Authors can submit an electronic copy of their paper by using the submission form.
Aims and scope
The LIVES Working Papers (ISSN: 2296-1658) are a social science paper series, published by the Swiss Centre of Expertise in Life Course Research LIVES. It is designed to advance scholarship and debate in the growing field of life course research. It explores the effects of vulnerability on health, family and work life, and its implications for social policy, from interdisciplinary social science perspectives, whilst emphasizing a solid grounding in sociological, psychological, demographic and economic theory and methodology.
The series encompasses the diversity of vulnerability and its spill-over effects on social and personal relationships, institutions, and minority groups, and their need to be understood in the context of different societies and life domains. Interdisciplinary in scope, the paper series covers a wide range of theoretical, methodological and substantive issues in life course research and related fields, ranging from methodological or research reports, literature reviews, and data descriptions, to papers presented at conferences or potential future journal articles.
You can consult all the working papers published in this series here.
Call for papers
Submissions to the LIVES Working Paper Series are invited from subject areas across the social sciences and related life course disciplines, for instance, social-psychology, sociology, social policy, population studies, socio-economics, labour market studies, education and youth studies, gerontology and ageing, health and social care, and social science history. Papers are expected to have relevance to academic, policy, and practitioner audiences, enabling a wide range of perspectives to be brought together, first to facilitate advances within disciplines, and second, to develop and enhance interdisciplinary research.
Papers receive only limited review. Please let the Editors know whether your paper will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal or is meant to remain a working paper (research report, descriptive results). Authors are responsible for the presentation of facts and for the opinions expressed therein, which do not necessarily reflect those of the LIVES Centre. Paper submission to this series does not prevent authors from submitting to and publishing in peer-reviewed journals. On the contrary, it is desirable that papers get published in a variety of journals, thus giving the LIVES Working Paper Series visibility.
Articles should have a maximum length of about 10,000 words (including references). An abstract between 150–350 words should be included. All articles are refereed to assess their suitability for publication. For guidance on the preparation of your manuscript, please follow the submission guidlines available on this page.
Editorial team
Editor-in-Chief: Davide Morselli (Editor-in-Chief)
Editorial Board: Jean-Michel Bonvin, Flavia Fossati, Matthias Kliegel, Rafael Lalive, Nicky Le Feuvre, Oana Ciobanu, Dario Spini, Matthias Studer
Editorial Assistant: Mengling Cheng
Publisher: Swiss Centre of Expertise in Life Course Research LIVES (LIVES Centre)
INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS AND REVIEWERS
All disciplines are invited to submit and publish in the LIVES Working Papers. Authors are however expected to clearly relate their paper to the life course paradigm. The following authors' guidelines refer particularly to research and conceptual papers; the submission standards for methodological and research reports and literature reviews are more flexible. Papers receive a limited review and authors are fully responsible for the content they publish.
- Once a submission is received, one of the editors evaluates whether this first draft meets minimal standards for a scientific paper (whether it is complete in all its parts) and sends it to a reviewer (according to specific competences and topics).
- All submitted papers will be read and reviewed by a professor or a post-doctoral researcher who will recommend to accept or to reject the paper or who will ask for revisions. Recommendations to revise and resubmit can refer to content and style. This is only a limited review process and should not take more than four to six weeks.
- Based on the reviewer’s evaluation, the editors will make the final decision about the publication.
- The Editorial Assistants will standardize the first 2 pages. The Working Paper (WP) is given a number and put on the LIVES WP webpage in pdf format available for download. When a modified version of the Working Paper is published as a journal article, it will be indicated on the website together with the link to the journal or book where it is published.
- Authors can submit an electronic copy of their paper by using the submission form.
- Submission of all papers must include an abstract (150-350 words), the author/s' name/s, the author/s' affiliation, title, and contact information. Please indicate also whether your paper will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal or whether it is meant to stay a Working Paper (research report, descriptive results). This information will help reviewers to focus their comments accordingly. The preferred language for manuscripts submitted to the LIVES Working Papers is English. Manuscripts in French and German will be considered as well.
- Research and conceptual papers should not be longer than about 10,000 words (including references). For research reports, the text length is more flexible. However, since the LIVES Working Papers will be only distributed in electronic format, we are flexible regarding the number of pages and the use of colors in graphs.
- Authors should use in-text citations rather than footnote citations. General font is Verdana. Additional information on the text can be given in endnotes. Open Document Format, Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, and Rich Text formats are acceptable.
- Authors keep the copyrights. Modified versions of the Lives Working Papers can therefore be submitted to scientific peer-reviewed journals at any time.
- Once a modified version of the Working Paper is published in a scientific journal, the authors should communicate this to the Editors who will add the sentence: "A revised version of this Working Paper has been published as a journal article and is available under <web address>. Please quote the journal article". The LIVES WP will still remain available online.
- The goal of the light review process for a LIVES WP is to avoid publishing papers that are not publishable regarding common scientific standards. Attention shall be paid to:
- The general structure of the argumentation in the paper, the interest of the research presented and the relationship with the life course approach
- The soundness of the theoretical approach and the state of the art of the literature review
- Whether the methodology is appropriate and/or innovative (sampling, data, analysis)
- For empirical research papers, whether results are consistently derived and interpreted; for data descriptions and literature review papers, whether they are complete and informative; for methodological papers, whether they propose innovative tools
- Language and style
- Additional references can be suggested
- In case of rejection, reasons shall be given.