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. If you wish to have color figures in the printed version, the fee will be determined at Production.

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.

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.

Your submission will only be considered if it meets the following requirements: (1) you complete the information required by our online submission system. (2) your article must include a title page file and (3) a main manuscript file, both of which follow the structure outlined below.

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

Authors are encouraged to submit original papers dealing in social theory and social research using the rational action paradigm as its foundation. The journal publishes scholarly articles that further this research and theory, but its pages are also open to work that challenges this approach. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches, and both theoretical and empirical works, are welcome. The editors also solicit comments and criticism on papers published in its own pages.

Although R&S does not have an official word count limit, most of our articles run from 8,000-10,000 words. We prefer well-edited papers that present their message as concisely as possible.

The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. If you are using a LaTeX template, please make sure it complies with the requirements listed in the "Main manuscript" section below.

Online submission system

Information on our online submission site must include:

• Manuscript title
• Author information
• Number of figures, tables, and words
• At least four keywords that fittingly describe the content of your paper. Keywords do not need to be included in the main manuscript.
• An abstract of no more than 250 words. Do not include references in your abstract. It is not necessary to include the abstract on your title page or in your main manuscript file.

Title page

Include a title page with all authors and their affiliations. Upload your title page separately from your main manuscript so that double anonymous peer review is ensured. The title page will not be sent to reviewers. Your title page must include:

• Article title. Your title should be concise, descriptive, unambiguous, accurate, and reflect the precise contents of the manuscript.
• The full list of authors, including names and affiliations of each.
• Contact information for the corresponding author: name, institutional address, phone, email.
• Acknowledgements, if desired. Please see the Sage Author Gatewayfor what information to include in your Acknowledgements section.
• A statements and declarations section. This section should include a Declaration of conflicting interest, Funding statement, Ethical approval statement, Informed consent statement, and Data availability statement. If a declaration is not applicable to your submission, you must still include the heading and state ‘Not applicable’ underneath.

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. If no conflict exists, your statement should read: ‘The author(s) declare 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.

Ethical approval

Please include your ethics approval statements under this heading. 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 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.

Informed consent statement

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.

Data availability statement

Authors of manuscripts using empirical research data are required to upload a replication package of their research in a relevant public data repository. Manuscripts must include a data availability statement linking to the replication package. Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, replication packages should include both the data used in your research and the syntax necessary to replicate your results. If you cannot upload your data directly, include your syntax and explain where and how your research data can be obtained. If it is not possible to share your data at all, use the data availability statement to explain clearly which legal, ethical or other constraints prohibit this. In your final manuscript, any data linked to in your statement must also be cited as a dataset in your list of references.

Main manuscript

The main text of your manuscript should use a single column format with standard margins. Do not include a running header, footer, or page numbering as these are automatically generated by the pdf compiler of the submission system.

Section headings

Headings should not be numbered. Please mark main headings in bold, italicize sub-headings and refrain from including more than two levels of headings. First letters in headings should be capitalized. Capitalize other words only if after a colon or when referring to proper nouns. Refrain from any references to numbered sections in your text.

Tables and figures

Include tables and figures in the main text and not at the end of your document. Figure resolution is 300dpi. Tables and figures should be numbered separately and consecutively in the order in which they appear in the text. For regression coefficients and other statistical estimates, please report standard errors in parentheses and indicate significance levels using the symbols outlined below.

Statistical information

Please report statistical information according to the Number and Statistics Guide, APA Style 7^th Edition. Use the following symbols for conventional significance levels: † p ≤ 0.10; * p ≤ 0.05; ** p ≤ 0.01; *** p ≤ 0.001. Do not report statistics in both the text and a table or figure.

Endnotes and footnotes

Rationality and Society does not publish footnotes. You may choose to include numbered endnotes, which should be included after the main text and before the reference list. We encourage you to use at most 10 endnotes. Please keep your endnotes concise.

References

Include a reference list at the end of your main manuscript and ensure that your references are formatted according to the SAGE Harvard reference style. View the SAGE Harvard guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.

If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the SAGE Harvard EndNote output file.

Double anonymous peer review

Mask all information in the manuscript that would identify you as an author, your institution, and your Ethical Review Board with ‘DAPR’. Avoid phrases that would reveal your identity as an author (‘In my previous study’, ‘We previously found that’, etc.).

Appendix

Short appendices of no more than two pages should be included with the main manuscript. These appendices will be published as their own section in your paper and will appear both in the online pdf and in print. Please include your appendix after the list of references. Appendices typically include mathematical proofs accompanying your paper, explications of your method, sensitivity analyses, or other analyses complementing your main results.

Online supplemental materials

In addition to a short appendix, you may include additional information as online supplementary materials. These materials will be uploaded on our website and referred to in print and pdf versions of your article. To facilitate the production process, please include online supplementary materials as a separate document upon submission of your manuscript. During the submission process, select ‘HTML / PDF Proof’ to make supplements accessible for reviewers. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplementary files.

Author biographies

Rationality & Society does not publish author biographies. Please refrain from including such information in your manuscript.

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.

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.
• Title Page with all required identifying information as laid out in Preparing your manuscript for submission (above). This will not be sent to the peer reviewers.
• Your manuscript, properly formatted and anonymized according to all stipulations above, and within the scope of the journal. Any information that compromises the anonymity of the author(s) should be removed or anonymized and included on the Title Page instead. See above for more information on anonymization. This version will be sent to the peer reviewers.
• Figures and images.
• All figures must be numbered consecutively in the order in which they appear in the text – they will appear in the published article in the order they are numbered.
• Figure resolution is 300dpi. More information on figure/image preparation can be found here.
• 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.

• 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: 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.

The journal 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.

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.

As a COPE member we engage with multiple forms of post-publication discussion in line with wider guidance from Sage: Commentaries, Critiques and Responses.

You can view our complaints and appeals policy here.

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.

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

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:

rationality@rug.nl