Dementia
Now accepted for inclusion in the Social Sciences Citation Index
Dementia: The International Journal of Social Research and Practice provides high-quality evidence, commentaries, and book reviews, for the field of dementia generally, and social research specifically. Dementia acts as a major global forum for social research of direct relevance to understanding lived experience and improving the quality of life, well-being, and quality of care for people with dementia, their families, and communities.
The aim of the journal is to publish high-quality original research, or original scholarship contributions, to the existing literature on social research and the lived experience of dementia. The journal will consider all relevant designs, methods and methodologies that meet this aim, including high-quality evaluations and service improvement studies in relation to quality of life, well-being, and quality of care. The journal will consider narrative-based and/or other forms of literature review that seek to address social research questions in dementia studies; such reviews need to have a systematic approach to the review process and offer a novel insight. Contributions from people with lived experience of dementia will be considered. All original research published in the journal must comply with ethical approval processes.
Dementia is hosted on SAGE track; a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOneTM Manuscripts. Please visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/dementia to log in and submit your article online.
All original papers must be submitted to the journal via the online system. The online submission process follows a standard format and contributors will be asked to confirm that all authors have agreed to the submission and that the article is not currently being considered for publication by any other paper-based or electronic journal. All submissions should avoid the use of insensitive and demeaning language, such as ‘the elderly’ (use ‘older people’) or ‘dementia patients’ (say people with dementia, or patients with dementia if the context is clinical). We recommend that authors refer to either the Dementia Engagement and Empowerment Project (DEEP) guidance on language about dementia Making things more accessible - DEEP (dementiavoices.org.uk) Or, Alzheimer’s Australia sets out guidelines for dementia-inclusive language[https://fightdementia.org.au/sites/default/files/NATIONAL/documents/language-guidelines-full.pdf]. Please avoid using abbreviations in your manuscript. Certain abbreviations such as QoL (for quality of life), MMSE (for Mini-mental State Examination), and the UK (United Kingdom) are acceptable, but do not use abbreviations for groups of people such as PWD (for people with dementia) or which detract from the overall flow of the manuscript, such as PCC (Person-Centred Care) and LTC (long-term care). Finally, the Journal promotes the use of gender-neutral language, e.g., staff (not manpower) and lay terms (not layman). Submissions which do not comply with these guidelines will be returned by the handling Editor.
Special editions of Dementia are commissioned by the journal’s Editors and we welcome suggestions for such copy. If you would like to consider being a Guest Editor(s) of Dementia and have a topic in mind, please contact prof Caroline Swarbrick (c.swarbrick2@lancaster.ac.uk) and/or prof Pamela Roach (pamela.roach@ucalgary.ca) in the first instance.
Reviews: Books and educational resources for review / requests to review should be sent to Dr Sarah Campbell, Division of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, Jean McFarlane Building (6th floor), The University of Manchester, University Place, Oxford Road, Manchester. M13 9PL, UK (email: Sarah.Campbell@mmu.ac.uk)
For all other original articles, including literature reviews, Dementia operates a strictly anonymous peer review process in which the reviewer’s name is withheld from the author and the author’s name from the reviewer(s). We aim for each manuscript to be reviewed by two reviewers but the Editors reserve the right to return the decision to the author with more, or less, reviews depending upon the context and circumstances of the submitted article. All manuscripts are reviewed as rapidly as possible and correspondence with the main author will be undertaken electronically. All submitting authors should be mindful that their manuscript may be reviewed by a person living with dementia as part of the journal’s Editorial Board.
The aim of the journal is to publish original research, or original scholarship contributions, to the existing literature on social research and dementia. The journal will consider all relevant designs, methods and methodologies that meet this aim. The journal will also consider narrative-based and/or other forms of literature review that seek to answer social research questions in dementia studies; however, such reviews need to have a systematic approach to literature collation and reporting. All original research published in the journal must comply with ethical approval processes.
Dementia is hosted on SAGE track; a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOneTM Manuscripts. Please visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/dementia to log in and submit your article online.
All original papers must be submitted to the journal via the online system. The online submission process follows a standard format and contributors will be asked to confirm that all authors have agreed to the submission and that the article is not currently being considered for publication by any other paper-based or electronic journal. All submissions should avoid the use of insensitive or demeaning language. In particular, authors should use ‘dementia-friendly’ language in positioning people living with dementia in their article and avoid using pejorative terms such as ‘demented’ or ‘suffering from dementia’. We recommend that authors refer to the Dementia Engagement and Empowerment Project (DEEP) guidance [http://dementiavoices.org.uk/resources/deep-guides/], which was developed by people living with dementia and offers a range of advice and support, including writing dementia-friendly information. Alternatively, Alzheimer’s Australia sets out guidelines for dementia-friendly language [https://fightdementia.org.au/sites/default/files/NATIONAL/documents/lang.... Please also consider how you are using abbreviations in your submission. Whilst QoL (for quality of life) and MMSE (for Mini-mental State Examination) may have common usage, please try to avoid unnecessary abbreviations in the submission of your manuscript, such as PWD (for people with dementia) and abbreviations that detract from the overall flow of the manuscript.
Special editions of Dementia are commissioned by the journal’s Editors and we welcome suggestions for such copy. If you would like to consider being a Guest Editor(s) of Dementia and have a topic in mind, please contact prof Caroline Swarbrick (c.swarbrick2@lancaster.ac.uk) and/or prof Pamela Roach (pamela.roach@ucalgary.ca) in the first instance.
Reviews: Books and educational resources for review / requests to review should be sent to Dr Sarah Campbell, Division of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, Jean McFarlane Building (6th floor), The University of Manchester, University Place, Oxford Road, Manchester. M13 9PL, UK (email: Sarah.Campbell@mmu.ac.uk)
For all other original articles, including literature reviews, Dementia operates a strictly anonymous peer review process in which the reviewer’s name is withheld from the author and the author’s name from the reviewer(s). We aim for each manuscript to be reviewed by two reviewers but the Editors reserve the right to return the decision to the author with more, or less, reviews depending upon the context and circumstances of the submitted article. All manuscripts are reviewed as rapidly as possible and correspondence with the main author will be undertaken electronically. All submitting authors should be mindful that their manuscript may be reviewed by a person living with dementia as part of the journal’s Editorial Board.
Social media and Website
The journal’s twitter account can be accessed at: @DementiaJournal
The journal’s main website can be accessed at: http://dem.sagepub.com/
| Pamela Roach | University of Calgary, Canada |
| Caroline Swarbrick | Lancaster University, UK |
| Sarah Campbell | Manchester Metropolitan University, UK |
| Renee L. Beard | Department of Sociology and Anthropology, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA |
| Anne Bourbonnais | Faculty of Nursing, Research Centre of the Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal,Université de Montréal,Montreal, Quebec |
| Charlotte Clarke | University of Edinburgh, UK |
| Laura Cole | NIHR Health and Social Care Workforce Research Unit, King’s College London |
| Louise Daly | School of Nursing and Midwifery,School of Nursing and Midwifery |
| Rose-Marie Droes | Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute, Department of Psychiatry, Amsterdam UMC |
| Ishtar Govia | University of West Indies, Jamaica |
| Alys Griffiths | University of Sheffield, UK |
| Kyong Hee Chee | Texas State University, USA |
| Ingrid Hellström | Ersta Sköndal Bräcke University College, Stockholm |
| Lillian Hung | Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, University of British Columbia |
| Pia Kontos | Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto |
| Jordan P Lewis | Department of Family Medicine and Biobehavioural Health, University of Minnesota, USA |
| Molly Maxfield | Arizona State University, USA |
| Carrie McAiney | Schlegel-UW Research Institute for Aging, School of Public Health and Health Systems, University of Waterloo, Ontario |
| Heather Menne | Miami University, USA |
| Christian Muller-Hergl | Basislehrgang Gerontopsychiatrie,Universität Witten/Herdecke Professional Campus |
| Sheila Novak | School of Nursing, University of British Columbia, Canada |
| Open Doors Dementia Review Group | |
| Assumpta Ryan | Ulster University, UK |
| Steven Sabat | Georgetown University,Washington, D.C. |
| Aagje Swinnen | Maastricht University, the Netherlands |
| Elaine Wiersma | Centre for Education and Research on Aging & Health, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario |
| Emma Wolverson | University of Hull, UK |
This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics.
Please read the guidelines below then visit the Journal’s submission site http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/dementia to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Dementia will be reviewed.
There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this Journal. Open Access options are available - see section 3.3 below.
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 Dementia may accept submissions of papers that have been posted on pre-print 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
- What do we publish?
1.1 Aims & Scope
1.2 Article types
1.3 Writing your paper - Editorial policies
2.1 Peer review policy
2.2 Authorship
2.3 Acknowledgements
2.4 Funding
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
2.6 Research ethics and patient consent
2.7 Indigenous Health Research Requirements
2.8 Research data - Publishing policies
3.1 Publication ethics
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
3.3 Open access and author archiving - Preparing your manuscript
4.1 Formatting
4.2 Language
4.3 Artwork, figures and other graphics
4.4 Supplemental material
4.5 Reference style
4.6 English language editing services - Submitting your manuscript
5.1 ORCID
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
5.3 Permissions - On acceptance and publication
6.1 Sage Production
6.2 Online First publication
6.3 Access to your published article
6.4 Promoting your article - Further information
Before submitting your manuscript to Dementia, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.
Dementia welcomes original research or original contributions to the existing literature on social research and dementia. Biomedical and overly clinical research articles will not be accepted.
Brief articles should be up to 3000 words and more substantial articles between 5000 and 6000 words (references are not included in this word limit). At their discretion, the Editors will also consider articles of greater length.
The journal also publishes book reviews. We send out a list of books to review twice a year in September and March.
If you would like to receive this list please e-mail Sarah Campbell, Book Review Editor at Sarah.Campbell@MMU.ac.uk and you will be added to our reviewer list. We welcome suggestions of books to review at any time. Also, if you have read a book that you think would be of interest to the journal and would like to review it, we also welcome unsolicited contributions.
Book reviews are usually around 1000 words in length but it will vary depending on the book. Providing a book review is not a guarantee of publication.
The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice and on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance their article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.
1.3.1 Make your article discoverable
When writing up your paper, think about how you can make it discoverable. The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article through search engines such as Google. For information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords, have a look at this page on the Gateway: How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.
Dementia operates a strictly anonymous peer review process in which the reviewer’s name is withheld from the author and, the author’s name from the reviewer. Each manuscript is reviewed by at least two referees. All manuscripts are reviewed as rapidly as possible.
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).
Please note that your manuscript may be reviewed by people living with dementia and care partners, confidentiality and an anonymous peer review process will still apply.
2.2 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.
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.
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.
Any acknowledgements should be placed on the title page. Your main text should include a Declaration of Conflicting Interests (if applicable), any notes and your References but should be completely anonymized.
2.3.1 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.
Dementia 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.
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
It is the policy of Dementia 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.
2.6 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.
2.7 Indigenous Health Research Requirements
Dementia: the International Journal of Social Research and Practice is now requiring an Indigenous Engagement section for all submitted manuscripts describing research and work with Indigenous communities. For more information click here.
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, we encourage you to consider using the statement to explain why it cannot be shared.
- cite this data in your research
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.
3.1.1 Plagiarism
Dementia 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 plagiarised 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.
3.1.2 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.
3.2 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.
3.3 Open access and author archiving
Dementia 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.
4. Preparing your manuscript for submission
Dementia requires authors to submit a short author biography. You will be asked to upload this as a seperate file.
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. Word and (La)Tex templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.
Dementia requires authors to submit a short author biography. You will be asked to upload this as a seperate file.
Language and terminology. Jargon or unnecessary technical language should be avoided, as should the use of abbreviations (such as coded names for conditions). Please avoid the use of nouns as verbs (e.g. to access), and the use of adjectives as nouns (e.g. dements). Language that might be deemed sexist or racist should not be used. All submissions should avoid the use of insensitive or demeaning language. In particular, authors should use ‘dementia-friendly’ language in positioning people living with dementia in their article and avoid using pejorative terms such as ‘demented’ or ‘suffering from dementia’.
Please also consider how you are using abbreviations in your submission. Whilst QoL (for quality of life) and MMSE (for Mini-mental State Examination) may have common usage, please try to avoid unnecessary abbreviations in the submission of your manuscript, such as PWD (for people with dementia) and abbreviations that detract from the overall flow of the manuscript.
Abbreviations. As far as possible, please avoid the use of initials, except for terms in common use. Please provide a list, in alphabetical order, of abbreviations used, and spell them out (with the abbreviations in brackets) the first time they are mentioned in the text.
Useful websites to refer to for guidance
We recommend that authors refer to the Dementia Engagement and Empowerment Project (DEEP) guidance which was developed by people living with dementia and offers a range of advice and support, including writing dementia-friendly information.
Alternatively, Alzheimer’s Australia sets out guidelines for dementia-friendly language, as do the Alzheimer Society of Canada, both of which are useful for guidance.
4.3 Artwork, figures and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines.
Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For specifically requested colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Sage after receipt of your accepted article.
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 supplementary files.
Dementia adheres to the APA reference style. View the APA guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.
4.6 English language editing 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.
Dementia is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/dementia 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.
Book reviews must be submitted via the online system. If you would like to discuss your paper prior to submission, please email Sarah Campbell Sarah.Campbell@MMU.ac.uk
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. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID iD will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID iD is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.
If you do not already have an ORCID iD please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.
5.2 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 declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).
Dementia requires authors to submit a short author biography. You will be asked to upload this as a seperate file.
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.
6. On acceptance and publication
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.
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.
6.3 Access to your published article
Sage provides authors with online access to their final 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.
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Dementia editorial office as follows: