Submissions

Author Guidelines

Your Paper, Your Way

We offer flexibility in submission requirements for both new and revised manuscripts. Authors are encouraged to submit their work for the refereeing process in its current format and address formatting concerns upon acceptance or during the revision stage. However, names and affiliations should be removed to keep anonymity during the double-blind review. We also recommend maintaining proper referencing and readability, and submissions should be consolidated into a single Word or PDF file.  

The above workflow is inspired by the Cities Journal's submission guideline.

During submitting your manuscript, you will be asked about the type of your contribution. There are two sections:

Full-length Articles

Articles submitted to this section will be directed toward a double-blind peer-review process. Word count is limited to 5000 to 9000 words including abstract and references. After receiving initial acceptance or revision feedback from the editors, authors are expected to adhere to the following guidelines: Manuscripts should be formatted according to provided templates in Microsoft Word or LaTeX, including sections such as title, abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, and references. Authors must utilize APA citation style, ensuring originality and appropriate citation practices to prevent plagiarism. Ethical standards, including informed consent and declaration of conflicts of interest, must be upheld. Figures and tables should be formatted according to guidelines, and references should adhere to APA style. Authors should anticipate a double-blind peer-review process, with acceptance or rejection based on predefined criteria.

Alternative Research

This section is non-refereed and dedicated to articles that are either shorter in length (1000- 5000 words) or employ alternative structures including debates, book reviews, competitions and event reports. Multi-format submissions are accepted in this section and we invite researchers to enrich their articles with clickable links (hyperlinks) and create a horizontal connection with public social databases such as YouTube, Instagram, Linked-in, etc, and common knowledge databases such as Reddit, Quora and Google Knowledge Panel. Authors may also include informative visual materials, such as GIF files, pictures, or videos, directly within their manuscripts.

Introducing distinctive architectural projects or implemented urban design/planning projects is also in the scope of this section. For further information regarding the files needed for introducing a successful project, or for any queries related to submitting a manuscript please send a short description to the editorial team.

Fees

As an open-access journal, there are currently no publication fees. For more details, please reach out to the editorial office.

Fact Validation Report

Given the dynamic nature of alternative sources, such as social media posts, and blogs, articles referencing these sources should include a Fact Validation Report verifying the information obtained from such platforms. The Fact Validation Report entails a fact-checking process that collects and documents data regarding content shared online through alternative sources and utilized as references in articles. This process involves validating the source cited in the article, fact-checking the claim, and generating a report assessing the validity of the content, along with additional details such as the content itself, location, date, time, and platform. This report serves as a reference point, enabling verification even if the referenced post undergoes subsequent edits.

For papers submitted to this journal, Fact Validation Report will be issued by our editors free of charge. For external uses, fees may apply. For more information on disinformation and the importance of fact-checking please refer to the following article (Link);

^{Aïmeur, E., Amri, S. & Brassard, G. Fake news, disinformation and misinformation in social media: a review. Soc. Netw. Anal. Min. 13, 30 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-023-01028-5}