expertise in this area.
  • Your manuscript, properly formatted according to all stipulations above, and within the scope of the journal.
  • Figures and images.
  • 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.

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.
  • If you have posted your manuscript to a preprint server, you will be asked to supply the DOI (this does not prohibit submission, but no changes should be made to the preprint version while your manuscript is under evaluation in this journal). Please see our guidelines on prior publication. If the article is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the journal's author archiving policy. If your manuscript is accepted, you must include a link in your preprint to the final version of your published article.

The following summary describes the peer review process for this journal:
Identity transparency: Single-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.

Journal of International Medical Research operates a conventional single-anonymized reviewing policy in which the reviewer’s name is always concealed from the submitting author. Two independent reviews are required for a manuscript to reach a Revise or Accept decision.

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 Managing Editors 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.

After acceptance you will receive instructions via email inviting you to complete the Open Access process. This will include signing the appropriate Creative Commons license and, where applicable, paying the Article Processing Charge (APC) or assigning a bill payer. Once the APC has been processed, your article will be prepared for publication and can appear online within an average of 30 days. Please note that, where an APC is applicable, production work cannot be completed on your manuscript until payment has been received.

Contributor’s Publishing Agreement

Before publication we require the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. The journal publishes manuscripts under Creative Commons licenses. The standard license for the journal is Creative Commons by Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC), which allows others to re-use the work without permission as long as the work is properly referenced and the use is non-commercial. For more information, you are advised to visit Sage's OA licenses page. Alternative license arrangements are available at the author’s request (e.g. to meet particular funder mandates).

High-Quality Edit and Proofs

Once payment is received, the manuscript will receive a high-quality edit. This will follow a standard editing approach that focuses on clarity, grammar, structure and follows the style guide of the journal. Any editorial queries will be raised directly to authors. On average, there are around 20 queries raised during this stage. Authors should aim to answer the queries clearly and quickly, with the agreement of all co-authors and to the satisfaction of the journal. Following that, a final typeset proof will be produced for final checks before publication. No further charges or refunds will be granted to reconcile any difference between the page charge fee paid for upon acceptance and the final published page count.

Preprints

If your manuscript was posted on a preprint server prior to acceptance, you must include a link in your preprint to the final published version of your published article.

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

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.

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.

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:

JIMR.admin@sagepub.com