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name: commres-submission description: Use when running the final pre-submission preflight for Communication Research (CR) via SAGE Track (ScholarOne) — double-anonymized preparation, the 45-page limit, APA reporting, the data-availability statement, ORCID, and declarations. Final checks; it does not draft content.

Submission Preflight (commres-submission)

The last check before pressing submit on SAGE Track (ScholarOne). CR is double-anonymized, so the single most common avoidable failure is an under-anonymized main document or supplement. Verify volatile specifics on the SAGE author page before relying on them.

When to trigger

• "Submitting tomorrow" — last pass before upload
• Unsure which files/metadata SAGE Track expects
• Confirming the page limit, APA reporting, and anonymization are clean

Process facts (verify volatile items on the official page)

• Publisher: SAGE Publishing. Founded 1974; bimonthly; ISSN 0093-6502 (print) / 1552-3810 (online).
• Portal: SAGE Track (ScholarOne); author guidelines at journals.sagepub.com/author-instructions/crx (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准).
• Review model: double-anonymized — anonymize the main document and supplemental materials; provide a separate title page. An initial evaluation precedes peer review; two independent reviews are required to back a Revise or Accept. Reviewers recommend to the Co-editors, who make the final decision.
• Reviewer suggestions: the journal assigns reviewers and does not accept author recommendations — do not include a suggested-reviewer list.
• Length: manuscript no more than 45 pages, double-spaced, inclusive of references; supplementary files do not count toward the page limit.
• Abstract: unstructured, no more than 150 words, placed between title and main body; clinical-trial registration details (if applicable) go at the end of the abstract.
• Special issues: CR does not publish special issues and does not work with guest editors.
• Preprints: accepted as prior posting — supply the DOI at submission, and add the final-version link if accepted.
• Style & reporting: APA; report statistics in line with APA — standard deviations and effect sizes where applicable; power analysis, confidence intervals for bootstrapping, and correlation matrices (as an online appendix) are encouraged where relevant.
• Self-citations: written in the third person.
• Transparency: data-availability statement expected; note any preregistration in the cover letter; deposit open-materials/data if claiming open practices; provide ORCID where requested.
• Fee: no submission fee for the standard (subscription) route (verified 2026-06-22); an optional open-access APC applies only if you choose OA after acceptance — SAGE sets the amount on its live OA page (confirm before quoting).
• Editors: final decisions rest with the Co-Editors — Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick (Ohio State) & Jennifer Gibbs (UC Santa Barbara) (verified 2026-06-22); editor roles rotate, so confirm the current masthead on the live SAGE page before naming them.

Preflight checklist

Format & length

• Manuscript ≤ 45 pages, double-spaced, inclusive of references
• Full specifications, scale items, robustness grids, codebooks moved to the online supplement
• Abstract unstructured, ≤ 150 words, between title and main body; states question + design + tested mechanism + finding

Anonymity (double-anonymized)

• No author names, affiliations, or acknowledgments in the main document
• Supplemental materials also anonymized (no identifying links/paths)
• Self-citations in the third person ("Smith and Lee (2024) showed…", not "as we showed…")
• Identifying file metadata stripped (document properties, comments)
• Separate (non-anonymous) title page with contact info + brief bio prepared as a distinct file

Reporting & metadata

• APA formatting; statistics reported with SDs and effect sizes, CIs, df, exact p
• Mediation reported with bootstrap CIs; moderated mediation with the index
• Figures/tables self-contained, accessible (see commres-tables-figures)
• ORCID provided where requested

Compliance & files

• Ethics / IRB / human-subjects compliance stated
• Data-availability statement included; preregistration noted in cover letter if applicable
• Open-materials/data staged if claiming open practices (see commres-transparency-and-data)

Desk-reject and return-to-author patterns (avoidable before upload)

Trigger seen at intake	Editor action	Preflight fix
Author name in main doc or file properties	returned for anonymity	strip metadata; identity to the title page
Manuscript over 45 double-spaced pages (refs counted)	returned for length	move specs/scales/robustness to the supplement
Stars-only results, no effect sizes	returned for APA reporting	add d/η²ₚ/β + CIs; report SDs
Qualitative/descriptive submission	declined without review	re-route to a generalist/digital sibling, or add a tested mechanism
Abstract over 150 words or structured	returned incomplete	trim to ≤ 150 words, unstructured, between title and body
No data-availability statement	flagged incomplete	add the statement (repository + identifier, or exemption)

Calibration anchor: what "ready" means at CR (hedged)

A CR-ready submission clears three bars at once: a tested communication mechanism (not a bare effect), valid, reliably measured constructs an expert referee will trust, and APA-standard reporting with effect sizes and uncertainty. Volatile specifics — exact caps, APC, masthead, timelines — drift; confirm against the current SAGE author page (待核实).

Worked micro-example: a 5-minute anonymity sweep (illustrative)

Before upload, a survey-experiment manuscript runs the sweep: (1) search the main doc for the author surname — two first-person self-cites get rewritten in the third person; (2) an OSF link in the supplement resolving to a named project is swapped for a view-only anonymized link; (3) clear the author field in document properties; (4) confirm the scale items and CFA table sit in the supplement, not the main text, keeping the manuscript under 45 pages. All four would otherwise return the paper.

Anti-patterns

• Leaving author identifiers in the text, supplements, or file metadata (breaks anonymization)
• First-person self-references ("as we previously found") instead of third-person
• Reporting significance without effect sizes (an APA-reporting failure at CR)
• Manuscript over 45 double-spaced pages because supplements were not used
• Omitting the data-availability statement

Output format

【Anonymized】main doc + supplements + file metadata clean? [Y/N]
【Self-citations third person】[Y/N]
【Length】≤ 45 double-spaced pp incl. references? [Y/N]
【APA reporting】effect sizes + CIs/SDs, mediation bootstrap CIs? [Y/N]
【Title page】separate non-anonymous file with bio + ORCID? [Y/N]
【Data-availability statement】included? [Y/N]
【Next】await decision → commres-rebuttal on R&R

Supplementary resources

• templates/checklist.md — copy-paste preflight checklist
• ../../resources/external_tools.md — reference managers, anonymization, repro tooling
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — official CR/SAGE URLs behind every fact in this pack