socialnet logo

Country Portraits – Format, Structure and References

Dear Author,

please read the following guidelines carefully. They include important information on text submission, format, referencing, and text structure of your country portrait, including the submission email addresses.

Submission

The country portrait should be 14-22 pages long. You do not need to worry about font, font size, and margin as we take care of the final layout. The text should follow general rules of academic writing.

Please submit your text via email to the addresses below within the agreed deadline.

Email:

Accepted file types are Word (doc, docx), RTF, Open Office/Libre Office (ODT). If you wish to write your text in Latex, please contact us to discuss submission options and layout.

Format

The article should be well structured to ensure accessibility on screen.

To help us with the layout, please ensure the following settings:

  • Please do not use set or automatic hyphenation.
  • Please do not insert any empty lines, or fix section breaks or page breaks.
  • Use the provided style sets instead, such as Normal, Heading1, or Heading2, to structure your text. Do not format your text manually, e.g. by making headings bold.

References and Further Reading

Please use in-text references, do not use footnotes.

In-text references, citations in the reference list, and references to further reading must follow Harvard Referencing Guidelines.  

If you need any help, please check this webpage:
https://www.citethisforme.com/harvard-referencing

Please attach two separate bibliographies to your text. The first should include the references you use in your text, the second one should include sources you suggest for further reading.

  • The Reference list only includes information on the sources you referenced.
    Please reference the sources you use, especially when you refer to new insights, controversial positions, and personal statements.
  • Further Reading: Your text gives an overview of the broad issues and a discussion with a focus of your choice. As the space is limited to 20 pages readers might be interested to engage further with the issues you raised. A list with suggested further reading shall help interested readers to explore the relevant topics in more depth.

Structure

Please use headings and sub-headings to structure the text body, and do not edit them any further, e.g. via manually changing fond size.

We automatically generate the table of content using the headings included in the style sets.

You can highlight text parts by italicizing them or making them bold. However, you should only use this sparingly.

Tables can be helpful to organise complex information, and to make it accessible. If you consider to use tables in your piece, please keep in mind that especially wide tables are occasionally not showing properly on screen. Tables can be included via the table menu in Word, or Open Office. Please provide a title and a brief description of the table, as well as data sources.

Long direct quotes can be highlighted by increasing the indent.

Pictures, graphs, and figures can be very helpful visualization tools. However, there are some aspects to consider.

  • Please ensure that the source is openly accessible or that you hold the copyrights.
  • Contrast and solution must be sufficient.
  • As the figure content is not captured by online search engines, you should take up significant terms in the text.
  • Please enclose figures in separate files (JPG, GIF, PNG), use significant file names that can be recognised in the text body where you want us to include the figure. The separate file should further include figure title, a brief description, copyright information, and source.
    In order to give you an idea, please see the following example:
    e.g. [Human_Height.jpg "Average Height of Men By Birth, 1896-1996”, Source*: Roser et al (2020), URL: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-height-of-men?tab=chart [last access 20.02.2020], Open Access
    *Full citation should be provided in reference list

Orthography. The text should be written in British English. We will then translate it into German.

Please use gender-inclusive language. You can do so by using plural nouns and pronouns. You should further avoid gender stereotypes and reflect on whether your language is gender-inclusive, e.g. “chair” instead of “chairman”, “legislators” instead of “congressmen”, “spouse” instead of “husband” or “wife”.

Please name approximately five keywords that are related to your article. This helps to contextualise your article in the broader academic and professional discourse.

If anything is unclear, please do not hesitate to contact us.