General
DIALOGUE: Science, Scientists, and Society considers articles on all issues pertaining to science practice, science policy, science education, science administration, science communication, and the science-society interface. Contributions must be scholarly in nature and balanced in their outlook. Polemic is not encouraged. Author(s) are responsible for the views expressed in published articles, and publication of an article does not imply an endorsement of the views or opinions therein by the Indian Academy of Sciences. All contributions, including invited submissions, undergo editorial and peer review. The journal is online only: there is no print edition and no restriction on use of colour illustrations. Supporting multimedia material is permitted. PDF and HTML files of all published articles are downloadable free of charge from the journal website. All articles must be in English, with British spelling.
Categories of Manuscript
DIALOGUE: Science, Scientists, and Society will consider full-length articles, short notes, and commentaries. Review articles, annotated bibliography pieces, and book, website or software reviews will typically be solicited. Prospective authors of such contributions are encouraged to contact the editors with a brief proposal prior to submission. There are word limits for all categories.
Article: The regular full-length article (maximum 10,000 words, main text), reporting results of original research or surveys, or an essay pertaining to science and social issues that includes data components, with an abstract of about 250 words.
Short note: A brief article (maximum 2500 words, main text; no abstract; up to four figures, tables, or other display items (e.g. videos); up to 20 references) on an interesting issue but not as fully developed as a full-length article. The first paragraph should be in the form of a summary of the note in about 150 words.
Commentary: A brief summary (maximum 3000 words, main text; up to two display items; up to 20 references) of recently published article(s) in other journals on a common theme of general interest, placing the work discussed in a broader context; no abstract.
Correspondence: A brief comment/critique on an article recently published in DIALOGUE: Science, Scientists, and Society (maximum 2500 words, main text; up to three display items; up to 20 references); no abstract. Authors of the original paper will be invited to submit a response.
Review article: No word / reference / display item limit; should include an abstract of less than 300 words.
Perspectives: A general article looking at some major issue in science research or education, technological applications of science, or the history of science and its impact on society; no word / reference / display item limit; should include abstract of less than 300 words.
Book/software/website review: No word limit; no abstract.
Submission
Submitted manuscripts must not have been published previously nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Moreover, submission to DIALOGUE: Science, Scientists, and Society will be deemed to imply that the manuscript will not be submitted elsewhere if accepted, or while it is under editorial consideration at DIALOGUE. The decision of the Chief Editor is final in the matter of acceptability for publication.
Submissions can be uploaded here with a covering letter, named as such. Authors whose submissions do not conform to the guidelines given in this section for file formats, and in the sections below, will experience delays in processing. Zip files are not accepted. Each component in the manuscript should be named appropriately. The covering letter, for example, should be named as Covering Letter, the manuscript as Manuscript, the figures as Fig. 1, Fig. 2, etc., and videos as Video 1, Video 2, etc. Each file uploaded should have the appropriate file extension such as - txt, tex, odt, docx, xlsx, pdf, mov.
Plain text, LaTeX, ODT and DOCX files, along with a reference PDF, are acceptable.
- Colour and greyscale illustrations: in one of 3 file formats – png, jpg, or bmp, preferably at a resolution of between 150 and 300 ppi. Scale independent graphics can be submitted in svg format.
Note that Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint files, which are frequently submitted for illustrations, are not acceptable. All lettering in illustrations should be in sans-serif font, preferably Helvetica or Arial, and as close to 8 point size as possible at final print size; hairlines should not be used; minimum line thickness should be 0.5 point.
Please note that the journal ‘strongly recommends’ the author to provide ORCID of all the authors, though it is not mandatory. If ORCID is provided it will help in quick processing of the article.
Permissions
Authors should submit written permission from appropriate sources for material to be included in their articles that has been published elsewhere.
Title, Author Details, Keywords
The title should preferably be brief, comprehensible to a non-specialist reader, unique and contain words useful for indexing. Serial titles should be avoided. A short running title (of not more than 55 characters including spaces) suitable for page headers, and up to six keywords not in the title should be provided. Full names and affiliations of all authors, and complete postal and email addresses are required.
Abstract
An abstract is required only for some categories of manuscript. The abstract should convey the essence of the contribution even to a non-specialist reader. For a full article, the abstract should include a few sentences of background to the work, the rationale, and the main results and conclusions. Abbreviations are discouraged. Abstracts should not include citations to references.
Main Text
In the case of a full-length data based article, it should be divided into sections with first-level headings such as Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion (stand alone, boldface). Articles can also have other appropriately descriptive section headings. There may be subsections with short, descriptive headings. Major subsections within sections may be placed under second-level headings (flush left, in italics and boldface, free-standing); these may contain further subsections under third-level headings (flush left, in italics and boldface, and text runs on after a colon). Sections and subsections are not numbered. Footnotes are not allowed. Where appropriate, first person and active voice are preferred. Perspectives should also follow the pattern of descriptive headings.. The text should be line numbered as “continuous” beginning from the first line of the tile to the last line of the article.
Conventions
Authors should follow internationally accepted conventions with regard to units, symbols and abbreviations. Only SI units of measurement and standard abbreviations should be used.
Statistical analyses
Guidelines on use and presentation of statistics have been published by Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences, and are usually printed in the last issue of every volume of that journal. Authors are encouraged to consult those guidelines.
Tables
All tables should be numbered serially, in Arabic numerals, in order of appearance. Tables should be as self-contained as possible, with a descriptive but brief title. Details not mentioned in text and explanations may be given below the table as footnotes. Row and column headings should be in lower case, except for the first letter of heading word or phrase, first letter of proper names, or where capitals are essential. A table should not be submitted as an image.
Illustrations
All figures should be numbered, serially in Arabic numerals in order of appearance. Parts of multipart figures, where these are absolutely necessary, should be labelled (a), (b), (c), etc. (lower case). Multipart figures should be submitted as a composite, along with the individual images and labels that form the composite. Authors should take responsibility for neat and correct arrangement of multipart figures. Figure legends should not be included in figure files but should be included in the file of the text. Line drawings should be sharp, and include all lettering that is necessary. Lettering should be in lower case, except for the first letter of label word or phrase, first letter of a proper name, or where capitals are essential. The font should be sans serif (preferably Helvetica or Arial), and letters at final print size should be as close to 8 or 9 point type as possible. All symbol, nomenclature, and other conventions apply to figure lettering. Individual parts in multipart groupings should be as close to each other as possible, with the parts labelled. Photographs should be sharp and high-contrast, and any labelling (such as arrows or letter symbols) should be clear.
Videos
Videos should be encoded in the h.264 or vp8 codecs for maximum compatibility with contemporary platforms. Flash and other proprietary formats are not accepted. Video files should be at a maximum of 720p and the file size should not exceed 20 Mb. However, you may upload a larger file to your private YouTube or Vimeo Channel and include the hyperlink and the embed code as part of the submission.
References
Citations in the text should be by name and year, not number, in chronological order and then alphabetically for the same year, and enclosed in parentheses. When there are two authors, the citation should include both names (e.g. Guo and Thompson 1992). When there are three or more authors, the citation should have only the first author and ‘et al.’ (e.g. Calafell et al. 1996). Two or more citations are separated by a semicolon. References should be listed at the end in alphabetical order by first author's surname. When several references have the same author or first author, single-author works are listed first chronologically, then two-author works in alphabetical order of second author and then chronologically, and multiauthor works third but chronologically. Letter labels should be used (e.g. 1997a, 1997b) in case of works with the same author/authors and of the same year. When there are many more than six authors, it is preferable to name only the first six and use ‘et al.’. Unpublished observations and personal communications should not be included in the list of references, but should be cited within parentheses in the appropriate place in the text with the full names of the sources. The list of references may include papers accepted but not yet published; such references should include the journal name and ‘in press’ in parentheses at the end. Information from material submitted for publication but not yet accepted should be cited only in the text as ‘unpublished observations’ with full names; these should not be included in the list of references. Abstracts should not be used as references. Journal name abbreviations and book titles are in italics, volume number is in bold. There should be a space between initials in author names.
Examples
Gibert P., Moreteau B., Moreteau J.-C., Parkash R. and David J. R. 1998 Light body pigmentation in Indian Drosophila melanogaster: a likely adaptation to a hot and arid climate. J. Genet. 77, 13–20.
Sambrook J., Fritsch E. F. and Maniatis T. 1989 Molecular cloning: a laboratory manual, 2nd edition. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Cold Spring Harbor, New York, USA.
Via S. 1994 The evolution of phenotypic plasticity: what do we really know? In Ecological genetics (ed. L. A. Real), pp. 35–57. Princeton University Press, Princeton, USA.
Acknowledgements
These should follow immediately after the end of the main text. In references to granting agencies, the names should be written out fully.
Proofs
Authors are requested to prepare their manuscript carefully and in accordance with these instructions to avoid delays and to minimise corrections and alterations in copyediting. Proofs will be presented in editable form via an online platform, along with instructions.
Copyright
The copyright to all published material remains with the authors, and is licensed for reproduction under the Creative Commons – CC BY_NC 4.0 license.
