Contemporary Drug Problems

Instructions to Authors

Manuscripts are to be submitted online at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cdx.

To determine the suitability of a manuscript for submission, prospective authors should first review the aims and scope of the journal and past issues. If you remain unsure if your manuscript would be suitable for the journal, please email Kate Seear and kylie valentine (K.Seear@latrobe.edu.au; k.valentine@unsw.edu.au). 

Manuscripts should not have been published or be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Where relevant, the manuscript should contain details of ethical approval from an institutional human research ethics committee.

• All manuscripts (including abstract, quotations, references, and endnotes) should be double-spaced and submitted as an MS Word (.doc & .docx) file.
• Tables and figures should appear at the end of the manuscript – each on a separate page – and their location in the text indicated with a callout: "(Table/Figure 1)."
• Please use MS Word’s tools to create editable tables, charts, and graphs when possible.
• Other images should be submitted as high-resolution (300 dpi) TIFF, JPEG, or EPS individual files. Please do not embed images within the document, as this reduces their overall quality.
• While there is no word limit on manuscripts, authors should include a justification if their manuscript exceeds 10,000 words (excluding references).

• Submissions are assessed by the Editor to ensure that they are consistent with the aims and scope of the journal, and are suitable for peer review. Submissions that proceed to peer review are assigned to an Associate Editor, who obtains assessments from at least two researchers expert in the areas covered by the submission and provides a recommendation to the Editor. The Editor considers the comments of the reviewers and the recommendation of the Associate Editor, and communicates the decision to the authors.

  To allow for double-anonymize reviewing, the cover page should be submitted separately and should include:

  • the title of the manuscript and the names and affiliations of all authors, as well as the contact details for the corresponding author
  • a brief biographical sketch for each author
  • acknowledgments (where relevant) and declarations of conflicting interest as well as funding information.
  • The main text should be submitted as a separate document and should include the manuscript title, an abstract of 150-300 words and up to six keywords for indexing.
  • Please remove all identifying details from the main text (e.g., publications by the submitting author(s) where these allow for identification).

Specific Style Points

Headings and Subheadings

Subheadings should indicate the organization of the content of the manuscript. Generally, three heading levels should be sufficient to organize the text.

1st level: Flush left, boldface, upper and lowercase

2nd level: Flush left, boldface, italicized, upper and lowercase

3rd level: Flush left, italicized, upper and lowercase

Spelling

Please use U.S. English spelling. The terms amongst, whilst, towards are among, while, toward in U.S. English.

Punctuation

• Use a serial (Oxford) comma in lists of three or more items (i.e., apples, pears, and lemons).
• Do not hyphenate most words formed with commonly used prefixes (e.g., semistructured, nondenominational, multimedia, antisocial, posttest, pretest, socioeconomic). Exceptions are words that could be misunderstood (e.g., re-create, re-form [to form again]) and words in which a vowel is repeated (e.g., anti-intellectual).

Capitalization

• The first word after a colon is capitalized if the text following it is a complete sentence, otherwise it is lowercased.
• Do not capitalize the names of theories, models, conditions, or diseases.

Direct Quotations

• Capitalize the first word of a direct quotation if the quoted text is a complete sentence, otherwise begin the quote with a lowercase letter.
• Retain the original spelling and punctuation within a direct quotation. Insert any altered text or insert "[sic]" within brackets.
• Use ellipses (…) only in the middle of a quotation, not at the beginning or end.
• Place periods and commas at the end of quotations inside the quotation marks.
• Include the page number of the quotation in parentheses immediately following, for example, "(Abbott et al., 1997, p. 208)."

Items in a List

Within a paragraph, list items that must appear in a certain order as (a), (b), and (c). If the order is unimportant, then remove the letters. Use vertical lists when expressing information that must appear in a certain order (e.g., steps in a procedure or itemized conclusions).

Numbers

Numbers 10 and higher should appear as arabic numerals (e.g., 1, 2, 3). Data indicating time, age, distance, ratios, and percentages should always appear as arabic numerals unless at the start of a sentence.

Abbreviations

Use the Latin abbreviations e.g., i.e., etc. only within parentheses. In the text of the sentence, use the abbreviation’s English translation (for instance/example, that is/in other words, and so on).

Bias-Free Language

Where possible, avoid the generic pronouns he and she, or he/she, by using they.

References

References should follow the style set out in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7^th Edition). For every reference, there should be a corresponding citation and vice-versa. Each corresponding citation should have identical spelling and year of publication. The use of DOIs is encouraged to improve accessibility.

Examples

Edman, J. (2012). Swedish drug treatment and the political use of conceptual innovation 1882-1982. Contemporary Drug Problems, 39, 429–461.

Coomber, R. (1997). Using the Internet for survey research. Sociological Research Online, 2. Retrieved January 10, 2014, from www.socresonline.org.uk

Carr, E. S. (2011). Scripting addiction: The politics of therapeutic talk and American sobriety. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Bunton, R., Nettleton, S., & Burrows, R. (Eds.). (1995). The sociology of health promotion: Critical analyses of consumption, lifestyle and risk. London: Routledge.

Charmaz, K. (2000). Grounded theory: Objectivist and constructivist methods. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 509–535). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Permissions

The authors are responsible for securing permissions to reproduce all copyrighted figures or materials before publication. A copy of the permission should ideally be included in the manuscript submission or emailed to the Editorial Office. Authors can also submit a Copyright Permission Request Form filled in by the copyright holder.

Sage Choice and Open Access

If you or your funder wish your article to be freely available online to nonsubscribers immediately upon publication (gold open access), you can opt for it to be included in Sage Choice, subject to the payment of a publication fee. The manuscript submission and peer review procedure is unchanged. On acceptance of your article, you will be asked to let Sage know directly if you are choosing Sage Choice. To check journal eligibility and the publication fee, please visit Sage Choice. For more information on open access options and compliance at Sage, including self/author archiving deposits (green open access) visit Sage Publishing Policies on our Journal Author Gateway.