Platforms & Society

1. Open Access
2. Article processing charge (APC)
3. What do we publish?
   3.1 Aims & Scope
   3.2 Article types
   3.3 Writing your paper
4. Editorial policies
   4.1 Peer review policy
   4.2 Authorship
   4.3 Acknowledgements
   4.4 Funding
   4.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
   4.6 Research ethics and patient consent
   4.7 Research data
5. Publishing policies
   5.1 Publication ethics
   5.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement
6. Preparing your manuscript
   6.1 Formatting
   6.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
   6.3 Supplemental material
   6.4 Reference style
   6.5 English language editing services
   6.6 Identifiable Information
7. Submitting your manuscript
   7.1 How to submit your manuscript
   7.2 Title, Keywords and abstracts
   7.3 ORCID
   7.4 Information required for completing your submission
   7.5 Permissions
8. On acceptance and publication
   8.1 SAGE Production
   8.2 Online publication
   8.3 Promoting your article
9. Further information
   9.1 Appealing the publication decision

This Journal recommends that authors follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Please read the guidelines below then visit the journal’s submission site  to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned. Remember you can log in to the submission site at any time to check on the progress of your paper through the peer review process.

Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Platforms & Society will be reviewed. As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and 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.

 Platforms & Society may accept submissions of papers that have been posted on preprint servers; please alert the Editorial Office when submitting (contact details are at the end of these guidelines) and include the DOI for the preprint in the designated field in the manuscript submission system. Authors should not post an updated version of their paper on the preprint server while it is being peer reviewed for possible publication in the journal. If your paper is accepted, you will need to contact the preprint server to ensure the final published article link is attached to your preprint. Learn more about our preprint policy here.

1. Open Access

Platforms & Society is an open access, peer-reviewed journal. Each article accepted by peer review is made freely available online immediately upon publication, is published under a Creative Commons license and will be hosted online in perpetuity. Publication costs of the journal are covered by the collection of article processing charges which are paid by the funder, institution or author of each manuscript upon acceptance. There is no charge for submitting a paper to the journal.

For general information on open access at Sage please visit the Open Access page or view our Open Access FAQs.

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2. Article processing charge (APC)

If, after peer review, your manuscript is accepted for publication, a one-time article processing charge (APC) is payable. This APC covers the cost of publication and ensures that your article will be freely available online in perpetuity under a Creative Commons license. 

The article processing charge (APC) for this journal is 2250 USD, where a 50% introductory discount will apply.

The article processing charge (APC) is payable when a manuscript is accepted after peer review, before it is published. The APC is subject to taxes where applicable. Tax-exempt status can be indicated by providing appropriate registration numbers when payment is requested.  Please see further details here.

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3. What do we publish?

3.1 Aims & Scope

Before submitting your manuscript to Platforms & Society, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.

3.2 Article types

• Original Research Articles

Double-blind refereed original research articles of up to 10,000 words will form the heart of the journal. This word limit includes all text in the article, excluding an abstract (maximum 300 words). Visual aids are calculated based on their size relative to a journal page, which is 500 words (eg, a half-page figure would count as 250 words). 

Submissions of original research articles should include a fully-anonymized manuscript and a separate title page with the name, affiliation, and contact information (including email addresses) of all authors, as well as any acknowledgements and funding details as necessary. Identifying information should not be included in any other uploaded file besides the title page.

• Editorials

Editorials are medium-length introductory texts (up to 4,000 words, including references) written by the Editors or the Guest Editors of a Theme Issue.

Editorials are reviewed internally by the Editors, with the support of editorial board members. Only solicited submissions are accepted in this case.

• Conversations & Debates

This section hosts (cross-disciplinary) discussions of issues related to the state of the art in platform research, as well as conversations between authors of recently published books and their readers. Contributions to this section can be up to 3,000 words (including references).

Conversations & Debates contributions will be reviewed by the Editors, with the support of the Editorial Board. Anonymization is not required for Conversation & Debate submissions.

• Multimedia submissions

These contributions forge alternative ways of grasping the nature and societal impacts of platforms/platformization, creating forms of knowledge in which the written word does not take center stage. Possible submission types include (but are not limited to):

• • Images (e.g. photos, comics, drawings, infographics)
  • Audio (e.g. podcast)
  • Video (e.g. documentary)
  • Interactive media (e.g. games)

Multimedia submissions should be accompanied by a short text (up to 1,000 words, including references) introducing the work. Both the multimedia work and the text will be double-blind peer reviewed.

Prior to submitting a multimedia contribution, authors should contact the Editors [pns.pra@sagepub.com] with a short proposal of the prospective piece, to ensure that the submission falls within the scope of the journal and that it has the technical capacity to publish the work. The proposal should include a short description of the proposed contribution and details about its format. At the submission stage, authors will be required to include their multimedia file (anonymized), its accompanying text (anonymized), and a title page with name, affiliation, and contact information (including email addresses) of all authors, as well as any acknowledgements and funding details as necessary.

• Provocations

The Provocations section hosts short pieces (up to 1,000 words, including references) that make a pointed intervention, by positing a thought-provoking perspective challenging existing assumptions and/or approaches in platform research.

Provocations will be reviewed by the Editors, with the support of the Editorial Board. Provocations do not require anonymization.

• Theme Issues

Theme issues are collections of original articles, editorials, and/or commentaries that focus on a particular topic related to the journal’s aims and scope. These issues are guest-edited by editorial board members or external contributors.

We welcome prospective guest editors to reach out via email [pns.pra@sagepub.com] to discuss their proposal. Proposals should include:

• a title
• a rationale (800-1,000 words in length) outlining the main thematic issues being addressed, including a specific discussion on the proposal’s fit with the aims and scope of the journal,
• a list of anticipated contributions, including potential authors, paper titles, and short abstracts (max 100 words),
• brief biographical notes on the guest editor(s) and contributors in the themed issue,
• if applicable, a brief statement about the connections between the proposed themed issue and the workshop, symposium, conference or similar events from which the papers derive,
• a timetable and target publication date,
• an indication of APC support, or a lack thereof, for the papers in the themed issue,
• if applicable, a brief statement about the connections between the proposed themed issue and the workshop, symposium, conference or similar events from which the papers derive.

A theme issue proposal should normally contain 4-8 contributions.

All theme issue proposals are welcome on the understanding that they are not under consideration elsewhere.

For more information on theme issue proposals, please consult these guidelines.

After a theme issue is accepted, guest editors will receive instructions on the submission and reviewing procedure. In the event that fewer than four papers are eventually accepted, these will be published as “regular” papers in a themed section.

Please visit our Sage Author Gateway for guidance on producing visual and/or video abstracts.  

3.3 Writing your paper

Visit the Sage Author Gateway for 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.

3.3.1 Making your article discoverable

For information and guidance on how to make your article more discoverable, visit our Gateway page on How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.

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4. Editorial policies

4.1 Peer review policy

Sage does not permit the use of author-suggested (recommended) reviewers at any stage of the submission process, be that through the web-based submission system or other communication. Reviewers should be experts in their fields and should be able to provide an objective assessment of themanuscript. Our policy is that reviewers should not be assigned to a paper if:

• The reviewer is based at the same institution as any of the co-authors.
• The reviewer is based at the funding body of the paper.
• The author has recommended the reviewer.
• The reviewer has provided a personal (e.g. Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail) email account and an institutional email account cannot be found after performing a basic Google search (name, department and institution).

Following a preliminary triage to eliminate submissions unsuitable for Platforms & Society all papers are sent out for review. The covering letter is important. To help the Editor in their preliminary evaluation, please indicate why you think the paper suitable for publication. If your paper should be considered for fast-track publication, please explain why.

The journal’s policy is to have manuscripts reviewed by two expert reviewers. Platforms & Society utilizes a double-anonymized peer review process in which the reviewer and authors’ names and information are withheld from the other. 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.

For other peer review processes see suggested wording here

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.

Platforms & Society is committed to delivering high quality, fast peer-review for your paper, and as such has partnered with Web of Science (previously Publons). Web of Science is a third party service that seeks to track, verify and give credit for peer review. Reviewers for Platforms & Society  can opt in to Web of Science in order to claim their reviews or have them automatically verified and added to their reviewer profile. Reviewers claiming credit for their review will be associated with the relevant journal, but the article name, reviewer’s decision and the content of their review is not published on the site. For more information visit the Web of Science website.

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.

4.2 Authorship

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.

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.

4.3 Acknowledgements

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.

Please supply any personal acknowledgements separately to the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.

Per ICMJE recommendations, it is best practice to obtain consent from non-author contributors who you are acknowledging in your paper.

4.3.1 Third party submissions

Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a  manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:

• Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input
• Identify any entities that paid for this assistance
• Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc.

Where appropriate, Sage reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.

4.3.2 Writing assistance

Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance. It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.

4.4 Funding

Platforms & Society  requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading.  Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding.

4.5 Declaration of conflicting interests

Platforms & Society encourages authors to include a declaration of any conflicting interests and recommends you review the good practice guidelines on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.

It is the policy of  Platforms & Society to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles.

Please ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your manuscript, after any acknowledgements and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’.

For guidance on conflict of interest statements, please see the ICMJE recommendations.

4.6 Research ethics and patient consent

Medical research involving human subjects must be conducted according to the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki.

Submitted manuscripts should conform to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, and all papers reporting animal and/or human studies must state in the methods section that the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board provided (or waived) approval. Please ensure that you have provided the full name and institution of the review committee, in addition to the approval number.

For research articles, authors are also required to state in the methods section whether participants provided informed consent and whether the consent was written or verbal.

If applicable, authors are required to state in the methods section whether participants provided informed consent.

Information on informed consent to report individual cases or case series should be included in the manuscript text. A statement is required regarding whether written informed consent for patient information and images to be published was provided by the patient(s) or a legally authorized representative. Please do not submit the patient’s actual written informed consent with your article, as this in itself breaches the patient’s confidentiality. The Journal requests that you confirm to us, in writing, that you have obtained written informed consent but the written consent itself should be held by the authors/investigators themselves, for example in a patient’s hospital record. The confirmatory letter may be uploaded with your submission as a separate file.

Please also refer to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Protection of Research Participants

4.7 Research data

The journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages.

Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:

• Share your research data in a relevant public data repository
• Include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, use the statement to confirm why it cannot be shared.
• Cite this data in your research

Peer reviewers may be asked to peer review the research data prior to publication.

• Peer reviewers may be asked to assess compliance with the research data policy
• Peer reviewers may be asked to assess research data files

If you need to anonymize your research data for peer review, please refer to our Research Data Sharing FAQs for guidance.

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5. Publishing policies

5.1 Publication ethics

Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway.

5.1.1 Plagiarism

Platforms & Society and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarized other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.

5.1.2 Prior publication

If material has been previously published, it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.

5.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement

Before publication Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Platforms & Society publishes manuscripts under Creative Commons licenses. The standard license for the journal is Creative Commons by Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC), which allows others to re-use the work without permission as long as the work is properly referenced and the use is non-commercial. For more information, you are advised to visit Sage's OA licenses page. Alternative license arrangements are available, for example, to meet particular funder mandates, made at the author’s request. 

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6. Preparing your manuscript

6.1 Formatting

The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. Word and (La)Tex templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.

6.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics

For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines.  

Figures supplied in color will appear in color online.

6.3 Supplemental material

This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files.

6.4 Reference style

Platforms & Society adheres to the APA reference style. View the APA guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.

Authors should update any references to preprints when a peer reviewed version is made available, to cite the published research. Citations to preprints are otherwise discouraged.

6.5 English language editing services

Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Language Services. Visit Sage Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.

6.6 Identifiable Information

Where a journal uses double-anonymized peer review, authors are required to submit:

1. A version of the manuscript which has had any information that compromises the anonymity of the author(s) removed or anonymized. This version will be sent to the peer reviewers.
2. A separate title page which includes any removed or anonymized material. This will not be sent to thepeer reviewers.

Visit the Sage Author Gateway for detailed guidance on making an anonymous submission.

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7. Submitting your manuscript

7.1 How to submit your manuscript

Platforms & Society is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/platsoc to login and submit your article online.

IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system 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.

7.2 Title, keywords and abstracts

Please supply a title, short title, an abstract and keywords to accompany your article. The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article online through online search engines such as Google. Please refer to the information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords by visiting the Sage Journal Author Gateway for guidelines on How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.

7.3 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.

7.4 Information required for completing your submission

You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. The affiliation listed on the manuscript 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 manuscript note at the end of the paper. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).

7.5 Permissions

Please ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.

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8. On acceptance and publication

If your paper is accepted for publication after peer review, you will first be asked to complete the contributor’s publishing agreement. Once your manuscript files have been checked for Sage Production, the corresponding author will be asked to pay the article processing charge (APC) via a payment link. Once the APC has been processed, your article will be prepared for publication and can appear online within an average of 30 days. Please note that no production work will occur on your paper until the APC has been received.

8.1 SAGE Production

Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will made available to the corresponding author via our editing portal Sage Edit, or by email to the corresponding author and should be returned promptly. 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.

8.2 Online publication

One of the many benefits of publishing your research in an open access journal is the speed to publication. With no page count constraints, your article will be published online in a fully citable form with a DOI number as soon as it has completed the production process. At this time it will be completely free to view and download for all.

8.3 Promoting your article

Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.

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9. Further information

Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the Manuscript Submission process should be sent to the Platforms & Society editorial office as follows:

10. Appealing the publication decision

Editors have very broad discretion in determining whether an article is an appropriate fit for their journal. Many manuscripts are declined with a very general statement of the rejection decision. These decisions are not eligible for formal appeal unless the author believes the decision to reject the manuscript was based on an error in the review of the article, in which case the author may appeal the decision by providing the Editor with a detailed written description of the error they believe occurred.

If an author believes the decision regarding their manuscript was affected by a publication ethics breach, the author may contact the publisher with a detailed written description of their concern, and information supporting the concern, at publication_ethics@sagepub.com

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