Contemporary Voice of Dalit
Social Problems
Contemporary Voice of Dalit started its journey as Voice of Dalit in 2008 in India. Over the years, it has emerged as a leading international journal on Dalit studies. Drawing contributions from the best of scholars in the field from across the world, this journal has an Editorial Board with representatives from around the globe.
The journal aims to promote a better understanding of society through deeper insights into questions of human rights and social justice, thus encouraging constructive engagement of scholars with questions of nation-building and development, with special reference to the Dalit population.
All papers submitted to Contemporary Voice of Dalit are subject to the double-blind peer review process under the monitoring of the members of a carefully appointed Editorial Board. The members of the Editorial Board, having diverse disciplinary backgrounds, are drawn from leading universities from across the world. In the process, their scholarship and the global representation are kept in mind.
Decisions on manuscripts are taken as rapidly as possible. We try to communicate our decision about an article to the concerned author within six to eight weeks of submission.
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Contemporary Voice of Dalit is a leading multi-disciplinary journal in the field of Dalit studies. It focuses on the publication of original research articles on issues related to Dalit, which are accepted only after a strict, double-blind peer review process. Emphasis is placed on both theoretical and empirical studies developed from different disciplinary angles. Book reviews and review articles are also the regular features of the journal. Periodically, commentaries on important topical issues also find a place in this journal. Authors are encouraged to offer new theoretical and scholarly approaches to Dalit writings. In particular, Dalit scholars are urged to make their special contributions.
We strive to cater to the interests of a broad readership. This includes researchers, academics, activists, administrators and students. Keeping this in mind, authors are requested to make their submissions.
| Debi Chatterjee | Former Professor, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India |
| Victor Babu | Professor and Former Head, Department of History, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow, India |
| Sekhar Bandyopadhyay | Emeritus Professor of History, School of History, Philosophy, Political Science and International Relations, Director, New Zealand India Research Institute, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand |
| Buddhadeb Chaudhuri | Ambedkar Professor (Retd) and Coordinator (Retd) of the Human Rights Programme, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India |
| Mitsuya Dake | Director, Professor, Center for the Studies of South Asia, Ryukoku University, Japan |
| Prasenjit Debbarman | Former Director, Cultural Research Institute, Kolkata, India |
| Tirthankar Ghosh | Former Associate Scientist (Senior), Sociological Research Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India |
| Hugo Gorringe | Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of Edinburgh, UK |
| Eva-Maria Hardtmann | Associate Professor, Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, Sweden |
| Knut A. Jacobsen | Professor, AHKR, History of Religions, University of Bergen, Norway |
| Mesbah Kamal | Professor, Department of History University of Dhaka, Bangladesh |
| Badri Narayan | Professor, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India |
| Ashok Pankaj | Council for Social Development, New Delhi, India |
| Ronki Ram | Shaheed Bhagat Singh Professor of Political Science, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India |
| Sumita Sen | Professor (Retired), Department of International Relations, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India |
| Stephen Taylor | Professor of Sociology, Department of Social Sciences, Northumbria University, UK |
Contemporary Voice of Dalit
This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics
Contemporary Voice of Dalit 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/vod to login and submit your article online.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Contemporary Voice of Dalit 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.
NOTE: The journal is experiencing high number of submissions, hence author may need to wait for a longer period of submission to acceptance & publication. Currently, an average delay of minimum 18 months is expected for issue allotment even after acceptance. Author may choose to submit their article in any other related journal in case they need quick publication after withdrawing from “Contemporary Voice of Dalit”.
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 Contemporary Voice of Dalit 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 Information required for completing your submission
5.2 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 Contemporary Voice of Dalit, please ensure you have read the ‘Aims & Scope’ of the journal.
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
- Communication/Discussion
- Note
- Review Article
Full-fledged papers must not exceed 6,000 words. Brief write-ups of 1,000 to 2,500 words may also be sent; these will be considered for inclusion in other sections. Commentaries on contemporary issues must not exceed 3,000 words.
The SAGE Author Gateway has some general advice and on how to get published, plus links to further resources. SAGE Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance their article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.
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
2. Editorial policies
2.1 Peer review policy
Contemporary Voice of Dalit adheres to a rigorous double-anonymize reviewing policy in which the identity of both the reviewer and author are always concealed from both parties. The reviewer may at their own discretion opt to reveal their name to the author in their review, but our standard policy practice is for both identities to remain concealed.
The Editor or members of the Editorial Board may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for possible publication in Contemporary Voice of Dalit. In these cases, the peer review process will be managed by alternative members of the Board and the submitting Editor/Board member will have no involvement in the decision-making process.
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.
2.4 Funding
Contemporary Voice of Dalit 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: ‘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
Contemporary Voice of Dalit 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’.
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
Contemporary Voice of Dalit 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 Contemporary Voice of Dalit 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
Contemporary Voice of Dalit 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. Word and LaTex templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.
The manuscript should be structured as follows:
- Cover page, showing title of the paper, name of author, author’s affiliation and institutional address with pin code, email id and a 150–200 word abstract. In case there are two or more authors, then corresponding author’s name and address details must be clearly specified on the first page itself.
- The contributors should provide 4–6 keywords for online searchability.
- Text should start on a new page, and must not contain the names of authors.
- References should come at the end of the manuscript. Important note: There is no limit on the number of references allowed.
Please Note: For each text citation there must be a corresponding citation in the reference list and for each reference list citation there must be a corresponding text citation.
- Tables and figures should be provided in editable format and should be referred to in the text by number separately (e.g., Table 1) not by placement (e.g., see Table below).
- Please Note: All figures and tables should be cited in the text and should have the source (a specific URL, a reference or, if it is author’s own work, ‘The author(s)’) mentioned irrespective of whether or not they require permissions.
- Figures, including maps, graphs and drawings, should not be larger than page size. They should be numbered and arranged as per their references in the text. All photographs and scanned images should have a resolution of minimum 300 dpi and 1,500 pixels and their format should be TIFF or JPEG. Permissions to reprint should be obtained for copyright protected photographs/images.
- Mathematical formulae, methodological details, etc. should be given separately as an appendix, unless their mention in the main body of the text becomes essential.
- The language and spellings used should be British (UK), with ‘z’ variant, for example, globalization instead of globalisation, 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.
- Articles should use non-sexist and non-racist language.
- Spell out numbers from one to nine, 10 and above to remain in figures. However, for exact measurement (e.g., China’s GDP growth rate 9.8 per cent) use numbers. Very large round numbers, especially sums of money, may be expressed by a mixture of numerals and spelled-out numbers (India’s population 1.2 billion).
- Single quotes should be used throughout. Double quote marks are 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.
- Notes should be numbered serially and presented at the end of the article. Notes must contain more than a mere reference.
- Use ‘percent’ instead of % in the text. In tables, graphs, etc., % can be used. Use ‘twentieth century’, ‘the 1990s’.
- Number ranges should not be truncated, for example, 2017–2018.
- The initials must be separated by dots and space.
- Abbreviations are spelled out at first occurrence. Very common ones (US, GDP, BBC) need not be spelled out.
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.
- All photographs and scanned images should have a resolution of minimum 300 dpi/1500 pixels and their format should be TIFF or JPEG.
- Due permissions should be taken for copyright protected photographs/images. Even for photographs/images available in the public domain, it should be clearly ascertained whether or not their reproduction requires permission for purposes of publishing (which is a profit-making endeavour).
- All photographs/scanned images should be provided separately in a folder along with the main article.
Please Note: All figures and tables should be cited in the text and should have the source (a specific URL, a reference or, if it is author’s own work, ‘The Author’) mentioned irrespective of whether or not they require permissions.
- 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., data sets, podcasts, videos, images, etc.) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information, please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplementary files.
Contemporary Voice of Dalit adheres to the APA reference style. View the APA guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.
- References: 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.
- Arrangement of references: Reference list entries should be alphabetized by the last name of the first author of each work. In each reference, authors’ names are inverted (last name first) for all authors (first, second or subsequent ones); give the last name and initials for all authors of a particular work unless the work has more than six authors. If the work has more than six authors, list the first six authors and then use et al. after the sixth author’s name.
- Chronological listing: If more than one work by the same author(s) is cited, they should be listed in order by the year of publication, starting with the earliest.
- Sentence case: In references, sentence case (only the first word and any proper noun are capitalized— for example, ‘The software industry in India’) is to be followed for the titles of papers, books, articles, etc.
- Title case: In references, Journal titles are put in title case (first letter of all words except articles and conjunctions are capitalized—e.g., Journal of Business Ethics).
- Italicize: Book and Journal titles are to be italicized.
Please Note: For each in-text citation there must be a corresponding reference in the reference list and for each reference there must be a corresponding in-text citation.
Contemporary Voice of Dalit 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/vod to login and submit your article online.
5.1 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 our editing portal SAGE Edit or by 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.
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Contemporary Voice of Dalit editorial office at the following address:
E-mail: voicedalit@gmail.com