Scope and Ethical Guidelines
The South India Journal of Social Sciences (SIJSS), published by the Academy of Social Sciences, is committed to upholding the highest academic and ethical standards in scholarly publishing. The journal follows internationally recognized editorial and ethical guidelines, ensuring integrity, transparency, and accountability in all aspects of its operation.
Authors submitting their manuscripts are fully responsible for their content and must ensure their work adheres to the journal’s guidelines. Manuscripts that do not meet the required standards may be returned for revision or declined. Accepted submissions undergo professional copyediting and formatting to enhance clarity and coherence before publication.
Editorial Governance and Independence
The editorial policies and operations of SIJSS are determined by its Advisory Board, which functions independently in accordance with the rules set by the Academy of Social Sciences. Editors are appointed based on their expertise, and their decisions are made without interference from the publisher or any external body. The editorial team has complete autonomy in managing content, ensuring an unbiased and rigorous review process.
Open Access Policy
SIJSS follows an Open Access model, ensuring that all published articles are freely available to readers worldwide without financial, legal, or technical barriers. Authors retain the copyright to their work while granting SIJSS a non-exclusive publishing right. Articles are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0), allowing unrestricted access, sharing, and adaptation of content for non-commercial purposes, provided proper attribution is given.
Manuscript Submission and Review Process
Authors must submit their manuscripts electronically via the journal’s submission platform hosted on Open Journal Systems (OJS). Along with their manuscript, authors are required to provide a plagiarism report generated using reputable plagiarism detection software such as iThenticate, Turnitin, Ouriginal, Urkund, or DrillBit. This ensures adherence to academic integrity and originality standards. Submissions undergo an initial screening to check for adherence to formatting and ethical guidelines, including plagiarism detection. Only manuscripts that meet these criteria move forward to the review process.
Research articles and thematic essays are subject to a rigorous peer review process. An assigned Editor or Associate Editor evaluates each submission for suitability before selecting at least three external reviewers. The review process follows a double-blind approach, maintaining the anonymity of both authors and reviewers.
All author-reviewer interactions take place through the OJS system to ensure a structured and transparent process.
Handling of Potential Conflicts of Interest
Editors and reviewers must disclose any potential conflicts of interest that could influence their assessment of a manuscript. Editorial team members refrain from handling papers authored by colleagues, current or former students, recent collaborators, or close associates, including family members. If a conflict is identified, the manuscript is reassigned to another editor to maintain impartiality. Papers submitted by editorial board members undergo a confidential review process managed by an independent editor.
Editorial Approach and Diversity of Submissions
SIJSS values intellectual diversity and welcomes contributions spanning theoretical, empirical, and methodological approaches. The journal encourages interdisciplinary research and considers empirical studies that contribute significantly to theoretical discourse.
Review Timelines and Publication Frequency
The journal is committed to timely processing of submissions while maintaining rigorous standards. The typical timeline for manuscript decisions is 6 to 8 weeks from the date of submission.
Authors can submit manuscripts under a broad spectrum of disciplines, including but not limited to:
- Economics, Political Economy, Commerce, and Management
- Anthropology, Sociology, Social Work, History, and Archaeology
- Geography, Environmental Studies, Sustainable Development, and Area Studies
- Political Science, Public Policy, Law, and International Relations
- Language Studies, Cultural Studies, Media and Communication, and Library Science
- Education, Health, Psychology, Philosophy, Social Exclusion, and Gender Studies
- Other Interdisciplinary Studies