Author Submission Guidelines

Before considering making a submission to Visions for Sustainability, we ask authors to carefully read the following author submission guidelines. Following them is essential for a smooth process leading to eventual publication.

  1. Types of papers

Visions for Sustainability offers a range of article types that authors can choose from. These are intended as indicative categories and we recognize that papers may combine elements of two or more of these.

  1. Research articles
  2. Review articles
  3. Position papers
  4. Editorials
  5. Special Issues
  6. Letters to Visions

Research articles

A Visions for Sustainability research article is an original paper based on Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion and Conclusions sections. The text is typically 5,000 (or fewer) words long (not including references and appendices).

Review articles

A Visions for Sustainability review article systematically and critically examines the state-of-the-art of knowledge in a specific field regarding long-term strategic visions. We ask authors to write to us for approval from the editors-in-chief before submitting a review article. The text of a review article is typically 8,000 (or fewer) words long (not including references and appendices).

Position papers

A Visions for Sustainability position paper presents scholarly or professional opinions on issues pertaining to long-term strategic visions. We ask authors to write to us for approval from the editors-in-chief before submitting a position paper. The text of a position paper is typically 5,000 words long (not including references and appendices).

Editorials and guest editorials

The editors-in-chief or invited guest editors provide commentaries and share perspectives on significant issues of relevance to the journal's aims and scope, introductory essays to special issues, as well as news and information relevant to the journal and its readers.

Special issues

A Visions for Sustainability special issue is a coherent collection of papers on a specific theme, enduring or emerging, regarding long-term strategic visions that falls within the aims and scope of the journal and has a broad international appeal. All special issue proposals are subject to a process of peer-review.

Letters to Visions

A letter to Visions for Sustainability is normally only by invitation and provides a short comment on a specific theme, enduring or emerging, regarding long-term strategic visions. A letter to can be a critical or explanatory note on an article we previously published. The editors-in-chief may invite a rejoinder from the author(s) of the article. The text of a letter is typically under 2,000 words.

Book (or other publication) reviews

A book (or other publication) review provides a brief summary of its contents and evaluates its contribution to issues related to the aims and scope of Visions for Sustainability. The text of a review is typically under 2,000 words.

  1. Pre-Submission enquiries

We ask authors to make a pre-submission enquiry by sending us a short summary or abstract of their proposed paper. In this way we can make a preliminary assessment of the proposal to ascertain if it is coherent with the aims and scope of our journal.

  1. Manuscript Submission

Please make sure that a manuscript submission contains two separate documents:

  1. A cover letter.
  2. The original manuscript.

The cover letter

Please make sure that the cover letter contains a declaration by the author(s) that:

  1. The work submitted has not been published before.
  2. It is not under consideration for publication anywhere else.
  3. Its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities at the institute where the work has been carried out.

The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring the accuracy of this declaration. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

The original manuscript

Please make sure that the original manuscript includes the title of the manuscript, the abstract, the text, and the references.

Please make sure that your manuscript is written in good quality, comprehensible language. This enhances the chances of acceptance for publication and the potential impact of your work within the research community. Please note that we cannot consider submissions that are not of an acceptable standard in this respect.

Please make sure that the manuscript contains the following information.

Title

Please make the title succinct and explanatory.

Author information

Please make sure the author information contains the following details:

  • The name(s) of the author(s).
  • The affiliation(s) of the author(s), i.e., institution, department, city, country.
  • An active institutional e-mail address for the corresponding author.
  • An active e-mail address for all the other author(s). Their e-mail addresses will not be published unless specifically requested.
  • If available, the 16-digit ORCID of the author(s).

If address information is provided with the affiliation(s), it will also be published. For authors that may be temporarily unaffiliated, we will only record their city and country of residence.

The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring the accuracy of this information.

Abstract

Please provide an abstract of 150 to 250 words. Please make sure it does not contain undefined abbreviations or unspecified references.

Keywords

Please provide 4 to 6 keywords which can be used for indexing purposes.

Competing interests statement

Please disclose any financial or non-financial competing interests that are directly or indirectly related to the work submitted for publication and that that may compromise or be seen to compromise the objectivity or integrity of the contents of a paper. If there are no financial or non-financial competing interests, please provide a declaration to this effect.

Text Formatting

Please submit manuscripts in Word English (UK).

Please use:

  • a normal, plain font (e.g., 12-point Cambria) for text.
  • italics for emphasis.
  • the automatic page numbering function to number the pages.
  • tab stops or other commands for indents, not the space bar.
  • the table function, not spreadsheets, to make tables.
  • the equation editor or MathType for equations.

Please do not use field functions.

Please save files in docx format (Word 2007 or later) or doc format (earlier Word versions).

Headings

Please use the decimal system of headings with no more than three levels.

Abbreviations

Please define abbreviations at first mention and subsequently use them consistently.

Footnotes

Please use footnotes to the text only to give additional information, which may include the citation of a reference included in the reference list. They should not contain only a reference citation, and they should never include the bibliographic details of a reference. They should also not contain any figures or tables.

Please number footnotes to the text consecutively. Footnotes related to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data). Footnotes to the title or the authors of the article do not have reference symbols. Please always use footnotes instead of endnotes.

Acknowledgments

Please place acknowledgments of people, grants, funds, etc. in a separate section on the title page. Please write the names of funding organizations in full.

In-text citations

Please make sure that in-text citations correspond to APA style (https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/basic-principles/author-date).

Please cite references in the text in alphabetical order by first author’s name and in chronological order for multiple publications by the same author, as in the following examples:

  1. Paper: We can have information with the aid of new telescopes (Schwieterman, 2018).
  2. Book: Gaia is the biosphere and the matrices in which it thrives (Volk, 1997, pp. 99-124).
  3. The two constructs prefigured by Wilson (2002).
  4. Several biophilic design models have been proposed (Browning & Ryan, 2020; Browning, Ryan & Clancy, 2014; Kellert, 2008; 2018; Sturgeon, 2017).

In the case of multiple citations, please only include citations needed to support your immediate point, and if possible, specify what the contribution of each is.

Reference list

Please make sure that all reference examples correspond to APA style (https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples).

In the list of references please only include works that are cited in the text and that have been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications and unpublished works should only be mentioned in the text.

Please alphabetize reference list entries by the last names of the first author of each work. Please alphabetize according to the following rules:

1) For one author, by name of author, then chronologically.

2) For two authors, by name of author, then name of coauthor, then chronologically.

3) For more than two authors, by name of first author, then chronologically.

If available, please always include full DOI links in your reference list (e.g., “https://doi.org/xxx”).

Journal article

Larsen, C.S., Knüsel, C.J., Haddow, S.D., Pilloud, M.A., Milella, M., Sadvari, J.W., Pearson, J., Ruff, C.B., Garofalo, E.M., Bocaege, E., Betz, B.J., Dori, I., & Glencross, B. (2019). Bioarchaeology of Neolithic Çatalhöyük reveals fundamental transitions in health, mobility, and lifestyle in early farmers. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 116(26), 12615-12623. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1904345116

Ideally, the names of all authors should be provided, but the usage of “et al.” in long author lists (more than ten authors) will also be accepted:

Larsen, C.S., Knüsel, C.J., Haddow, S.D., et al. (2019). Bioarchaeology of Neolithic Çatalhöyük reveals fundamental transitions in health, mobility, and lifestyle in early farmers. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 116(26), 12615-12623. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1904345116

Article by DOI

Kuo, M., Browning, M.H., & Penner, M.L. (2018). Do lessons in nature boost subsequent classroom engagement? Refueling students in flight. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 2253. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02253

Book

Christie, D.E. (2013). The Blue Sapphire of the Mind. Notes for a Contemplative Ecology. Oxford University Press, New York, NY.

Book chapter

Wilson, E.O. (1993). Biophilia and the Conservation Ethic. In The Biophilia Hypothesis. S.R. Kellert and E.O. Wilson (Eds.). Island Press, Washington, DC: pp. 31-41.

Online document

Harvard Medical School (2018). Understanding the stress response. Chronic activation of this survival mechanism impairs health: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding-the-stress-response  Accessed 30 Dec 2022.

Please always use the standard abbreviation of a journal’s name according to the ISSN List of Title Word Abbreviations, see ISSN.org LTWA. If you are unsure, use the full journal title.

Figures

Please supply all figures, without captions, in separate files in standard high definition format (JPG or PNG or TIFF) at a minimum of 300 dpi and 2000x1500 pixels.

Please number all figures using Arabic numerals.

Please always cite figures in text in consecutive numerical order, indicating where they should be placed in the manuscript (e.g., “Insert Figure 1 here”).

Tables

Please supply all tables, without captions, in separate files in standard high definition format (original Word file) at a minimum of 300 dpi and 2000x1500 pixels.

Tables should have a maximum width of 12 cm. If for some reason a table requires greater width, it will be published as an appendix to the article.

Please number all tables using Arabic numerals.

Please always cite tables in text in consecutive numerical order, indicating where they should be placed in the manuscript (e.g., “Insert Table 1 here”).

For each figure or table

Please supply in separate files a figure or table caption or title explaining the components of the figure or table.

Please identify any previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference at the end of the figure or table caption or title.

  1. Summary checklist - Ten steps to publication
  1. Pre-submission. Authors send a short summary or synopsis of their proposed paper. We make a preliminary assessment of the proposal to ascertain if it is coherent with the aims and scope of our journal and communicate this to the authors within one week.
  2. Submission. Before submitting, authors make sure that their submission corresponds to all the indications in our author submission guidelines regarding both the cover letter and the original manuscript. This must contain the declarations and the author information specified above. We cannot consider submissions that do not conform to these guidelines.
  3. Reception. When we receive a submission, we immediately write to authors to acknowledge receipt.
  4. Preliminary submission assessment. We make a preliminary assessment of the submission to ascertain if it can be sent to peer review. If we believe it cannot be sent, we communicate this to the authors within one week.
  5. Peer Review. After a positive preliminary assessment, we send the submission for peer review. Our review process normally takes from one to two months.
  6. Negative Peer Review Outcome. After the review process, we write to authors to inform them of the outcome. If we believe that we cannot publish the submission, we give detailed reasons why and explain what changes would be necessary if the authors would like to make a new submission.
  7. Positive Peer Review Outcome. If the outcome of the review process is positive, we give clear indications for eventual revisions authors should carry out before we can proceed to publication. We ask authors to let us know within one week if they are prepared to do so. If they agree, then we ask them to send us their revised version within a maximum of two months.
  8. Copyediting. After receiving a revised version of a submission, we check it to make sure it corresponds to our requests. If so, we proceed to the copyediting stage. We then send a copyedited version to authors to check. This can take from one to two weeks. We then ask authors to give us their confirmation that we can proceed within one week.
  9. Production. After receiving authors’ confirmation, we proceed with production of a definitive version of the paper ready for publication. We then send this to authors for a final check. We then ask authors to give us their confirmation that we can proceed with publication within one week.
  10. Publication. After receiving authors’ confirmation, we proceed immediately with publication of the paper, complete with DOI, on our journal homepage in the More Visions Online section. At the following solstice, the paper is then incorporated into the next full issue of our journal, which is published twice a year.
  1. Open access

Visions for Sustainability is a diamond open access journal. It is published, distributed, and preserved with no fees to either reader or author. We do not require transfer of copyright of the articles published. The copyright remains with the author. The author(s) agree to publish the article under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0). Find more about the license agreement.

  1. Ethical Responsibilities of Authors

Visions for Sustainability is committed to upholding the integrity of the scientific record. Authors should refrain from misrepresenting research results which could damage trust in the journal, the professionalism of scientific authorship, and ultimately the entire scientific endeavour. Furthermore, authors need to make sure they respect third party’s rights such as copyright and/or moral rights.

  1. Plagiarism

Visions for Sustainability uses software to screen for plagiarism, as defined by the ORI (Office of Research Integrity): "theft or misappropriation of intellectual property and the substantial unattributed textual copying of another's work". We will not publish any such manuscripts.