Rejected from Technology in Society? Choose the Next Journal

The journal's official scope sits at the intersection of technological change and social, economic, business, political, cultural, ethical, and philosophical transformation. The next destination should be chosen from the manuscript's real disciplinary center and the strength of its evidence.

Check whether the rejection reflects scope, theory, design, or interpretation.

A desk rejection frequently identifies disciplinary ownership. A platform-adoption model may belong in information systems; an innovation strategy paper in management; a normative AI argument in ethics; a communications-regulation analysis in policy; an ethnography in STS; or an engineering system evaluation in a technical journal.

A post-review rejection gives evidence about constructs, sample, measurement, coding, identification, theory, context, and interpretation. Another reviewer can see common-method bias, convenience sampling, weak qualitative reflexivity, untested mediation, overfit structural models, or generic implications from the same manuscript.

An Article Transfer Service offer may save administrative work, but the receiving journal independently decides whether to review or accept the paper. Use it only when the suggested audience is right after revision.

Technological Forecasting and Social Change

Best for: work on technological change, innovation systems, diffusion, transitions, foresight, scenarios, and social or organizational consequences. It can fit when the paper explains how technology change unfolds and what actors or institutions shape it.

Think twice if: the study is a one-time intention survey with no temporal, system, or change mechanism. A forecasting or transformation vocabulary does not create longitudinal evidence or a foresight method.

Telecommunications Policy

Best for: research on communications networks, digital infrastructure, platforms, competition, access, governance, regulation, and public policy. It fits when the paper names a policy instrument, regulator, market structure, or institutional choice.

Think twice if: "policy implications" are generic calls for awareness or education. Specify jurisdiction, decision-maker, intervention, tradeoff, affected population, and evidence boundary.

Information, Communication & Society

Best for: social research on digital media and communication, including platforms, inequality, participation, identity, labor, publics, and everyday life. It can fit rich quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-method work where communication is central.

Think twice if: the paper treats users as abstract adopters and social context as control variables. Explain practices, relations, institutions, power, or communication processes rather than only intention scores.

AI & Society

Best for: sociotechnical questions about artificial intelligence, including ethics, governance, work, culture, design, accountability, participation, and human consequences. It is plausible when AI's particular properties matter to the argument.

Think twice if: the technology could be replaced with any digital tool without changing the theory. Avoid broad claims about "AI impact" from hypothetical vignettes or self-reported intention alone.

Science, Technology, & Human Values

Best for: theoretically informed STS scholarship about how science and technology interact with institutions, values, expertise, politics, classification, and social order. Detailed historical, ethnographic, interpretive, and mixed-method work can be central.

Think twice if: the manuscript uses a standard variable model with little engagement with STS concepts or method. Do not add an STS citation paragraph after rejection; rebuild the research question and analysis if that is the true destination.

Futures

Best for: futures inquiry, scenarios, anticipation, foresight practice, uncertainty, and plural pathways. It can suit a paper that helps decision-makers reason about alternative technology-society trajectories.

Think twice if: the future claims are extrapolated from a cross-sectional sample or trend list without a transparent method. Expose assumptions, drivers, uncertainty, stakeholder perspectives, and the decisions the scenarios inform.

Write an implication contract: actor, decision, technology, social mechanism, affected group, evidence, tradeoff, jurisdiction, and boundary. If the paper cannot fill those fields, its policy section is probably outrunning the study.

1. Title and abstract: name the technology, social process, population or institution, design, and bounded finding.
2. Theory: explain the mechanism and why the technology or context changes what existing theory predicts.
3. Constructs and measurement: document item sources, adaptation, validity, invariance, common-method controls, and distinctions among overlapping constructs.
4. Sampling: state recruitment, inclusion, geography, timing, platform, response patterns, weighting, exclusions, and who is missing.
5. Identification and causal language: align claims with design. Use experiments, natural variation, longitudinal data, comparison, or explicit causal assumptions when claiming effects.
6. Quantitative analysis: report uncertainty, robustness, model alternatives, missing data, diagnostics, effect sizes, and researcher degrees of freedom.
7. Qualitative analysis: expose positionality, access, sampling logic, coding, negative cases, interpretation, and evidence supporting themes.
8. Technology context: describe the system version, affordances, governance, deployment setting, data practices, and relevant institutional changes.
9. Social and policy implications: name decision-makers, instruments, tradeoffs, harmed or benefited groups, feasibility, and limits.
10. Data and materials: share instruments, codebooks, code, de-identified data where ethical, and constraints on access.

Audit the theory-to-design-to-implication chain before rerouting.

Use Elsevier's Article Transfer Service when the suggested venue owns the manuscript's real disciplinary center and the transfer saves useful setup. A transfer does not guarantee review or acceptance. Revise the manuscript and destination-specific letter before the receiving editor sees it.

Reserve an appeal for an identifiable error in fact or process with a plausible effect on the outcome. An editor's assessment of novelty, scope, importance, or interpretation is normally better answered through reconstruction and rerouting. Use the instructions and deadline in the letter. Keep the manuscript exclusive during that process: do not send it to another journal, accept a competing transfer, or maintain simultaneous submissions while the appeal remains open.

Submit fresh when the correct audience lies outside Elsevier, when new data or analysis materially changes the paper, or when the offered title is administratively convenient but intellectually wrong.

Across technology-and-society manuscripts we review, three qualitative patterns repeatedly shape the post-rejection route. These patterns do not predict an editor's decision and should be reconciled with the actual letter.

Pattern 1: society appears only in the implications

The methods and results examine performance, adoption intention, firm capability, or user satisfaction; the discussion then adds broad statements about ethics, equity, democracy, sustainability, or policy. We trace the social claim back through constructs, sample, design, analysis, and evidence. If no social mechanism was measured or interpreted, an information-systems, management, or technical venue is often more honest.

Pattern 2: cross-sectional association becomes technological impact

A one-time convenience sample and self-report instrument produce correlations or a structural model, but the paper says technology causes trust, productivity, well-being, exclusion, or behavior. We inspect temporal order, common-method bias, selection, omitted variables, model alternatives, effect sizes, and robustness. The repair may be causal design, narrower language, or a destination that values descriptive evidence.

Pattern 3: context is a label rather than an explanatory variable

The manuscript names a country, platform, industry, profession, or policy environment but does not explain how institutions, infrastructure, culture, regulation, or power shape the result. We map context to theory, sampling, measures, findings, and transfer limits. That work often decides whether the paper belongs in policy, communication, STS, management, or a broad technology-society venue.

These checks reach the research question, theory, sample, instruments, interviews, coding, models, tables, robustness, discussion, and policy section. A new journal name cannot repair the chain.

Our Technology in Society routing review finally tests whether the proposed journal changes the manuscript's center. A policy route requires a named institution, instrument, jurisdiction, and tradeoff. A communication route requires a social or communicative process. An STS route requires theory and analysis of institutions, expertise, values, or power. We compare those demands with the abstract, theory, sample, survey or interview protocol, models, coding, robustness tables, discussion, and implications. The destination follows the evidence already present or the revision the team can genuinely complete.

Before resubmission, confirm that the destination owns the paper's disciplinary center, social claims are measured or analytically supported, causal language matches design, context changes the explanation, policy advice names a real actor and tradeoff, and prior criticism is addressed visibly.

Measure final GSC outcomes after 14 complete days. At day 21, keep, revise, or stop based on indexing, query ownership, impressions, clicks, and qualified review starts. Preview-start counts are a cluster-level signal, not proof of exact-query volume.