S.B.H.A.

Aims and Scope

Society, Biology and Human Affairs is the in-house journal of the BioSocial Society, which aims to provide a forum for the dissemination of news about the Society, as well as the rapid publication of refereed articles describing empirical and theoretical, primary and secondary research exploring the intersection between social and biological processes as these relate to humans. The Journal will consider articles on ‘human affairs’ from the social and natural sciences, and particularly encourages submissions from those ‘boundary’ disciplines that encompass both – such as biocultural anthropology, medical sociology, social epidemiology, demography, bioethics, and the history of science.

The Journal will consider three types of submissions: Original Articles – comprising research or reviews of up to 7,000 words; Brief Communications – comprising shorter reports of interesting or novel findings of up to 2,500 words; and Letters to the Editor – comprising commentaries, news or responses to published articles of up to 500 words. Authors submitting Original Articles or Brief Communications must be members of the BioSocial Society prior to publication, and non-members must submit an application form to join the Society before their manuscript can be reviewed. Authors submitting manuscripts based on research conducted whilst they were registered as a student, and that has or will be presented at a scientific symposium, may be eligible to apply for the Society’s Conference Bursary Scheme which provides bursaries of up to £500 to student members on a competitive basis (for further details please contact the Secretary: Rachel Casiday, r.e.casiday@durham.ac.uk).

Authors should submit their article electronically as an email attachment formatted in MS Word, to the Editor of SBHA: Dr. Rachel Casiday, University of Wales Lampeter, Department of Voluntary Sector Studies Lampeter, Ceredigion, SA48 7ED, UK.

Please be sure to comply with the guidelines on the preparation of manuscripts as outlined below.

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Guidelines on the preparation of manuscripts

Length – the guidelines on word length are strictly enforced for Letters to the Editor (=500 words) but are more flexible for Original Articles (˜7,000 words) and Brief Communications (>500 and =2,500 words). Original Articles less than 2,500 words long will ordinarily be considered for publication as a Brief Communication while Letters to the Editor of more than 500 words long may be considered for publication as a Brief Communication if they contain substantive information.

Structure – Original Articles should be formatted to include a 300-word abstract as well as separate sections for the: Introduction; Materials & Methods; Results; Discussion; Acknowledgements and References. Brief Communications do not have abstracts, but have separate Introduction and Materials & Methods sections, while the Results and Discussion sections are combined. No sub-headings are required for Letters to the Editor.

Tables and Figures – Authors are encouraged to include Tables and Figures to illustrate Original Articles and Brief Communications but not to replicate issues, data or analyses described in detail elsewhere in the text. Both should be numbered consecutively and presented on separate pages at the end of the text, with detailed legends clearly describing what each Table or Figure contains. Tables should be formatted as plain text (i.e. without using the ‘Table’ function in MS Word) to facilitate type-setting, and Figures should be submitted as high quality, black and white ‘.pdf’ files. In both instances authors should ensure that the Tables and Figures will be legible when published in the Journal’s A5 (148mm wide by 210mm high) format. Authors are responsible for securing formal permission, in writing, from copyright holders of any Figures reproduced from elsewhere.

Format – all manuscripts should be formatted in 12 point and double-spaced throughout (including headings, text, footnotes, tables and figure legends) to facilitate manuscript review and typesetting.

Citing References – the Journal uses the Harvard system of referencing with authors’ names cited in the text wherever their work is referred to. References should be cited in the text by author name(s) and year of publication. For example: “Redman and Turner (2001) suggest that the term ‘screen’ is itself problematic in some contexts…” or “Some authors suggest that the term ‘screen’ is itself problematic in some contexts (Redman and Turner 2001; Redman et al. 2002a; 2002b)…” When citing more than one reference these are listed in ascending order of year of publication and then in alphabetical order of first (and subsequent) authors’ surnames. For two authors use ‘and’, for three or more use the first author followed by ‘et al.’. Separate citations with a semi-colon. When citing publications by the same author(s) the authors’ names only need be given once and subsequent dates of publication can be listed separated by a semi-colon. For citing more than one publication by the same author(s) in the same year use ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’ and so on after the date (see example above) to distinguish between the different publications, and make sure that these letters are added to the reference list.

Listing References – References should be listed alphabetically at the end of each article. For listing publications by the same author, single author references should be listed first (in ascending order by year of publication), then two-author references (in alphabetical order by second authors’ name, then in ascending order by year of publication) and finally three or more author references (in alphabetical order by second, third, fourth etc authors’ name, then in ascending order by year of publication). Include all authors’ and editors’ names in the reference list except where there are more than three authors/editors in which case the first three authors’ names followed by ‘et al.’ will suffice, for example: single author – Smith LB; two authors – Smith LB, Jones JW; three authors – Smith LB, Jones JW, Lee JP; four or more authors – Smith LB, Jones JW, Lee JP, et al.; Examples of different types of article follow below:

Journal articles – authors’ name(s) (as above); full stop; article title (initial caps only first word and any proper nouns); full stop; journal title (in full in italics); year of publication (not italics); semi-colon; volume number; colon; space; first page number; dash; last page number; full stop. For example: Redman GM, Phillips R. The distribution of sickle cell trait within South Africa. Human Biology 1976; 82: 1122.

Authored Books – authors’ name(s) (as above); full stop; book title (in italics, initial caps all main words including subtitles; full stop (not italics); publisher; semi-colon; city of publication; colon; year of publication; full stop. For example: Winthrobe MM, Davies PP, Peter JTD, et al. Clinical Haematology: Diagnosis and Treatment of Uncommon Disorders. Taylor & Francis; Philadelphia: 1978.

Edited Books – editors’ name(s) (as above); comma; “Ed” or “Eds”; full stop; book title (in italics, initial caps all man words including subtitles; full stop; publisher; semi-colon; city of publication; colon; year of publication; full stop. For example: Winthrobe, MM, Ed. Clinical Haematology: Innovation and Practice. Taylor & Francis; Philadelphia: 1978.

Chapters in edited books – authors’ name(s) (as above); full stop; title of chapter (not italics, initial caps only first word and any proper nouns); full stop; “In:”; book title (in italics, initial caps including subtitles; comma; “pp.”; first page number of Chapter; dash; last page number of Chapter; full stop (not italics); editors’ name(s) (as above); comma; “Ed” or “Eds”; full stop; publisher; semi-colon; city of publication; colon; year of publication; full stop. For example: Redman GM, Phillips R., Peters, GGR. Sickle cell trait within East Africa. In: Clinical Haematology: Global Epidemiology, pp. 114-135. Winthrobe MM, Davies PP, Peter JTD, et al., Eds. Taylor & Francis; Philadelphia: 1982.