Laboratorium—Author Guidelines

(based on the fourth edition of the ASA Style Guide)

Manuscript Submission:

Laboratorium welcomes submissions of original work in empirical social research, broadly defined. Submissions are accepted in English or Russian. Please indicate whether you are submitting your paper in response to a thematic call for papers or as a stand-alone piece. Please send submission to managing editor Oksana Parfenova [oparfenova@soclabo.org].

In submitting your work to Laboratorium, you guarantee that: a) your article has not been published or submitted for print or electronic publication elsewhere, in any language, in whole or in part, nor will it be submitted to any other publication until Laboratorium decides on its publication; b) the article represents your own work and does not include unattributed passages from work by other authors. If your text or any part thereof is found to contain plagiarism, the editors reserve the right to publicize this fact widely (and of course refuse publication). If the study you report on is the result of collective research, all members of the research team must be indicated either as co-authors or in a note at the beginning of the paper.

Editorial Process:

Unless outright rejected by the editors, all submissions will undergo at least one round of double-blind peer review. In most cases, authors will be asked either to make small revisions or to revise and resubmit their papers, in which case there will be another round of reviews. Final decisions on publication are made on the basis of outside reviews, but always remain at the discretion of the editors.Articles commissioned by Laboratorium undergo the same process and are judged by the same criteria as unsolicited submissions.

The article may be returned to you for revision in an edited and/or reformatted version; in this case, please use that version. You will be able to authorize any editorial changes before layout. Before publication, you will receive proofs of your article along with a copyright transfer agreement. No major changes can be made at this point.

Laboratoriumholds the copyright for all published material. Re-publication in any form requires written permission from the editors. Authors are automatically granted such permission for reprints in edited volumes or collections of their own work on the condition that they clearly and precisely indicate the place of first publication and Laboratorium’s copyright.

Manuscript Preparation:

1) You may submit articles in either American or British English, as long as the style is consistent throughout the article. Submissions in English should be formatted in accordance with the American Sociological Association’s Style Guide.

2) Each article should not exceed 60,000 characters (roughly 9,000–10,000 words), including spaces and footnotes, but excluding references. Exceptions to this rule may be granted by the editors at their discretion.

3) All copy must be typed in a common font (for example, Times New Roman) of 12-point size, except for footnotes, block quotes, and captions to tables, figures etc., which should be in 10-point size. All text, including footnotes and references, should be at at least 1.5-line spacing.

4) Manuscripts should include at minimum (1) a title page, (2) an abstract of no more than 1,000 characters (150–170 words), (3) the text, (4) footnotes, and (5) references; (6) tables and figures are optional.

If manuscripts do not conform to the specified format, authors will be expected to correct them at some stage before their final acceptance. To insure anonymity during the review process, authors must remove all self-identifying references from the manuscript.

Detailed instructions for manuscript preparation are as follows:

1. The title page should include the manuscript’s full title and names and institutional affiliations of all authors. Provide work address and e-mail address of the author to whom communications about the article should be sent. This information will be published. Acknowledgments, information about funding sources, and other relevant information should be mentioned here.

2. The abstract (no more than 170 words) should be on a separate page headed by the title. Omit author identification.

3. Begin the text of your manuscript on a new page. Include the title but not author identification.

a. It is helpful if the article is split into several sections, each with its own heading. Longer sections in turn can be broken into shorter parts with their own subheadings.

b. Set off long quotations (more than 300 characters, or 50 words) in a separate, indented paragraph, without quotations marks.

c. For in-text citations include the last name of the author and year of publication—and page numbers where necessary or helpful to the reader. Identify subsequent citations of the same source in the same way as the first.

* If author’s name is in the text, follow it with year in parentheses: […Sassen (1996)…].

* If author’s name is not in the text, enclose the last name and year in parentheses (without separating them by a comma): [... (Lévy 2008).].

* Give both last names for joint authors: [... (King and Sznajder 2006).].

* Citing works by multiple authors, provide all last names on the first citation; thereafter use ‘et al.’ in the citation: [... (Eyal, Szelényi, and Townsley 1998). And later... (Eyal et al. 1998).].

* If a work has more than three authors, use et al. in the first citation, as well as in all subsequent citations.

* Separate a series of references—either by different authors or by the same author—with a semicolon: [...(Kallen 1915; Alexander 2006)...] and […(Goldberg 2009; 2011)…].

* For institutional authorship, supply minimum identification from the beginning of the complete citation: [...(Institute for Survey Research 1976:11)...].

* If the work is not published (yet) use ‘N.d.’ or ‘forthcoming’ for material scheduled for publication: […Ivanov (N.d.) and Petrov (forthcoming)...].

* Page number follows year of publication after a colon with no space between them: [...(Bellah et al. 2008:viii)…] or […Breslauer (1990:17)…].

* If you cite consecutively from the same source, it is sufficient to give just page numbers for the second and all subsequent consecutive citations.

* Use an en-dash (–) when providing page ranges: […(Machiavelli 1996:26–27).].

4. Footnotes in the text should be numbered consecutively throughout the article with superscript Arabic numerals. If a footnote is referred to again later in the text, use a parenthetical note ‘(See note 3)’.Use footnotes to explain or amplify text or to cite materials of limited availability. Excessive and long footnotes may distract the reader and are expensive to print, therefore refrain from overusing them. If material in a footnote is detailed or complex, especially when it relates to the article’s methodology, consider moving it to an appendix.

5. References follow the text in a section headed ‘Bibliography.’ All references used in the text must be listed in the bibliography, and vice versa. Publication information for each must be complete and correct. Type references alphabetically by author. First, list sources in Cyrillic and then in Roman script. Be especially thorough with non-Russian and non-English language publications: editors, copy-editor, and proof-readers don’t necessarily read the same languages as you do. Diacritical marks, which are common in French, German, Hungarian, and other languages, must be reproduced if they appear in the names/titles in the original publication  (e.g., ‘István Szántó,’ not ‘Istvan Szanto’). 

If there are two or more items by the same author(s), list them in order of year of publication from the earliest to the latest. If the cited material is unpublished but has been accepted for publication, use ‘Forthcoming’ in place of the date and give the name of the journal or publisher. Otherwise use ‘N.d.’ If two or more works are by the same author(s) within the same year, distinguish them by adding the letters a, b, c, etc. to the year. List such works in alphabetical order by title. For multiple authorship, only the name of the first author is inverted (e.g. ‘Alba, Richard and Victor Nee’). Even in cases of more than three authors, list all authors’ names.

If you cite a translated or repeat edition of a title, list the original publication date in brackets, followed by the publication date of the version used.

Book titles and journal names are give in italics; titles of book chapters and journal articles are put in quotation marks. In publication titles and subtitles, capitalize the first and last words in titles and subtitles and all other major words (nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs).

Articles and books obtained from the Internet are cited the same way as their print editions, except their page numbers are omitted and the URL and access dates are included. For other online resources, links to specific materials, not website homepages, are to be cited.

Examples:

* Books:

Bellah, Robert N., Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton. [1985] 2008. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press.

Deutsche Erinnerungsorte. Band 1. 2001. Herausgegeben von Etienne François und Hagen Schulze. München: C.H. Beck.

Gross, Jan T. 2001. Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Sociology in America: A History. 2007. Edited by Craig Calhoun. Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press.

* Periodicals:

Goffman, Alice. 2009. “On the Run: Wanted Men in a Philadelphia Ghetto.” American Sociological Review 74(3):339–357.

Katovich, Michael A. and Carl J. Couch. 1992. “The Nature of Social Pasts and Their Uses as Foundations for Situated Action.” Symbolic Interaction 15:25–48.

* Collections:

Degage, Alain.1985. “Le Port de Sète: Proue Méditerreanéenne du Canal de Riquet.” Pp. 265–306 in Le Canal du Midi, Vol. 4, edited by Jean-Denis Bergasse. Cessenon: J. D. Bergasse.

*E-Resources:

Chen, Adrian. 2009. “Why Do Doctors Wear White Coats?” Slate. Retrieved June 22, 2009 (http://www.slate.com/id/2220925).

6. Number tables and figures consecutively throughout the text and type each on a separate sheet at the end. Insert a note in the text to indicate the placement: “Fig. 1 about here” or “Table 2 about here.” All tables must include a descriptive title and headings for columns and rows; all figures should be accompanied by a caption. Illustrations should be provided in high resolution (300 dpi for photographs). Authors should secure permission to reproduce any copyrighted material prior to its publication in Laboratorium.