Submissions

Author Guidelines

All prospective authors can submit their manuscripts through our online portal by registering for an account here (link also available in the sidebar under "For Authors"). Once registered, follow the five-step prompts to complete your submission through the portal. If you are a returning author, simply login to your existing account to complete the five-step submission process. 

Your submission should include the following details: 

• A title page with the author’s name(s) and complete affiliation(s), along with the corresponding author’s name, email address, and telephone number 

• A separate page which includes an abstract of no more than 250 words and up to 10 keywords

• A separate page which includes brief bio(s) of the author(s) no more than 200 words each, and a paragraph for acknowledgements (no more than 300 words) 

• Your anonymized main document (including all endnotes, references, figures and tables, and appendices) 

• The text should be double-spaced; using 12-point, Times New Roman font 

• Any in-text notes should be numbered consecutively with superscript Arabic numeral and included after the main body of the paper as endnotes (please do not include footnotes). 

• All tables and figures/illustrations should be placed within the text at the appropriate points (not at the end of the manuscript) 

• Tables and figures should be numbered consecutively in the order they are referred to in the text (i.e. table 1, table 2, figure 1 etc.) 

• Each table or figure should include a brief descriptive title. 

• The author(s) should make sure that the size of the font in tables and figures is readable and similar to the size of text font

• Submissions must follow APA 6th edition referencing and formatting guidelines 

• All sentences and phrases that are directly from another source must be placed in quotations and clearly cited. Both intentional and unintentional violations will be considered plagiarism and will result in disqualification from the submission process

• Authors should make sure that the reference list is complete and that every referenced work is cited in the paper

• Where available, URLs for the references should be provided in the reference list

• Sections of the text should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals. Subsections, if numbered, should be consecutive (i.e. 2.1, 2.2, ...)

• All pages must be numbered 

• Submissions must consistently use Canadian spelling

• The order of the "main document" should be as follows (saved as one file): text, endnotes, references followed by the appendix (please note that to ensure the double-blind nature of the review process, no author name(s) or identifiers should appear on these sections) 

• The title page, abstract page, author bios/acknowledgement page can include identifiers since these will only be viewed by the Editor(s)-in-Chief. These 3 documents should be saved as separate files. 

Types of Submissions Accepted by CGJSC/RCESSC and Page limits* 

Double-blind Peer Review 

• Theoretical/ empirical articles (30 pages maximum)

• Position papers/ Reflective essays (15 pages maximum) 

• Policy briefs (15 pages maximum)

Panel/Editorial Review 

• Book and film reviews (3 pages maximum)

• Critical commentaries (5 pages maximum)

• Poems (2 pages maximum)

• Comics (1 page maximum)

• Short stories (5 pages maximum)

• Visual/ Textual Artistic Media and Photographic essays (10 pages maximum)

*page limits refer to double-spaced pages and exclude references and appendices. 

The Review Process 

1. Upon submission of your manuscript, it will undergo an initial screening by the Editor(s)-in-Chief for quality control, ensuring that each submission meets the basic submission guidelines. A submission may be rejected at any stage of the review process, and submissions not adhering to the scope of the journal or submission guidelines will be rejected. 

2. If the manuscript meets the submission guidelines it is either sent to two peer-reviewers using a double-blind procedure or forwarded for panel/editorial review (depending on the type of submission). Reviewers will read each submission and provide constructive feedback based on a set of predetermined criteria to certify that each submission maintains the highest level of ethical standards, quality, rigour, and academic integrity. Reviewers will return their written reviews to the Editor(s)-in-Chief in a timely fashion with their suggestions and informed decision. Upon receiving acceptable reviews, the Editor(s)-in-Chief will consult with the advisory board, which includes experts in the field (an established scholar and faculty member), to make a final decision about the manuscript. 

3. Finally, the Editor(s)-in-Chief will contact the corresponding author with a copy of the feedback provided by each reviewer along with the final decision regarding the manuscript. There are three possible decisions that can be made about any submitted manuscript: 

1. Accepted 

2. Accepted (pending minor edits) 

3. Revise and resubmit (pending major edits) 

4. Rejected 

Ensuring Double Blind (Anonymous) Review

To ensure the integrity of the anonymous peer-review for submission to CGJSC, every effort should be made to prevent the identities of the authors and reviewers from being known to each other. This involves the authors, editors, and reviewers (who upload documents as part of their review) checking to see if the following steps have been taken with regard to the text and the file properties:

• The authors of the document have deleted their names and any identifiers from the text of the main document (i.e. ensure that the label "Author" is used, instead of the authors' actual name etc.) 

• With Microsoft Office documents, author identification should also be removed from the properties for the file (see under File in Word), by clicking on the following, beginning with File on the main menu of the Microsoft application: File > Save As > Tools (or Options with a Mac) > Security > Remove personal information from file properties on save > Save.

• With PDFs, the authors' names should also be removed from Document Properties found under File on Adobe Acrobat's main menu.

Permissions

All images, tables, and figures require permissions before they can be published in our journal. 

If the media in question is not the creation of the author, permission must be obtained from the copyright holder. It is the responsibility of the author to obtain any such permissions as soon as possible from the original creator (obtaining permissions can be a lengthy process). Once permission is granted, please send a copy of the relevant permissions via email to our Editor(s)-in-Chief

For the author(s) wishing to publish their own original work with the CGJSC, please certify that permission is given to display your work on our website and publish it in our journal by completing the CGJSC Authorship Agreement upon acceptance of your paper. 

Archiving Policy 

Articles from past issues are archived and will be available on the CGJSC/ RCESSC website. 

Open Access Policy 

The CGJSC/RCESSC has an open access policy to help ensure that valuable knowledge can be transferred without barriers to both academic and non-academic audiences. Therefore, all articles published in the CGJSC are made freely available to download and use by any interested individual.

Copyright Notice

The CGJSC/RCESSC is committed to the open exchange of ideas and information. 

Unlike traditional journals which require the author to relinquish copyright to the publisher, the CGJSC instead requires that authors release their work under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license (CC BY-NC) which aligns with the open-access policy of this journal. This license allows others to adapt, build upon, distribute and transmit the original authors’ work for non-commercial purposes provided that appropriate attribution is given to the original author(s). More information about Creative Commons licenses can be found here.  

Indexing policy

Articles in the CGJSC may be indexed by databases such as Google Scholar, Scholars Porstal, etc. to increase online exposure  

Processing Fees

The Canadian Graduate Journal of Sociology and Criminology does not charge authors any article processing charges or other submission fees.

General Terms and Conditions 

Users of the Open Journals@UWaterloo website and/or software and members of the CGJSC agree to not misuse or violate the general principles of the journal in any way. Any individual(s) who do not adhere to the principles of the CGJSC or Open Journals@UWaterloo will be ineligible for participation or membership. The failure of the CGJSC or Open Journals@UWaterloo to exercise or enforce any provision, principle, or submission agreement does not constitute a waiver of such right or provision. Rather, the policies, principles, and submission agreements should be considered elements of the entire agreement between the CGJSC, Open Journals@UWaterloo, and the author(s) regarding submission of the article.

Reproduction, posting, transmission or other distribution or use of any articles or material therein, in any medium, requires appropriate citation to Canadian Graduate Journal of Sociology and Criminology as the publisher of record and attribution to appropriate authors. For assistance, please contact the Editor(s)-in-Chief at email. 

Commitment to Ethical Practice and Standards

The Canadian Graduate Journal of Sociology and Criminology (CGJSC) is committed to ensuring ethical practice among researchers in the social sciences and places an emphasis on research ethics. The CGJSC seeks to contribute towards a research environment where the rights of research participants are paramount and of the utmost priority.  THE CGJSC adheres to the standards established in the Tri-Council Policy Statement (TCPS-2) for research in the social sciences involving human participants and their data. When engaging in a discussion on research ethics within the social sciences, it is important to understand the wide array of data that researchers may encounter and work with.

All submissions, whether academic or non-academic, involving human participants or data that is not publicly accessible must receive clearance from an institutional research ethics board (REB); or a community research ethics board for independent or community-based scholars. When submitting a work for consideration to the CGJSC, authors must indicate whether their work is subject to ethics approval and, if so, provide a certificate number indicating they have received institutional approval for their research. Submissions that fail to provide this information will be rejected upon receipt. In the case of non-academic submissions that involve human participants, like photos, authors must demonstrate that the subject of the submission has consented to their involvement and for their picture to be displayed in the context of a social sciences journal.

Commitment to Academic Integrity and Misconduct

The Canadian Graduate Journal of Sociology and Criminology (CGJSC) is committed to fostering an environment where academic integrity is respected. Like many leading journals and academic institutions, the CGJSC provides a space for researchers and academics to share their ideas and insights, on topical and salient social issues, and do so in a manner that advances the academic enterprise. Providing an environment where academic integrity is valued establishes the journal’s reputation in the field, and demonstrates the value placed upon the values of honesty, accountability, fairness, responsibility, and equity.

In addition to the journal’s peer review process, authors are expected to properly cite their sources using APA (6th edition) formatting, provide bibliographic information for all sources used in the creation of their submission, ensure that their work is original in nature, ensure that all authors of the piece have received credit for their work, the work is not plagiarized, there is no unauthorized collaboration (ghost writing), the intellectual property is that of the author’s and not of another individual or entity, and there is no misrepresentation of research findings. 

The editorial team reserves the right to refuse any manuscript submitted to the CGJSC and to make suggestions and/or modifications to an accepted submission before it is published. Submissions may be checked for academic integrity using TurnItIn or similar software. Submissions may also be returned to the author(s) for reworking or retyping if they do not conform to APA style and formatting requirements. All manuscripts must be in final form when submitted.