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Guidelines for Manuscripts
Manuscript Preparation A
manuscript submitted for review to The American Journal of
Political Science should be prepared as follows.
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The manuscript should address an
interesting and important research problem or question; display
a high level of creativity or innovation in research; engage the
relevant research literature and thereby contribute to the
accumulation of knowledge; and demonstrate high-quality thought
and/or theorizing (as appropriate), analysis or methodological
use (as appropriate), and evidence bearing on the argument,
theory, or rival hypotheses, models, or theories introduced (as
appropriate).
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A manuscript
must be well organized, well written, and thereby capable of
effective and informative communication.
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The manuscript should follow the style guidelines of the American Political
Science Association’s Style Manual for Political Science
(rev. August, 2006) which is based on The Chicago Manual of
Style (15th edition). The guidelines include,
but are not limited to, matters of text style (but, The AJPS
prefers use of the third person, rather than “I” or “we” unless
such use leads to very awkward writing), citations, appendices,
notes, references, and tables and figures.
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It should not
exceed 40 pages in length inclusive on standard 8.5x11 inch
paper. A manuscript that does is returned without review unless
the author specifically requests, justifies, and receives the
Editor’s exemption.
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The manuscript
must include a concise, descriptive, and informative abstract of
150 words or less on the title page.
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All pages,
including figures, tables, and appendices, are numbered
consecutively.
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All text,
footnotes, bibliographic references, and appendices (as
appropriate) are doubled-spaced and printed in a standard
12-point type font (tables may be single-spaced).
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Figures and
tables are printed at the end of the manuscript – each one on a
separate page.
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Figures,
tables, and appendices are numbered consecutively.
Manuscript Submission
A manuscript intended for review by AJPS must be submitted as
follows.
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Submission is
available on The Journal’s website at
www.ajps.org.
Only electronic submission is accepted. No submission is
returned.
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Before
submitting a manuscript, the contact author should have
available the names and email addresses of all authors and the
text of the manuscript abstract. At this time, s/he also should
identify a research subfield for the manuscript. And, an author
submitting a revised manuscript should further have available
the original manuscript number.
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An original
manuscript or a revised one may include only one anonymous PDF
file and only one author-identifying file, as described below:
The contact author must submit an entirely anonymous
version of the manuscript as a pdf file. That is, the file must
exclude such author-identifying information as the cover page
information on authors’ names and universities, expressions of
appreciation to others for advice or data, statements of where
the manuscript may have been presented at a conference,
citations to the author’s prior presentations or publications,
and other such identifying text. The PDF file should be marked
“anonymous” in the “document summary” tab and the file should be
printable. An author who submits a revised manuscript must
insert an anonymous revisions memorandum at the beginning of the
anonymous revised manuscript pdf file – that is, the memorandum
and the revised manuscript must be in the same pdf file.
An author may, but is not required to, submit a second,
author-identifying file in the “author’s comments” field, with
comments to the editors, acknowledgements, and details on where
the paper has been presented, and/or statements that related
text, data documentation, or additional analyses are available
on request.
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An author may
recommend 3-4 individuals who are particularly qualified to
review the manuscript. Recommendations should not include an
author’s doctoral dissertation supervisor, someone with whom an
author has co-authored in the past 24 months, colleagues in an
author’s department or comparable academic unit, or anyone with
whom an author has a family or other personal relationship.
Recommendations are recommendations; none, one, or all of them
may be selected to review. An author’s recommendations should
include a name and a contact email address sent to
ajps@utdallas.edu within one week of submitting the
manuscript through
www.ajps.org.
Other Notes The
American Journal of Political Science:
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Does not review
manuscripts that:
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do not meet
the standards stated in bullet one above;
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works that
are not analytically rigorous, of high quality, and
self-contained;
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works that
are unsolicited rejoinders to recently published articles;
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are reviews of books or essays on
current events;
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papers under review elsewhere or published
already;
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ignore one or more of the substantive,
stylistic, or formatting preparations or procedures stated
above.
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Is committed to
the integrity and quality of the review process. It conducts
this process in a manner that is timely but also depends on
reviewer response. Accordingly, time-to-decision averages
approximately twelve weeks. All reviews
are advisory to the
Editor.
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Is closed to
manuscript submission between August 1 and September 4, and
between December 15 and January 2.
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