NOTICE TO CONTRIBUTORS

Sex & Sexualities publishes cutting-edge sociological research on sexualities by fostering space for rigorous intersectional, interdisciplinary, transnational, feminist, and critical research. This journal serves as a home to scholarship that has been historically devalued and will center work interrogating sexualities as a site of both resistance to and reproduction of broader patterns of social marginalization. The journal encourages intersectional, feminist, transnational, and critical scholarship that foregrounds the experiences of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) as well as transgender, non-binary, agender, intersex, and other gender-expansive people throughout the world. Sex & Sexualities creates a space for work that reveals the importance of sex and sexualities in interrogations of the complex power dynamics that marginalize and oppress disempowered groups while opening up spaces for resistance, pleasure, and joy.

MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION AND PROCESSING

Manuscripts submitted to Sex & Sexualities (S&S) are processed electronically using Sage Track. Authors can create an account and log in to submit a manuscript at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/sns. 

Sex & Sexualities accepts original research articles (8,000-10,000 words), research notes (under 4,000 words), perspectives interviews (3,000-4,000 words), and conversation and debate comments/essays (3,000-4,000 words).

Authors will need to upload the following separate items into Sage Track:

• Abstract. Please provide an abstract of no more than 150 words that describes the topic of the research, the specific research questions, the data and basic research design, and the major conclusions. Remember that abstracts are summaries of the research project, not summaries of the background or motivation for the project.
• Title Page. Please include the title of the manuscript; each author’s institutional affiliation; acknowledgments; and contact information for the corresponding author.
• Anonymized Manuscript. Do not include the title page or any other self-identifying information in the manuscript. There is also no need to include an abstract with the manuscript.
• Cover Letter (Optional). Please provide any important and relevant information that the Editors may need to fairly and effectively evaluate your manuscript.

As part of the submission process, authors will also be asked to provide information on adherence to the ASA Code of Ethics, IRB compliance, funding, and conflicts of interest.

Address correspondence to the editorial team at sexandsexualities@gmail.com.

Ethics: Submission of a manuscript to another professional journal while it is under review by Sex & Sexualities is regarded by the ASA as unethical. Significant findings or contributions that have already appeared (or will appear) elsewhere must be clearly identified. All persons who publish in ASA journals are required to abide by ASA guidelines and ethics codes regarding plagiarism and other ethical issues. This requirement includes adhering to ASA’s stated policy on data-sharing: “As a regular practice, sociologists share data and pertinent documentation as an integral part of a research plan. Sociologists generally make their data available after completion of a project or its major publications, except where proprietary agreements with employers, contractors, or clients preclude such accessibility or when it is impossible to share data and protect the confidentiality of the research participants (e.g., field notes or detailed information from ethnographic interviews)” (ASA Code of Ethics, 2018).

Name Change Policy: Sage has introduced a policy to enable name and pronoun changes for our authors. ASA journals published by Sage follow this policy. Going forward, all requests to make a name or pronoun change will be honored. This includes, but is not limited to, name changes because of marriage, divorce, gender affirmation, and religious conversion. For more information, read Sage’s Name Change Policy. 

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION 

Original research articles are based on original research using qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods. This might include data collected through interviews, ethnographies, experiments, surveys, content/narrative analyses, archives, other comparative-historical sources, secondary data, social network analyses, case studies, and participatory action research, including emerging digital methodologies. Submissions should be 8-10,000 words long. Most published articles are around that length, though a higher word count is occasionally acceptable. While all papers need not follow a specific template, reviewers and readers may be accustomed to seeing research presented in a particular format. For example, an empirical paper might be organized as follows:

• A 150-word abstract providing an overview of the paper’s main questions, methods, and contributions.

• A short introduction posing a research question focused on sexuality and noting the question’s importance. 

• A review of the literature placing the question in its appropriate theoretical and empirical context and making clear how the question has the potential to contribute to existing sociological theory. In some cases, this section might include hypotheses or theoretical expectations, or a section on “background,” which gives necessary information about the context of the study.

• A methods section systematically describing the methods used in collecting the data for the paper. This section should also explain the sampling approach and provide details about the sample. Finally, it should describe how the data were analyzed, providing a summary of how the results section will unfold.

• A results section, which systematically presents the major findings, providing detailed evidence (such as quotes or statistics), and connecting these findings back to theory. This section should consist of thematically organized subsections, to make it easier to follow the paper’s narrative. This is usually the longest section of the paper.

• A conclusion reiterating the research question and findings and considering alternative explanations and limitations of the study. This section should identify the paper’s main contributions to knowledge about sexuality, by identifying how the findings have extended, filled a gap, or contradicted previous research and theory.

While not all papers follow this format, it is important that all empirical papers include discussions of both theory and method. 

Research Notes are brief reports or research notes for significant or timely contributions that do not require full-length manuscripts. Submissions should be approximately 4,000 words or less. The format may follow the original research article structure or focus more exclusively on a methodological advancement, dilemma, or experience.

Perspectives interviews, conversation, and debate comments/essays are a conversation between two or more people about an important aspect of sexualities research or theory. They may also be broader “think pieces” about the progress of the subfield, a book review of multiple books, or a debate between multiple scholars. Submissions should be approximately 3-4,000 words.

 

All parts of the anonymized manuscript should have at least 1-inch margins, should be double spaced, and should use a standard 12-point font. Manuscripts should generally not exceed the word limit associated with each manuscript type (including text, endnotes, figures and tables, research ethics statement, references, and appendices); the number of tables and figures should be kept to a minimum. Please refer to the ASA Style Guide (7th edition, 2022) for more information.

 

Note: Authors are responsible for securing permission to reproduce copyrighted materials before they are published by Sex & Sexualities. A copy of the written permission should be included with the manuscript submission.

 

The anonymized manuscript should include the following sections (when applicable) in this order: (1) body of manuscript; (2) endnotes; (3) references; (4) tables; (5) figures; and (6) appendices. Do not include a title page or abstract in the anonymized manuscript, do not use footnotes, and be sure that each table and each figure appears on separate pages after the references.
 

1. Body of Manuscript. Please use headings to structure the manuscript; see recent articles in ASA journals for examples. Please do not use language that identifies you as the author. Example: Instead of writing “I found … (LePore 2012)” please use “LePore (2012) found…”

• Abbreviations and acronyms should be spelled out at their first mention unless they are commonly used as words (e.g., "IQ").
• Equations in the text should be numbered using consecutive Arabic numerals in parentheses at the right margin.
• In-text citations should include the last name of the author(s), the year of publication, and page numbers (when quoting directly from a work or referring to specific passages). If the author’s name is in the text, follow it with the publication year in parentheses. Example: "…in a study by Binder (2010)." If the author’s name is not in the text, enclose the last name and publication year in parentheses. Example: "...whenever it occurred (Bills 2004)." Pagination follows the year of publication after a colon, with no space between the colon and the page number. Example: "...according to Fomby (2005:71)." Give both last names for joint authors. Example: "... based on prior evidence (Grodsky and Muller 2009)." If a work has three authors, cite all three last names in the first citation in the text; thereafter, use et al. in the citation. If a work has more than three authors, use et al. throughout. Example: "...obtained the same results (Liebler, Ruggles, and Fitch 2007; Hauser et al. 2008). However, ... (Liebler et al. 2007)." Separate a series of references with semicolons, and list the series in alphabetical or date order (but be consistent throughout the manuscript). Example: "…for more information (Park 2006; Schofer 2009)."

3. Endnotes.Endnotes should be used sparingly and should be brief. They should be numbered in the text consecutively using superscript Arabic numerals; be double-spaced and in the same font style and size as the rest of the manuscript; and appear in a separate section labelled “Endnotes.”
4. References.All references cited in the text must be listed in the "References" section, and vice versa. It is the author's responsibility to ensure that publication information for each entry is complete and correct. References should be double-spaced and should appear in the same style and sized font as the rest of the text. They should be listed in alphabetical order by first authors’ last names. Include first names and surnames for all authors; use first-name initials only if an author used initials in the original publication.

• Books should appear as:
  Author1 (last name inverted), Author2 (last name not inverted), and Author3 (last name not inverted). Year of publication. Name of Publication (italicized). Location of publisher: Publisher’s Name.
  Example: Arum, Richard and Josipa Roksa. 2011. Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
• Journal articles should appear as:
  Author1 (last name inverted), Author2 (last name not inverted), and Author3 (last name not inverted). Year of publication. “Title of Article.” Name of Publication (italicized) Volume Number (Issue Number): Page numbers.
  Example: Horvat, Erin M., Elliot B. Weininger, and Annette Lareau. 2003. "From Social Ties to Social Capital: Class Differences in the Relations Between Schools and Parent Networks." American Educational Research Journal 40(2) 319-351.
• Internet resources follow the same pattern, with the exception that page numbers are omitted and the URL and date of access are included.
  Example: Schafer, Daniel W. and Fred L. Ramsey. 2003. “Teaching the Craft of Data Analysis.” Journal of Statistics Education 11(1). Retrieved December 12, 2006 (http://www.amstat.org/publications/jse/v11n1/schafer.html)

5. Tables and Figures.Tables and figures should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they appear in the text and must include descriptive titles. Each table and each figure should appear on a separate page. Tables must be editable (e.g., in Word), and figures should be submitted as high-resolution images. All tables and figures should stand alone and should not require the reader to refer to the text. Use short notes to define key terms, briefly describe the data and research design, spell out acronyms, etc. When reporting results of hypothesis tests, use one, two, and three asterisks for p<0.05, p<0.01, and p<0.001, respectively.
6. Appendices.Appendices should be lettered to distinguish them from numbered tables and figures. Include a descriptive title for each appendix (e.g., “Appendix A. Variable Names and Definitions”). Please note which appendices are intended to appear in print and which might appear online; because of page limitations, most appendices will need to appear online.

 

Peer Review Policy

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. Editors must assign a minimum of two reviewers to each new manuscript sent through the review process (including research notes and comments.) When the recommendations of the first reviewers are sharply divergent, or when one or more of the original reviewers fails to return a review, the advice of additional reviewers will be sought.

ORCID

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.