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.
Manuscript Submission Guidelines: Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly
This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics.
Please read the guidelines below then visit the Journal’s submission site [https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/nvsq] to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned. Remember you can log in to the submission site at any time to check on the progress of your paper through the peer review process.
Sage disseminates high-quality research and engaged scholarship globally, and we are committed to diversity and inclusion in publishing. We encourage submissions from a diverse range of authors from across all countries and backgrounds.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly will be reviewed.
There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this Journal. Open Access options are available - see section 3.3 below.
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, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, 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. Please see our guidelines on prior publication and note that Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly will consider submissions of papers that have been posted on preprint servers; please alert the Editorial Office when submitting (contact details are at the end of these guidelines) and include the DOI for the preprint in the designated field in the manuscript submission system. Authors should not post an updated version of their paper to a preprint server while it is being peer reviewed for possible publication in the Journal. If your paper is accepted, you will need to contact the preprint server to ensure the final published article link is attached to your preprint. Learn more about our preprint policy here.
If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journal Solutions Portal.-
- What do we publish?
1.1 Aims & Scope
1.2 Article types
1.3 Writing your paper - Editorial policies
2.1 Peer review policy
2.2 Authorship
2.3 Acknowledgements
2.4 Funding
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
2.6 Research ethics
2.7 Research data
2.8 Code of ethics - Publishing policies
3.1 Publication ethics
3.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement
3.3 Open access and author archiving - Preparing your manuscript
4.1 Formatting
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
4.3 Identifiable information
4.4 Supplemental material
4.5 Reference style
4.6 English language editing services - Submitting your manuscript
5.1 ORCID
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
5.3 Permissions - On acceptance and publication
6.1 Sage Production
6.2 Online First publication
6.3 Access to your published article
6.4 Promoting your article - Further information
7.1 Appealing the publication decision
- What do we publish?
1 What do we publish?
Before submitting your manuscript to Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.
Research Articles: Manuscripts should be no more than 10,000 words (including the main text, references, appendices and endnotes). As an international and interdisciplinary journal, we welcome full-length manuscripts from diverse perspectives in the areas of voluntary action, civil society, citizen participation, philanthropy, and nonprofit organizations.
Research Notes: Research Notes should be no longer than 5,000 words (including the main text, references, appendices and endnotes). Research Notes identify relevant prior research, clearly articulate their contribution to nonprofit/voluntary sector research and provide compelling evidence for their arguments. Research Notes are different than articles in that the Note may have a narrower audience, be more limited in its contributions, be more technical, or comment on previous NVSQ articles. Like full-length manuscripts, Research Notes are rigorous and written in a similar style and tone.
Book Reviews: We welcome Book Reviews for recently published books or comparing texts in a given research area on any topic of interest to NVSQ readers. Book reviews may be submitted through the NVSQ submission system (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/nvsq).
To submit a book for review or for questions about book reviews, please contact Dr. Elizabeth Dale, Book Review Editor, elizabeth.dale@gvsu.edu
Visit the Sage Author Gateway for 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.
1.3.1 Make your article discoverable
For information and guidance on how to make your article more discoverable, visit our Gateway page on How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.
Sage does not permit the use of author-suggested (recommended) reviewers at any stage of the submission process, be that through the web-based submission system or other communication.
Reviewers should be experts in their fields and should be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. Our policy is that reviewers should not be assigned to a paper if:
- The reviewer is based at the same institution as any of the co-authors.
- The reviewer is based at the funding body of the paper.
- The author has recommended the reviewer.
- The reviewer has provided a personal (e.g. Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail) email account and an institutional email account cannot be found after performing a basic Google search (name, department and institution).
The journal’s policy is to have manuscripts typically reviewed by three expert reviewers. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly utilizes a double-anonymized peer review process in which the reviewer and authors’ names and information are withheld from the other. Reviewers may at their own discretion opt to reveal their names to the author in their review but our standard policy practice is for their identities to remain concealed. 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. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly has an Associate Editor structure where Associate Editors may be assigned a manuscript to manage the peer review process and make decision recommendations, but only the Editors make final decisions.
The Associate Editors 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 Associate Editor/Board member will have no involvement in the decision-making process.
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly is committed to delivering high quality, fast peer-review for your paper, and as such has partnered with Web of Science (previously Publons). Web of Science is a third-party service that seeks to track, verify and give credit for peer review. Reviewers for Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly can opt in to Web of Science 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 Web of Science website.
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.
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.
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.
Please supply any personal acknowledgements separately to the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.
Per ICMJE recommendations, it is best practice to obtain consent from non-author contributors who you are acknowledging in your paper.
2.3.1 Third party submissions
Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:
- Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input
- Identify any entities that paid for this assistance
- Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc.
Where appropriate, Sage reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.
Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance. It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 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.
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly encourages authors to include a declaration of any conflicting interests and recommends you review the good practice guidelines on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.
It is the policy of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles.
Please ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your manuscript, after any acknowledgements and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’. For guidance on conflict of interest statements, please see the ICMJE recommendations here.
If applicable, authors are required to state in the methods section whether participants provided informed consent.
NVSQ has a data transparency policy for experiments. Authors submitting manuscripts that include experimental designs are asked to provide the data and codes used to produce the reported findings to the editors and reviewers. This includes: providing clear documentation to assist with replication; sharing all data and code used to generate reported results with editors and reviewers (please ensure that these files are anonymous); considering the use of a Depository Platform, such as Github, FigShare, or the Open Science Framework (If the data cannot be shared publicly, you may use a private project link); and upholding the Compliance Requirements, such as institutional review board (IRB) or ethics committee requirements, as well as privacy laws such as GDPR or other relevant regulations. Please be sure to remove any personal or identifying information from the data and materials to protect participant confidentiality.
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.
NVSQ encourages data transparency and promotes open data where possible.
Authors submitting their manuscripts to NVSQ for publication consideration must follow the NVSQ Code of 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.
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 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.
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.
3.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement
Before publication, Sage requires 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 Author Gateway.
3.3 Open access and author archiving
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly offers optional open access publishing 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. 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.
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. Submissions must be made in English.
Title Page: Include the title, all authors' names, affiliations, e-mail addresses, discipline, and a short (2-3 sentence) biography of each author.
Main Document: Remove ALL identifying information.
- On the first page, please include the title, an abstract (150 words or less), 4-5 keywords, and a data availability statement.
- On the second page, begin the main text of article, and please include appendices, endnotes, references, and tables and figures.
- Use 12 point, Times New Roman font for all documents.
- Follow the APA style (most current edition) for formatting, headings, citations, and references.
- Double-space, indent the first line of paragraphs, and left-justify everything (no full justification).
- Any direct quote requires a page reference or a paragraph number if from a website.
- Use endnotes only for substantive comments bearing on content. Do not use footnotes.
- All in-text citations are included in the reference list; all references have in-text citations.
- Figures should be camera-ready; they should appear exactly as they should in the journal, except for sizing.
- Tables and figures may either be included within the text or at the end with placeholders in the text.
4.2 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 regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in color in the printed version. For specifically requested color reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Sage after receipt of your accepted article.
Where a journal uses double-anonymized peer review, authors are required to submit:
- A version of the manuscript which has had any information that compromises the anonymity of the author(s) removed or anonymized. This version will be sent to the peer reviewers.
- A separate title page which includes any removed or anonymized material. This will not be sent to the peer reviewers.
Visit the Sage Author Gateway for detailed guidance on making an anonymous submission.
This Journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc.) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files.
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly adheres to the APA reference style. View the APA guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.
4.6 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.
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit [https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/nvsq] to login and submit your article online.
Submissions must be in English. NVSQ will not consider manuscripts that have been published or are under consideration elsewhere. If closely related material has been published elsewhere, this should be discussed in the cover letter describing the unique contribution of the work being submitted.
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.
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.
5.2 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 in 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).
- Written, signed permission must be obtained for (a) all quotations from copyrighted publications and (b) all tables or figures taken from other sources.
- Permission is required to reprint:
- More than 300 words from a single journal article.
- More than 500 words from a full-length scholarly book.
- Anything, even a few words or a phrase, quoted directly from a newspaper article, magazine, poem, or song.
- Anything quoted directly from a news broadcast.
- Any table or figure reproduced or adapted from another work.
- Any quotes without permissions must be paraphrased or deleted if the manuscript is accepted for publication. Please check with the journal editor for more information.
For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway.
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 corrections should be made directly or notified to us 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.
Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite Online First articles.
6.3 Access to your published article
Sage provides authors with online access to their final 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.
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly editorial office as follows:
7.1 Appealing the publication decision
Editors have very broad discretion in determining whether an article is an appropriate fit for their journal. Many manuscripts are declined with a very general statement of the rejection decision. These decisions are not eligible for formal appeal unless the author believes the decision to reject the manuscript was based on an error in the review of the article, in which case the author may appeal the decision by providing the Editor with a detailed written description of the error they believe occurred.
If an author believes the decision regarding their manuscript was affected by a publication ethics breach, the author may contact the publisher with a detailed written description of their concern, and information supporting the concern, at publication_ethics@sagepub.com