MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION
The new Instructions for Authors, including mandatory use of the APA 7th edition referencing style, apply to all manuscripts submitted on or after 10 January 2026.
- By submitting a manuscript, authors warrant that their contribution to the journal is their original work, that it has not been published before, that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, and that its publication has been approved by all co-authors (if any) and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities at the institution where the work was carried out.
- Authors are exclusively responsible for the contents of their submissions and the validity of the experimental results therein. They must make sure that they have permission from all involved parties to make the data public.
- Authors wishing to include figures or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright holder(s) and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.
- Manuscripts are pre-evaluated at the editorial office to check whether they meet basic publishing requirements and quality standards. They are also screened for plagiarism by iThenticate.
- Authors will be notified by email upon receiving their submission. Only those contributions that conform to the following instructions can be accepted for peer review. Otherwise, the manuscripts shall be returned to the authors with observations, comments, and annotations.
- Two Word files have to be uploaded during the submission procedure:
1) A manuscript file (e.g. Main-text.docx) that contains the manuscript with no information about authors and supporting agencies should be uploaded as 'Article text' by choosing this option from the drop-down menu of article components in the 'Upload submission file' section.
2) An authors file (e.g. Authors.docx) that contains information about all authors of the article (including their full names and affiliations – academic titles, research/scientific positions, emails, and ORCID numbers) and acknowledgments (if they exist) should be uploaded as 'Authors' by choosing this option from the drop-down menu of article components in the 'Upload submission file' section. If the manuscript has more than on author, each coauthor's contribution should be described according to the roles adopted by the CRediT taxonomy.
MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION
- Authors must follow the instructions for authors strictly. If they fail to do so, their manuscript will be rejected without review.
- Manuscripts shall be submitted in English or Serbian (including all standard variants of the former Serbo-Croatian language).
- The manuscript should be prepared in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx format). Authors are asked to avoid complex formatting, embedded text boxes, manual hyphenation, and extensive footnotes.
- Upon acceptance for publication, authors will be required to format the final version of the manuscript using the journal’s official Word template, which will be provided to them in a timely manner, in accordance with the provided guidelines.
- The manuscript should be single-spaced, justified. The use of italic, superscript, and subscript is encouraged, as is the use of equation editors embedded in text processors. Two levels of subheadings are allowed. Footnotes are numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals. References quoted in the text should not be included in the footnotes, but in the reference list.
- The manuscript can be up to 8,000 words long, not including the list of references and the abstract. In specific cases, the editorial board may accept longer papers.
- Writing style and language competencies should be briefly commented upon in the process of peer review; the journal’s proofreader corrects minor glitches. However, manuscripts full of spelling and grammatical errors cannot be accepted for publication. Authors should use gender-neutral language.
The manuscript should be divided into the following ordered sections: title, abstract, keywords, the text of the manuscript (introduction, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion), and list of references. Figures should also be submitted as separate files.
The title describes the manuscript and/or the main relations among variables; it should be clear, not too long, but explanatory (up to 115 characters). Abbreviations should be avoided in the title if possible.
The abstract should be provided in the same language as the manuscript. Manuscripts written in Serbian (including all standard variants of the former Serbo-Croatian language) must additionally include a title, abstract, and keywords in English. The abstract should be between 250 and 300 words long, concisely reflecting the structure of the manuscript (background, objective and aims, methods, results, conclusions and comments) so that its original text can be used in referential periodicals and databases. Do not include citations in the abstract.
Keywords (concepts, locations, results) are listed in a separate line at the end of the abstract. Keywords should be relevant to the topic and content of the paper. An accurate list of keywords will ensure the correct indexing of the paper in referential periodicals and databases. There should be five keywords provided in the same language as the manuscript.
The text of the manuscript should consist of the following sections: introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusions (not necessarily under these names). Depending on the type of the manuscript, it might be possible to omit some of the sections. For example, in a review article, it is possible to omit sections on methods and results, while scientific criticism or polemics may include only sections on the motives of the work, specific research problems, and discussion.
References shall be cited in Roman script to allow rapid, accurate indexing, and easy comprehension by the journal users. The list of references shall only include papers that are cited in the text. Place them in alphabetical order, and do not number them. Include all names of authors. When there are eight or more authors, include the first six authors’ names and then use ellipsis points (...) before concluding with the last author’s name. Authors are encouraged to cite recent and relevant literature in order to demonstrate the current scientific relevance of the research. In cases where more than one reference by the same author is cited, works should be listed chronologically, from the earliest to the most recent. If an article is submitted to a journal and publicly available as a pre-print, the pre-print may be cited. Authors should limit the number of cited references by referring to the most relevant papers. Cyrillic references must be transliterated into Latin. Where available, indicate at the end of a reference its DOI or URL.
The journal follows the APA 7th edition (American Psychological Association) referencing style. Submissions that do not comply with APA 7 will be returned to authors for technical revision prior to peer review.
Examples of different types of references:
Monographs, books
Alho, J. M., & Spencer, B. D. (2005). Statistical demography and forecasting. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-28392-7
Monographs, books with more editions
Todaro, M. P., & Smith, S. C. (2012). Economic development (11th ed.). Pearson.
Chapters in edited books / monographs or collections of papers (print)
De Abreu, B. S. (2001). The role of media literacy education within social networking and the library. In D. E. Agosto & J. Abbas (Eds.), Teens, libraries, and social networking (pp. 39–48). ABC-CLIO.
Chapters in edited books / monographs or collections of papers (online)
Nikitović, V. (2018). The end of demographic transition in Kosovo: Does the meaning of the population factor change? In D. Proroković (Ed.), Kosovo: Sui generis or precedent in international relations (pp. 299–320). Institute of International Politics and Economics. https://www.diplomacy.bg.ac.rs/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/2018_Kosovo_Dusan_Prorokovic.pdf
Journal articles
Lutz, W., Sanderson, W., & Scherbov, S. (2001). The end of world population growth. Nature, 412(6846), 543–545. https://doi.org/10.1038/35087589
Conference paper or poster presentation
Rašević, M. (2006). Abortion problem in Serbia. Paper presented at the European Population Conference (EPC 2006), Liverpool, United Kingdom. http://epc2006.princeton.edu/papers/60355
Research reports, working papers
Dudel, C., & Schmied, J. (2019). Pension adequacy standards: An empirical estimation strategy and results for the United States and Germany (MPIDR Working Paper WP-2019-003). Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2019-003.pdf
Doctoral dissertation found on a database
Galjak, M. (2022). Premature mortality in Serbia (Doctoral dissertation, University of Belgrade). National Repository of Dissertations. https://nardus.mpn.gov.rs/handle/123456789/21191
Website content
Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia. (2018). Vital events: Data from 2011. Statistical database. http://data.stat.gov.rs/Home/Result/18030102?languageCode=en-US
Act (statute / legislation)
Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992. (2013, December 16). https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1992/0096/latest/whole.html
Newspaper articles in print
Frost, L. (2006, September 14). First passengers ride monster jet. The Salt Lake Tribune, p. A2.
Newspaper articles found online
Cohen, P. N. (2013, November 23). How can we jump-start the struggle for gender equality? The New York Times. https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/23/how-can-we-jump-start-the-struggle-for-gender-equality/
In-text citations (APA 7)
- Direct citation: Lee (1998)
- Indirect citation: (Rašević, 2009; Stanić & Matković, 2017)
- Direct quotation: “…economic growth” (Lutz, 2014, p. 530).
- Three or more authors: (Alkema et al., 2011)
- Same author, different years: (McDonald, 2002, 2006)
- Same author, same year: (Raftery et al., 2012a, 2012b)
Tables should not exceed one page and should not be overloaded with auxiliary lines. Tables should have a clear, self-explanatory title. Tables should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals in the order in which they are referred to in the text. Editorial staff need to have full control over the tables, that is, to be able to click inside the tables to edit the font of the words written inside the tables to match the journal style and correct the spelling. All tables should be incorporated in the text of the manuscript.
Figures, cartograms, pictures, drawings, and other illustrations should also be submitted as Figures (in jpg format 300dpi) and Tables (in editable textual format eg. docx, .csv) should also be submitted as separate files. Authors are encouraged to submit colour versions of their figures/cartograms/illustrations for the electronic issue. However, it should not be forgotten that the printed issue is black and white. All illustrations should be labelled as ‘Figure’ and numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals in the order in which they are placed in the text (e.g. Figure-1.jpg).
The title of a table and figure should be placed above the table and figure. The table/figure legends should provide information on the applied statistical procedures. The legend of a table/figure including data source(s) should be placed beneath the table/figure, while notes, if they exist, should follow in the next line. Referencing to the figures/tables in the text of the manuscript should follow the numbering of the graphs/tables (for example, in Table 1) instead of their position in the text (for example, in the above table).
