Institutionalised Children Explorations and Beyond
CALL FOR PAPERS
Institutionalised Children Explorations and Beyond (ICB) is a bi-annual international academic journal, launched on 14 March 2014, to discuss the state of care of children in alternative forms of care. The journal includes manuscripts from across the globe with more regional focus on the eight South Asian countries. In 2023, ICB journal is completing a decade of compiling and publishing regional evidence.
The mission of the journal is to create a rich platform for sharing discourse related to law, practice and evidence-based research, regarding alternative care for children and youth without parental care and family strengthening, to serve the purpose of developing dialogues and debates amongst practitioners, academicians, researchers, policy makers, advocates, activists and volunteers working for child and youth care. The journal aims to improve standards of care and mental health practices that enhance the delivery of services in alternative care settings.
The vision of the journal is to evolve as the most comprehensive and sought after journal, especially for South Asian countries that examines and addresses all issues related to alternative care for children and young persons in the region, as well as from an international perspective, from the lens of policy, legislation, jurisprudence, case law reviews, good practices, expert interviews, research and future directions to improve the lives of children and youth.
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
As an international, multi-disciplinary, peer-reviewed academic journal, Institutionalised Children Explorations and Beyond (ICB) documents original research papers, good models of care practices, comprehensive desk review papers, editorial and foreword, expert opinions, interviews, and book and movie reviews. Along with addressing issues that can influence policy reforms, decision-making and improve practices and standards of care, the content of ICB also addresses limitations in research, knowledge and counselling practices currently prevalent in the South Asian region.
In essence, ICB sees itself as a forum for studies, discussions, debates and research on issues that would lead to better practices of care, improve mental health and encourage the integration of OHC children and young persons, including the differently-abled, into the mainstream and thus to their inclusion in civil society. The journal will be of interest to board members, managers, caregivers, psychologists, counsellors, psychiatrists, volunteers and social workers, in governmental and NGO organisations, as also to policy-makers, and university faculty who are interested in the care and study of children in institutions, as well as in other alternative forms of care. Students in social work, psychology, law and other related disciplines across the South Asian countries, as well as other mental health professionals interested in these studies, will find the journal useful. The scope includes encouraging studies on these issues by universities and hospitals, together with clinics, young professionals and those in the field of caregiving, especially in the non-governmental not-for-profit-sector. The belief is that such education, and sharing of knowledge and experiences would lead to more dynamic prevention as well as rehabilitation models.
| Monisha C. Nayar-Akhtar | Psychotherapist & Psychoanalyst; Clinical Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania, USA |
| Kiran Modi | Founder Managing Trustee, Udayan Care |
| Luis Aguilar Esponda | Human Rights Officer, United Nations |
| Shubha Murthi | Deputy Chief Operating Officer, SOS Children's Villages International |
| Lakshmi Madhavan | Sr. Coordinator, Research and Development, Udayan Care |
| Md Enamul Haque | Deputy National Director, SOS Children's Villages International, Bangladesh |
| Seema Arif | Associate Professor, Department of Education, School of Social Sciences & Humanities, University of Management & Technology, Lahore, Pakistan |
| Mallika R. Samaranayake | Technical Lead, Child Protection in Crisis (CPC) Learning Network and Founder Member / President - Community of Evaluators (CoE) South Asia Network |
| Sumnima Tuladhar | Executive Director, Child Workers in Nepal Concerned Centre (CWIN) |
| Sumedha Gupta Ariely | Assistant Professor of the Practice, Global Health Institute, Duke University |
| Jhuma Bhasak | Psychoanalyst; Member, International Psychoanalytical Association, London |
| Maria Rosaria Centrone | Co-founder, ARTICOLO12, Lecturer, University of Applied Sciences, Germany |
| Vikram Dutt | Founder, Manovikas |
| Ian Anand Forber-Pratt | Director of Advocacy - Southeast Asia, Children’s Emergency Relief International (USA) |
| N Janardhan | Assistant Professor, Psychiatric Social Work National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (India) |
| Sushama Sharma | Professor of Special, Education (Retd.), Department of Education, Kurukshetra University |
| Hiranthi Wijemanne | Member, U.N. Committee Rights of the Child (Sri Lanka) |
Institutionalised Children Explorations and Beyond
This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics
Institutionalised Children Explorations and Beyond is hosted on Sage Peer Review, a web-based online submission and peer review system. Please read the Manuscript Submission Guidelines below, and then visit https://peerreview.sagepub.com/icb to login and submit your article online. Remember you can log in to the submission site at any time to check on the progress of your paper through the peer review process.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Institutionalised Children Explorations and Beyond 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.
If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journal Solutions Portal
1.1 Aims & Scope
1.2 Article types
1.3 Writing your paper
2.1 Peer review policy
2.2 Authorship
2.3 Acknowledgements
2.4 Funding
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
2.6 Research data
3.1 Publication ethics
3.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement
3.3 Open access and author archiving
4.1 Formatting
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
4.3 Supplemental material
4.4 Reference style
5.1 ORCID
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
5.3 Permissions
6. 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
Before submitting your manuscript to Institutionalised Children Explorations and Beyond, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.
There could be three to five sections in the journal, though two sections remain unchanged.
- Unchanged Sections
- Research Articles: only the research articles are refereed.
- Book Reviews: vary from number to number invariably guided by limits to the size of the manuscript
- Changed Sections
- Editorial
- Foreword
- Brief Communications
- International Perspective
- Movie Review
- Interview
- Good Practices and Models of Alternative Care
- Opinion Piece
- Opinion Piece: Child/Youth Perspective
- Upcoming Events
Full-fledged papers may be of 3,000 words. Brief write-ups of 1,000 to 2,500 words may also be sent; these will be considered for inclusion in other sections.
- Text should start on a new page and must not contain the names of authors.
- References should come at the end of the manuscript. There is no limit on the number of references allowed.
- All articles must be accompanied by an abstract of 150–200 words and 4–6 keywords.
- The language and spellings used should be British (UK), with ‘s’ variant, for example, globalisation instead of globalization, labour instead of labor. For non-English and uncommon words and phrases, use italics throughout the text. Meaning of non-English words should be given in parenthesis just after the word when it is used for the first time.
- Use single quotes throughout. Double quotes only to be used within single quotes. Spellings of words in quotations should not be changed. Quotations of 45 words or more should be separated from the text and indented with one space with a line space above and below. Notes should be numbered serially and presented at the end of the article. Notes must contain more than a mere reference.
- Use ‘twentieth century’, ‘1980s’. Spell out numbers from one to nine, 10 and above to remain in figures. However, for exact measurements, use only figures (3 km, 9 per cent, not %). Use thousands and millions, not lakhs and crores.
- Use of italics and diacriticals should be minimised, but used consistently.
- Tables and figures to be indicated by numbers separately (see Table 1), not by placement (see Table below). Present each table and figure on a separate sheet of paper, gathering them together at the end of the article. All Figures and Tables should be cited in the text. Sources for figures and tables should be mentioned irrespective of whether or not they require permissions.
- A consolidated listing of all books, articles, essays, theses and documents referred to (including any referred to in the tables, graphs and maps) should be provided at the end of the article. Guidelines specified in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th edition) must be followed.
- Use endnotes instead of footnotes. Notes must contain more than a mere reference.
The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice on how to get published, plus links to further resources.
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
Institutionalised Children Explorations and Beyond adheres to a rigorous double-anonymize reviewing policy in which the identity of both the reviewer and author are always concealed from both parties.
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.
If the named authors for a manuscript change at any point between submission and acceptance, an Authorship Change Form must be completed and digitally signed by all authors (including any added or removed) . An addition of an author is only permitted following feedback raised during peer review. Completed forms can be uploaded at Revision Submission stage or emailed to the Journal Editorial Office contact (listed on the journal’s manuscript submission guidelines). All requests will be moderated by the Editor and/or Sage staff.
Important: Changes to the author by-line by adding or deleting authors are NOT permitted following acceptance of a paper.
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.
2.3.1 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.
Institutionalised Children Explorations and Beyond 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
Institutionalised Children Explorations and Beyond encourages authors to include a declaration of any conflicting interests and recommends you review the good practice guidelines on the Sage Journal Author Gateway
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
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
Institutionalised Children Explorations and Beyond 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.
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
Institutionalised Children Explorations and Beyond 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
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. A LaTex template is available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.
4.2 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 supplemental files
Institutionalised Children Explorations and Beyond adheres to the APA reference style. View the APA guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.
Institutionalised Children Explorations and Beyond is hosted on Sage Peer Review, a web based online submission and peer review system. Please read the manuscript submission guidelines, and then visit https://peerreview.sagepub.com/icb 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.
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).
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 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.
All editorial correspondence should be addressed to journal administrator at https://peerreview.sagepub.com/icb