Submissions

Author Guidelines

Urban Crime. An International Journal

Urban Crime is a refereed journal. Articles submitted to Urban Crime should be original contributions and should not be under consideration for any other publication at the same time. If another version of the article is under consideration by another publication, or has been, or will be published elsewhere, authors should clearly indicate this at the time of submission. Manuscripts and editorial correspondence should be sent to urbancrimejournal@gmail.com.  Articles should  be around  4,000 to 10,000 words in length, but this is not  exhaustive. An abstract is required and should not exceed 200 words in length.  Book reviews should normally be between 500 and 1,000 words in length. Details of the author’s institutional affiliation, full address and other contact information should be included on a separate cover sheet.

Technical instructions for the authors

1. Type of file: The manuscript should be prepared in Microsoft Word document and word processing software, using: Times New Roman, Latin script, font 12 (pages typed in 1,5 line spacing) in Greek, French or English.

2. Length of the manuscript: Articles should normally be approximately 4,000 and 10,000 words in length, but this is not exhaustive.

3. First page should contain the following:

3.1. The title of the paper (Times New Roman, 12, Capital letters, Bold, Justified in the middle). The title should clearly point to the subject of the paper.

3.2. Author’s name and surname (Times New Roman, 12, Justified in the middle). After the author’s surname put the footnote (Times New Roman, 10) that should contain academic title, the name of the institution where the author works, the country and an e-mail. In case of co-authored papers, please specify data for each co-author separately.  ORCID id (if available) can also be included.

3.3. Abstract (Times New Roman, 12, Capital letters, Bold, Justified in the middle- Only the work "Abstract"). The abstract should not exceed 200 words. It presents a short and clear overview of the subject of the paper. It must clearly state the problem and the aim of the paper, as well as the main topics that will be covered in the article and main conclusions

3.4. Keywords (Times New Roman, 12, Bold). After the abstract, please provide 4 to 5 keywords. Please use keywords that could be easily used for indexing and searching articles (e.g. referring to the list of keywords of the Web of Science).

4. Structure of the manuscript: Text of the manuscript should contain following sections:

4.1. For manuscripts that predominantely present empirical research results: introduction, research methodology, results and discussion, conclusion.

4.2. For predominantely theoretical manuscripts: introduction, main part of the manuscript structured in at least two sub-chapters, and conclusion.

5. In the introduction you should clearly state the problem, subject and the aim of the article, as well as the structure of the article.

6. Subheadings should be written in the following way:

Paragraph heading (Times New Roman, 12, Bold)

Sub-Heading 1 (Times New Roman, 12, Italic)

Sub-Heading 2 (alphabet letter in the bracket, Times New Roman, 12, Regular)


7. Acknowledgments: If any, acknowledgments should be given in a footnote after the title of the article or in the Acknowledgments section, after the text of the manuscript and before the list of the references.

8. If the article was previously orally presented at the scientific meeting (under the same or similar title) this should be stated in a footnote at the first page of the article, after the title.

9. Please use the Harvard referencing system. At the end of citation you should open a bracket and give the author’s surname, the year of publication and page number.

Example: (Farsedakis, 2005: 28).

When there are two or three authors they should be separated with “,” and “&” (e.g. Zarafonitou, Kontopoulou & Mimis, 2010).

When there is more than three authors, after the surname of the first author add “et al.” (e.g. Zarafonitou et al., 2009).

When an author is mentioned twice or more for the same year, place "a", "b" etc. after the year  and seperate with comma or slash (e.g.  Zarafonitou, 2011a, 2011b or Zarafonitou, 2011a/2011b)

If there are multiple papers of different authors in the same bracket, they should be separated with a semicolon. In that case the papers should be mentioned chronologically according to the year of publishing.

10. Footnotes (Times New Roman, 10): Footnotes should contain only brief accompanying comments, law articles and Official Gazzetes.

11. Foreign names should be written originally.

12. Tables, figures and pictures (photos):

12.1. Tables should be prepared in Word, and figures in Excell. Tables and figures should be clear, as simple as possible and easy to explore.

The titles of the tables and figures should be written above. Example: Figure 1: (In)security in the area of residence/employment - (Times New Roman, 10).

Please make a reference to certain Tables and/or Figures in the text. Exampe: (Figure:1) or At the Figure 1….

12.2. Pictures (photos): Titles of the pictures (photos) should be written below the picture (photo) (Times New Roman, 10).

13. Enclose the list of references (literature) at the end of the manuscript (Times New Roman, 12, Bold, Capital letters,  Justified in the left).
Please list all the references in alphabetical order, according to the first author’s surname. Please include only the authors / resources mentioned in the text. If you are using literature translated from another language add the original language in parenthesis (Example: In Greek)

A list of references should contain the following:

For books: surname and initials of the author, year of publication (in the bracket), title of the book (italic), place of publication and publisher.
Example: Zarafonitou, C. (2002). The fear of crime. A criminological approach and inquiry based on an empirical study of the phenomenon within the city of Athens. Athens-Komotini: European Studies in Law, A. Sakkoulas Publisher (in Greek and in English).

For book chapters: surname and initials of the author, year of publication (in the bracket), chapter title, In: initial, surname of the editor followed by ed. in the bracket, title of the book (italic), place of publication, name of publisher and the page numbers of the chapter.

For journal articles: surname and initials of the author, year of publication (in the bracket), title of the article, title of the Journal (italic) and page numbers of the article.
Example: Zarafonitou, C. & Kontopoulou, E. (2020). "Environmental degradation and fear of crime. The research evidence from the center of Athens."  Urban Crime. An International Journal, 1(1), 22-52.

For documents accessed by internet: give the electronic address and the date you accessed the source.

Prior to the web page there can be the author’s name (if known) and the title of the text. In this case, in front of the web page write - available at:

For laws: next to the name of the law, mention the Official Gazette in which it was published.

For conference papers: surname and initials of the author, year of publication (in the bracket), title, name of the conference (in italics), page number in the book of abstracts (in the bracket), place of publication, name of the publisher.

For magazine articles: surname and initials of the author, year and day of publication in the bracket, headline, newspaper name, page number.

It is possible to specify the web edition of the newspaper, when instead of the page you can write - available at: and then web site address and the date of accessing the site.