FAQ

  • Does Engaging Science, Technology, and Society (ESTS) have a Citation Impact Factor?
    Not yet. At present, ESTS is indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI). Once we are accepted in the Science Citation Index by Reuters, we will have an impact factor.
  • How many words long can my submission be?
    Please refer to the submission guidelines for a range of submission specifications. Quickly, word limit targets are as follows: Standard Research Articles (9k words); Engagements (2k-6k words); Perspectives (2k words). All word counts include footnotes. Bibliographic references are excluded from the word count.
  • What is the word limit for the abstract?
    The journal content management system can accept up to 600 words, but we encourage abstracts in a single paragraph of around 250 words. This is to help indexing searches.
  • What editorial style should I follow?
    Please refer to the seventeenth edition of The Chicago Manual of Style (2017), and their author-date bibliography system. Please refer to our author guidelines for examples.
  • Do I have to get permission to use my published article in a book or edited collection?
    No. Authors publishing in ESTS retain copyright on their work and can reuse or adapt the content without seeking permission from our editorial office. However, if your article uses any 3rd-party content that is copyrighted, you will have to get permissions for that from its publisher.
  • Do I have to pay Author Processing Charges (APC) or Submission Fees to publish in ESTS?
    No. There are no APCs or submission fees to contribute to and/or read ESTS.
  • How long will it take for my paper to be reviewed?
    All papers will receive a pre-review decision within one month of submission. Submissions that successfully pass the pre-review stage enter a stage of substantive peer review. We aim to arrive at a first editorial decision for such manuscripts within five months of submission, but this may vary depending on reviewer availability and other such considerations.
  • Can my submission include multimedia data formats?
    Yes. Submissions may include supplementary files such as graphs, pictures, images, or video and audio files to be stored on our server. Graphics should be in JPEG, GIF, PNG, or TIFF format. Audio segments should be in MP3, AIFF, or WAV (Windows Audio Wave) format. Video segments should be in Quicktime, MPEG, AVI (Video for Windows), or WMV (Windows Media Video) format. Other audio and video file formats may be acceptable; but please check with us before uploading them to confirm their compatibility with our software and our conversion programs. We encourage authors to obtain appropriate permissions to use materials originally produced by others, but do not require such permissions as long as the usage of such materials falls within the boundaries of Fair Use.
  • Do I really have to follow the author checklist when I submit my paper?
    Yes.
  • Why is it important for me to pay so much attention to the details in my bibliographic references?
    We are pleased not to charge processing fees to submitting/publishing authors. In order to continue this practice we need to keep our production processes efficient. We ask authors to contribute to this process by taking responsibility for basic aspects of professional writing, like ensuring complete and accurate bibliographic references, and reconciling inconsistencies between in-text citations and bibliographic references.
  • My article was just accepted. When will it be published?
    Soon after your manuscript is accepted it will go into editorial production (layout, copyediting and proofing). Typically, finalized manuscripts will be published in the upcoming journal issue; they will not appear immediately upon completion of proofing. This may sometimes vary, depending on the nature of the upcoming issue. In all instances, journal editors will work with authors to identify appropriate publication dates.
  • What does the Creative Commons License used by ESTS mean?
    Please consult the Creative Commons' own FAQ to learn more about a range of scenarios that would apply.
  • How do I propose a Thematic Collection to ESTS?
    We are interested in receiving proposals for Thematic Collections (ESTS's terminology for "special issues"). Starting 2023, ESTS will announce an open call for Thematic Collection proposals once annually. The CfP will be opened after the annual 4S conference, and will be posted on the journal’s website News and circulated widely via various distribution channels. If you have an interesting idea and some authors lined up, please put a proposal together (including a description of the problematic you are dealing with and the names of your likely contributors and provisional paper titles), send it to us via email, and we will reply with our thoughts on the project. Once we have signaled encouragement to proceed, we highly recommend that you go through a thorough round of internal review and revising with your authors prior to submission at ESTS. When you believe papers are ready for peer review, please have each author submit individually through the ESTS website, marking the category "Thematic Collection" when they supply their metadata. When all papers are received, we will conduct a preliminary pre-review to ensure that the papers are appropriate for the journal and the peer review process. Some papers might be declined at this stage. For those papers deemed appropriate, we will manage the peer review process and take responsibility for making editorial decisions and providing further editorial guidance to the authors. We may contact you during the review process asking for suggestions for potential reviewers for each of the manuscripts.
  • How can I stay updated with ESTS?
    Please subscribe to our RSS feed, Newsletter, and social media channels to stay updated and participate in discussions about all things ESTS.