Journal of Tropical Futures

Please read the guidelines below then visit the Journal’s submission site https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jotf to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.

Journal of Tropical Futures recommends that authors follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Sage Publishing disseminates high-quality research and engaged scholarship globally, and we are committed to diversity and inclusion in publishing. We encourage submissions from a diverse range of authors from across all countries and backgrounds.

Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Journal of Tropical Futures will be reviewed.

There are no fees payable to submit to this Journal. There are fees associated with Sage Open Access if authors are interested in open access publishing. More information on open access publishing can be found in section 6.3.

As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere. Please see our guidelines on prior publication and note that Journal of Tropical Futures will consider submissions of papers that have been posted on preprint servers; please alert the Editorial Office when submitting (contact details are at the end of these guidelines) and include the DOI for the preprint in the designated field in the manuscript submission system. Authors should not post an updated version of their paper on the preprint server while it is being peer reviewed for possible publication in the Journal. If the article is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the Journal's author archiving policy.

If your paper is accepted, you must include a link on your preprint to the final version of your paper.

If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journal Solutions Portal.

1. What do we publish?

1.1 Aims & Scope
1.2 Article types
1.3 Writing your paper

2. Preparing your manuscript

2.1 Formatting
2.2 Artwork, figures, and other graphics
2.3 Identifiable information
2.4 Supplemental material
2.5 Reference style
2.6 Editing and formatting services

3. Submitting your manuscript

3.1 ORCID
3.2 Information required for completing your submission
3.3 Permissions

4. On acceptance and publication

4.1 Sage Production
4.2 Online First publication
4.3 Access to your published article
4.4 Promoting your article

5. Editorial policies

5.1 Peer review policy
5.2 Authorship
5.3 Acknowledgements
5.4 Funding
5.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
5.6 Research ethics and patient consent
5.7 Research data

6. Publishing policies

6.1 Publication ethics
6.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement
6.3 Open access and author archiving

7. Further information

7.1 Appealing the publication decision

1. What do we publish?

1.1 Aims & Scope
Before submitting your manuscript to Journal of Tropical Futures, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.

1.2 Article types

All paper types should include an abstract (200 words) and keywords (5).

• Research paper. Reports on any type of research undertaken by the author(s), including: The construction or testing of a model or framework; Action research; Testing of data, market research or surveys; Empirical, scientific or clinical research; Papers with a practical focus. (8,000 words)
• Conceptual paper. Focuses on developing hypotheses and is usually discursive. Covers philosophical discussions and comparative studies of other authors’ work and thinking. (8,000 words)
• Case study. Describes actual interventions or experiences within organizations. It can be subjective and doesn’t generally report on research. Also covers a description of a legal case or a hypothetical case study used as a teaching exercise. (8,000 words)
• Literature review. This category should only be used if the main purpose of the paper is to annotate and/or critique the literature in a particular field. It could be a selective bibliography providing advice on information sources, or the paper may aim to cover the main contributors to the development of a topic and explore their different views. (8,000 words)
• Research Notes. Papers that focus on advancing innovative methodological design or techniques. (4,000 to 6,000 words)
• Tropical Provocations. Non-standard heterodox 'thought pieces' that raise important questions about theory, research, methodology, development and/or practice. This includes a broad range of commentaries on business, management and governance in the tropics that could include shorter articles, roundtable discussions and debates, one-on-one interviews and other thought-provoking pieces that explore key challenges and dilemmas facing the tropics. (3,000 to 5,000 words)

1.3 Writing your paper

The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice and on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance their article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation. Our Inclusive Language Guide also provides recommendations on preferred terminology on topics including age, appearance, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, race, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, emigration status, and weight.

       1.3.1 Make your article discoverable

For information and guidance on how to make your article more discoverable, visit our Gateway page on How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.

2. Preparing your manuscript for submission

2.1 Formatting
The preferred format for your manuscript is a Word document. All pages should be numbered and double-spaced. All text should be in Times New Roman 12-point type. Tables should be editable and include captions. Tables should be placed after the reference list. British English spelling and punctuation is preferred.

2.1.1 Reference Style

Journal of Tropical Futures adheres to the Sage Harvard reference style. View the Sage Harvard guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.

2.1.2 Manuscript Structure

We recommend that research articles include the following sections:

• Introduction
• Background and Literature
• Methods
• Findings
• Discussion and Conclusions

2.2 Artwork, figures, and other graphics
Photos, figures, graphic images, and tables not created in Word should be submitted as separate, high-resolution (minimum 300 dpi) files. For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures, and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines.

Figures supplied in color will appear in color online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in color in the printed version. For specifically requested color reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding Sage costs after receiving your accepted article.

For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures, and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines.

2.3 Identifiable information
Where a journal uses double-anonymised peer review, authors are required to submit:

1. A version of the manuscript which has had any information that compromises the anonymity of the author(s) removed or anonymized. This version will be sent to the peer reviewers.
2. A separate title page which includes any removed or anonymised material. This will not be sent to the peer reviewers.

See https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/Manuscript-preparation-for-double-anonymized-journal for detailed guidance on making an anonymous submission.

2.4 Supplemental material
This Journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g., datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc.) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files.

If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the Sage Harvard EndNote output file.

2.5 Editing and formatting services
Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the Journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Language Services. Visit Sage Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.

3. Submitting your manuscript

Journal of Tropical Futures is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jotf to login and submit your article online.

IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the Journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created.  For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.

3.1 ORCID
As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.

The collection of ORCID IDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this Journal. If you already have an ORCID ID you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. All co-authors who wish to have their ORCID ID included for their published manuscript must link their ORCID ID in our peer review system.

To add an ORCID ID, one must add it for oneself (a co-author cannot link ORCID IDs for all other authors on the paper). Each author who wishes to add their ID would need to log in to the peer review site, click their name at the top of the page and select "e-mail/name" from the drop down menu. Then, click the ORCID link in the system, sign into their ORCID account and the peer review system will automatically update to link the ID to the author’s account. The author's ORCID ID will then become part of their accepted publication’s metadata, making their work uniquely attributable to that author. The ORCID ID is published with the article so that fellow researchers reading the paper can link to the author's ORCID profile and from there link to the author's other publications. (Please note that only including an ORCID ID on the cover page of a manuscript submission, but not following the authentication steps, will not properly link the paper to the author's ORCID record.)

If you do not already have an ORCID ID please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.

3.2 Information required for completing your submission
You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. The affiliation listed in the manuscript should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a manuscript note at the end of the paper. At this stage, please ensure you have included all the required statements and/or declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).

3.3 Permissions
Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway.

4. On acceptance and publication           

4.1 Sage Production
Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be made available to the corresponding author via our editing portal Sage Edit or by email, and corrections should be made directly or notified to us promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.

4.2 Online First publication
Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite Online First articles.

4.3 Access to your published article
Sage provides authors with online access to their final article.

4.4 Promoting your article
Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.

5. Editorial policies

5.1 Peer review policy
Journal of Tropical Futures adheres to a rigorous double-anonymised reviewing policy in which the identity of both the reviewer and author are always concealed from both parties.

All manuscripts are reviewed initially by the editorial team and only those papers that meet the scientific and editorial standards of the journal and fit within the aims and scope of the journal, will be sent for outside review. Each manuscript is then reviewed by at least two referees.

Sage does not permit the use of author-suggested (recommended) reviewers at any stage of the submission process, be that through the web-based submission system or other communication.

Reviewers should be experts in their fields and should be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. Our policy is that reviewers should not be assigned to a paper if:

• The reviewer is based at the same institution as any of the co-authors.
• The reviewer is based at the funding body of the paper.
• The author has recommended the reviewer.
• The reviewer has provided a personal (e.g., Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail) email account and an institutional email account cannot be found after performing a basic Google search (name, department and institution).

Journal of Tropical Futures is committed to delivering high quality, fast peer-review for your paper, and as such has partnered with Web of Science Reviewer Recognition Service (formerly Publons). This is a third-party service that seeks to track, verify, and give credit for peer review. Reviewers for Journal of Tropical Futures can opt-in to this service in order to claim their reviews or have them automatically verified and added to their reviewer profile. Reviewers claiming credit for their review will be associated with the relevant journal, but the article name, reviewer’s decision and the content of their review is not published on the site. For more information visit the Web of Science Reviewer Recognition Service website.

The Editor or members of the Editorial Board may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for possible publication in the Journal. In these cases, the peer review process will be managed by alternative members of the Board and the submitting Editor/Board member will have no involvement in the decision-making process.

5.2 Authorship
All parties who have made a substantive contribution to the article should be listed as authors. Principal authorship, authorship order, and other publication credits should be based on the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their status. A student is usually listed as principal author on any multiple-authored publication that substantially derives from the student’s dissertation or thesis.

Papers should only be submitted for consideration once consent is given by all contributing authors. Those submitting papers should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the paper are acknowledged as contributing authors.

Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.

5.3 Acknowledgements
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.

Please supply any personal acknowledgements separately to the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.

Per ICMJE recommendations, it is best practice to obtain consent from non-author contributors who you are acknowledging in your paper.                   

5.3.1 Third party submissions

Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:

• Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company, and level of input
• Identify any entities that paid for this assistance
• Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g., conflicting interests, funding, etc.

Where appropriate, Sage reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.

5.3.2 Writing assistance

Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g., from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance. It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.

5.4 Funding
Journal of Tropical Futures requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading.  Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. 

5.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
Journal of Tropical Futures encourages authors to include a declaration of any conflicting interests and recommends you review the good practice guidelines on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.

It is the policy of Journal of Tropical Futures to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles.

Please ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your manuscript, after any acknowledgements and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’. For guidance on conflict of interest statements, please see the ICMJE recommendations here.

5.6 Research ethics and patient consent
Medical research involving human subjects must be conducted according to the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki.

Submitted manuscripts should conform to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, and all papers reporting animal and/or human studies must state in the methods section that the relevant ethics committee or institutional review board provided (or waived) approval. Please ensure that you have provided the full name and institution of the review committee, in addition to the approval number.

For research articles, authors are also required to state in the methods section whether participants provided informed consent and whether the consent was written or verbal.

Information on informed consent to report individual cases or case series should be included in the manuscript text. A statement is required regarding whether written informed consent for patient information and images to be published was provided by the patient(s) or a legally authorized representative. Please do not submit the patient’s actual written informed consent with your article, as this in itself breaches the patient’s confidentiality. The Journal requests that you confirm to us, in writing, that you have obtained written informed consent but the written consent itself should be held by the authors/investigators themselves, for example in a patient’s hospital record. The confirmatory letter may be uploaded with your submission as a separate file.

Please also refer to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Protection of Research Participants.

5.7 Research data
The Journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages.

Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:

• Share your research data in a relevant public data repository
• Include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, use the statement to confirm why it cannot be shared.
• Cite this data in your research
• Indicate if data is available and shared
• In certain cases, indicate if research data is available but not shared, and why. If you cannot share your data and this is a requirement of publication, consult the journal editorial office.
• Indicate if there is an absence of data
• Cite data in your research

6. Publishing policies

6.1 Publication ethics
Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway.

6.1.1 Plagiarism

Journal of Tropical Futures and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the Journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarized other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.

6.1.2 Prior publication

If material has been previously published it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.

6.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement      
Before publication, Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive licence agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than Sage. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information, please visit the Sage Author Gateway.

6.3 Open access and author archiving
Journal of Tropical Futures offers optional open access publishing via the Sage Choice programme and Open Access agreements, where authors can publish open access either discounted or free of charge depending on the agreement with Sage. Find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. For more information on Open Access publishing options at Sage please visit Sage Open Access. For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines and Publishing Policies.

7. Further information

Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Journal of Tropical Futures editorial office as follows:

Editor-in-Chief, Peter Case: peter.case@jcu.edu.au

Managing Editor, Jacob Wood: jacob.wood@jcu.edu.au

7.1 Appealing the publication decision
Editors have very broad discretion in determining whether an article is an appropriate fit for their journal. Many manuscripts are declined with a very general statement of the rejection decision. These decisions are not eligible for formal appeal unless the author believes the decision to reject the manuscript was based on an error in the review of the article, in which case the author may appeal the decision by providing the Editor with a detailed written description of the error they believe occurred.

If an author believes the decision regarding their manuscript was affected by a publication ethics breach, the author may contact the publisher with a detailed written description of their concern, and information supporting the concern, at publication_ethics@sagepub.com