Editorial Policy

BioSocieties is an innovative journal in the social sciences, dedicated to advancing analytic understanding of the social, ethical, legal, economic, public and policy aspects of current and emerging developments in the life sciences.

Its cross-disciplinary analyses of genomics, neuroscience, psychopharmacology, biomedical and reproductive technologies, and biosecurity will become essential reading for all those in the life science community concerned with the social implications of their work.

BioSocieties publishes scholarship across the social science disciplines, and represents a lively and balanced array of perspectives on controversial issues. In its inaugural year BioSocieties demonstrated the constructive potential of interdisciplinary dialogue and debate across the social and natural sciences.

We are becoming the journal of choice not only for social scientists, but also for life scientists interested in the larger social, ethical and policy implications of their work. The journal is international in scope, spanning research and developments in all corners of the globe.

BioSocieties appears quarterly, with occasional themed issues that highlight some of the critical questions and problematics of modern biotechnologies. Articles, response pieces, interviews, review essays, and self-standing editorial pieces by social and life scientists form a regular part of the journal.

Submitting a manuscript

BioSocieties is a refereed journal; all manuscripts must consist of original material and are reviewed with the explicit understanding that their essential substance will not be submitted for review elsewhere until the editors have made a final decision regarding publication. Articles that describe the results of studies involving human subjects must give evidence that such studies have been subjected to appropriate ethical review.

The editors of BioSocieties are committed to publishing articles that are accessible and relevant to readers across a diverse set of social science and life science disciplines. All authors are therefore strongly encouraged to submit manuscripts which are free of jargon, and which fully explicate potentially unfamiliar disciplinary theories and concepts.

If the submitted work has been previously available as a conference or white paper, either on a public website or on an author's repository, this must be declared immediately upon submission. We will check that the submitted work has been developed from the version currently available via our CrossCheck software, to consider it for review and formal publication. If published, the BioSocieties paper will be subject to copyright and must be mutually linked to the draft publication available online.

We welcome short questions or inquiries about the appropriateness of manuscripts for journal. Please send inquiries to the Editors via the editorial office.

Authors should submit papers electronically as MS Word files via the journal's electronic submission system. Please read the instructions given below carefully before commencing your submission. The submission system is designed to be self-explanatory. Authors should submit a minimum of two files (author information file and article file).

Manuscripts should not exceed 10,000 words (including footnotes, but excluding references) and should be double-spaced and typed in Times New Roman, 12 point font. Please include consecutive page numbers on all pages, and arrange the files as follows:

1. Author Information File:

  • the title of the article
  • the names and affiliations for all authors
  • full contact details (including email, postal address and phone and fax numbers) for the corresponding author
  • short biographies for each author (50 words maximum each) which will appear at the end of the paper
  • Word count (including footnotes, but excluding references)
  • A note to confirm that the manuscript is comprised of original material that is not under review elsewhere, and that the study(ies) on which the research is based has been subject to appropriate ethical review. Authors must also note whether they have any competing interests – intellectual or financial – in the research detailed in the manuscript.

2. Article File:

  • the title of the article
  • a summary or abstract of not more than 200 words. This should be self-contained and understandable by the general reader outside the context of the full paper.
  • 3-6 keywords/phrases
  • Main text, acknowledgements, references, appendix, table/figure captions, tables and figures.

NOTE: BioSocieties adheres to a strict policy of double-blind peer review, in which the identity of the authors is, as much as possible, kept from reviewers, so as to facilitate a fair and un-biased review process. Therefore, the main article file should not include any information that could identify the authors or collaborators. In addition to stating the names, affiliations and biographies of authors only in a separate author information file, we ask authors to pay particular attention to all tables (and captions), figures (and captions), and in-text citations, for information which might identify the authors.


For example, please do not use “As I have argued before (Phillips, 2010)…” Instead use “As I have argued before (xxxx, YEAR)…”


Manuscripts containing information that might identify authors may be returned for correction prior to sending for review.


3. Figures and Tables

  • Tables and figures should not be embedded within the main text but must be referred to at the appropriate point in the text. They can be uploaded in the same main article file (at the end of the file as noted above) or as separate files.
  • Tables and graphs should be provided in editable format in Word and/or Excel.