About the Journal

 

About

ISSN 2516-8053 (Online)

Social Science Protocols is a peer-reviewed, Open Access journal. All content is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence, unless otherwise stated. There are no fees to access or publish in the journal.

 

Aims & Scope

Social Science Protocols is the only platform with a focus on publishing study protocols in the social sciences disciplines.

Study protocols should provide a detailed outlined of the research hypothesis, rational and methodology of the study. Study protocols that have received funding and ethical approval will be published without peer review. All published study protocols will receive a DOI number and appear in academic databases.

Social Science Protocols does not publish results of accepted study protocols, but it provides electronic links to associated publications and documents, such as journal articles and datasets.

Benefits of Publishing Research Protocols

  • Ensures transparency and documentation of research processes, such as a study's plan, research question, methodology and analytic approach to data.
  • Benefits the researcher from obtaining critical and constructive feedback on their proposed study through a vigorous peer reviewing process.
  • Provides a platform to compare the initial research intent and the actual research outcome.
  • Enables the research community to identify studies that are currently being conducted in their research field.
  • Reduces duplication bias and encourages collaboration between researchers.
  • Benefits researchers who are conducting systematic reviews to source relevant studies that could reduce distortion of evidence from publication bias.
  • Improves standards of social science research to develop a strong evidence base and better societal impact.

 

Governance & Ownership

Social Science Protocols is owned and governed by the journal editors. Copyright to papers published within the journal issues are owned by their respective authors under Creative Commons licenses. The journal is published by the University of Edinburgh – a charitable body. Edinburgh Diamond – a service based within the University of Edinburgh Library – acts as the Publishing Partner by providing publishing services.

 

Indexing

Social Science Protocols is indexed in the following databases:

  • Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE)
  • BrowZine
  • CORE
  • Jisc Open Policy Finder
  • JournalTOCs
  • Paperity
  • Publication Forum (JuFo)

 

Policies

Please see the Journal Policy page for information on preservation, copyright, licensing, open access, permissions, and privacy.

 

Publication Frequency

Social Science Protocols publishes on a rolling publication model, meaning papers are published when ready.