Information For Authors

Dear authors,

The online journal "Sociology and Sustainability – Journal for Socio-Ecological Transformation Research" (SuN) offers you the opportunity to publish scientific articles dedicated to the topic of sustainability research from a social science perspective.

Manuscript Submission

The standard length for articles is 50,000 characters (including spaces). If you are interested in publishing, please contact our editorial office (e-mail: sun.redaktion@uni-muenster.de).

Please submit your contribution as a docx file with as little formatting as possible. To ensure a smooth process, please observe the following formalities and/or use our format template.

Further information on our peer review process is available here. All manuscripts are assessed based on the following guiding questions:

Does the manuscript engage with current sustainability discourses?
Are sociological or social science research perspectives clearly identifiable?
Is the submission more than a mere research report and does it provide a broader contextualization within ongoing sustainability debates?

All contributions to SuN are published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. Detailed information on this license is available here. Authors are responsible for ensuring that they hold the copyright to their submitted work at the time of submission. Upon publication in SuN, authors retain unrestricted copyright ownership of their manuscripts.

In addition to your article, we need:

an abstract of the text (max. 1200 characters incl. spaces)
4-5 keywords
A short CV (name, main areas of work, institutional affiliation, if applicable)
Your contact details (affiliation, e-mail address)
An "Acknowledgements" statement
A "Disclosure Statement"
An anonymised version of the manuscript for peer review process.

For submitted manuscripts, please note the following:

We accept manuscripts in British English and German.
If you are not a native speaker of the language in which the manuscript was submitted, please make sure that the manuscript has been thoroughly proofread by a native speaker.
Please cite your own work carefully to avoid self-plagiarism.

Referencing

Please use the Harvard Citation Style in the body text: References in the text by mentioning the author's name, the year of publication and, if applicable, the page number. Page reference please without "p.", e.g. (Simmel 2001: 25).

When citing the same source more than once, repeat the reference and do not use abbreviations such as "ibid" or similar.

If there are two authors, give both names (separated by "/"); if there are three or more authors, give the first name and write "et al.". Ex: (Rucht/Roth 2006: 495, Meadows et al. 1973).

If two authors you cite have identical last names, please use the initials of the first names to distinguish them. Ex: (M. Weber 1988, A. Weber 1955).

For more than one title per author and year of publication, add the letters a, b, c, etc. to the year, e.g.: (Rucht/Roth 2006a: 15, Rucht/Roth 2006b: 498).

Separate several consecutive references by commas and enclose them in common brackets (see above).

Place a space between page references and "f." or "ff." where appropriate (e.g.: 124 f., 201 ff.).

Quotation marks: Please use ‘quotation marks’ as indicated here.

For quotations within quoted text passages, use “double quotation marks” as indicated here.

Own emphasis in quotations must be marked after the citation reference: Ex: (Simmel 2001: 75, emphasis V.N.).

Omissions or additions by the author(s) in quotations or sources are indicated by [square brackets].

Please cite texts in English using the officially published translation wherever available. If quotations must be translated by the author, this should be clearly indicated, e.g.: (Smith 2010: 79, translated by V.N.).

Formatting

Please format your article using Microsoft Word, taking into account the following criteria:

Headings

Main headings of the first level in style "Heading 1"

Headings of the second level in style "Heading 2"

Only the first level headings should have numbering, level two does not need numbering. The introduction also does not need numbering. A maximum of two heading levels can be included in the typesetting.

Styles

Normal body text in style "Standard" or "No space"

Quotations in style "Quotation"

Highlighting in style "Highlight" or "Italic"

Footnotes in style "Footnote text"

Bibliography in style "Book title"

Tables and Graphics

Please create tables in Microsoft Word and, if necessary, add a table heading or caption using the appropriate function.

Please include graphics and images in the body text with sufficient image resolution (at least 300 dpi) or submit them as separate graphics (at least 300 dpi) with indication of their placement in the text.

When creating tables and graphics, please note that the layout of SuN is in two columns. You can therefore either create tables and graphics so that they do not exceed the width of one column (in which case exact placement in the body text is possible) or so that they do not exceed the width of two columns (in which case placement in the body text is based on the higher-level criteria of the layout, so exact placement in the body text is not possible).

Additional Notes

The referenced style sheets correspond to the default settings in Microsoft Word (version 2007 and later).

Therefore, no additional layout adjustments to these style sheets are required. For the typesetting of your contribution in SuN, please ensure clean formatting using the above-mentioned styles.

Emphasis should be used sparingly indicated only by italics; boldface and underlining are not permitted. Commonly used terms (e.g. well-known expressions or established concepts) should also be set in italics.

Please distinguish dashes (–) from hyphens (-); enter dashes without a space before and after each.
Common abbreviations (such as e.g., i.e.) should be written without spaces.

Please note that the typesetting and layout specifications for SuN have been determined through a comprehensive coordination process. Should any adjustments be necessary, the editorial board will make the final decision, while your preferences will be considered to the greatest possible extent.

References

Please list the literature used at the end of the article in alphabetical order according to the following guidelines. In the bibliography, only the first place of publication is given. Please provide a DOI if possible. For publications with more than ten authors, please also abbreviate the reference list entry with et al. after the tenth author.

Monographs

Haraway, D. J. (2016): Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press.

Giddens, A. (2009): The politics of climate change. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Journals and Edited Volumes

Stern, P. C./Dietz, T. (1994): The Value Basis of Environmental Concern. In: Social Issues, Vol. 50, No. 3, pp. 65–84. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1994.tb02420.x

Hall, P. A./Lamont, M. [Eds.] (2009): Successful societies: How institutions and culture affect health. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Elias, N. (1985): Thomas Morus‘ Staatskritik. Mit Überlegungen zur Bestimmung des Begriffs Utopie. In: Voßkamp, W. [Ed.]: Utopieforschung. Interdisziplinäre Studien zur neuzeitlichen Utopie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, pp. 101–150.

Online Sources

United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (1972): Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. Online: https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/523249/files/A_CONF.48_14_Rev.1-EN.pdf [Accessed March 4, 2026].

Doctoral Theses

Lundahl, O. (2017): From a moral consumption ethos to an apolitical consumption trend: The role of media and celebrities in structuring the rise of veganism. Dissertation, University of Vaasa.

Non-Academic Journals and Newspapers

Carrington, D. (2018): Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘sioctoral thesesngle biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth. Biggest analysis to date reveals huge footprint of livestock - it provides just 18% of calories but takes up 83% of farmland. The Guardian, May 31. Online: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth [Accessed March 4, 2026].

McConnell, T. (2025): How to save a desert oasis—before it vanishes completely. National Geographic, May 6. Online: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/desert-oasis-morocco-vanishing [Accessed February 12, 2026].

Protection of Personal Data

Names and email addresses entered on the journal’s website are used exclusively for the purposes stated and will not be disclosed to third parties.

Our full privacy policy is available here: https://www.uni-muenster.de/Ejournals/index.php/index/datenschutzerklaerung

(Last updated: March 2026. For any questions, please contact sun.redaktion@uni-muenster.de.)