Pre-submission: helping readers find your article
Before you submit your manuscript, go back and review your title, keywords and abstract. These elements are key to ensuring that readers will be able to find your article online through online search engines such as Google. More information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords can be found here: How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.

One simple thing you can do to improve your article’s visibility and ensure proper indexing and cross-linking is to provide full names for all authors. Please refer to our guidelines for author names, prepared in consultation with Google Scholar, for more information.

Submitting your article
Each SAGE journal has its own editorial office and its own instructions for authors. To submit your article, visit your chosen journal’s homepage and click on the manuscript submission guidelines link. View the list of all our journals here.

Our general guidance for authors can be found below. Please be sure to read your chosen journal’s guidelines as each journal will have its own specific requirements. Please direct queries on the submission process to the journal’s editorial office; details can be found within each journal’s submission guidelines. Other queries may be sent to authorqueries@sagepub.co.uk

SAGE is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and follows their best practice guidelines.
For authors submitting to medical journals, SAGE recommendsthat authors follow the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Are you choosing the right journal for your research? With so many journals to choose from you may need a little guidance…

Think, check, submit is a trusted online service with a useful checklist that will help you determine whether you are submitting to the right journal.  If you can answer ‘yes’ to most of their questions then you can be confident that your chosen journal is easily discoverable with a suitable reputation. 

Editorial policies

Peer review policy
Please see the submission guidelines of the journal you wish to submit to. View the complete list of SAGE Journals.

Please note that as part of the submission process you may be asked to provide the names of a number of peers who could be called upon to review your manuscript. Recommended reviewers should be experts in their fields and should be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. Please be aware of any conflicts of interest when recommending reviewers. Examples of conflicts of interest include (but are not limited to) the below: 

• The reviewer should have no prior knowledge of your submission
• The reviewer should not have recently collaborated with any of the authors
• Reviewer nominees from the same institution as any of the authors are not permitted

Please note that the journal’s editors are not obliged to invite any recommended/opposed reviewers to assess your manuscript.

Authorship
For authors submitting to technical or medical journals, papers should only be submitted for consideration once consent is given by all contributing authors. Those submitting papers should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the paper are acknowledged as contributing authors.
The list of authors should include all those who can legitimately claim authorship. This is all those who:

1. Made a substantial contribution to the concept and design, acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data,
2. Drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content,
3. Approved the version to be published.
4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. 

Authors should meet the conditions of all of the points above. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.
When a large, multicentre group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship.

Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship, although all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section. Please refer to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines for more information on authorship.

For authors submitting to social science or humanities journals, 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.

Corresponding author
The one individual who takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process, and typically ensures that all the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and gathering conflict of interest forms and statements, are properly completed, although these duties may be delegated to one or more co-authors.

The corresponding author is the person who signs the publishing agreement on behalf of all of the authors and whose contact details are included on the article. They should be available after publication to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for data or additional information should questions about the paper arise after publication.