Manuscript Preparation: A manuscript submitted for review to the American Journal of Political Science should be prepared as detailed below. Papers that do not meet these formatting and submission guidelines will not be sent out for review.
- All submissions of original work submitted to the AJPS are expected to adhere to the ethics in research and publications guidelines provided in the American Political Science Association’s A Guide to Professional Ethics in Political Science (revised 2012).
- The manuscript should present its content as efficiently as possible, with no unnecessary material included in the text, tables, or figures. Article submissions that exceed 10,000 words will not be reviewed. Research note submissions that exceed 4,000 words will not be reviewed
- The manuscript must include a title page featuring an abstract of no more than 150 words, followed by a word count for the manuscript. The abstract should provide a concise summary of the research stream to which the manuscript contributes, the specific research topic it addresses, the research strategy employed for the analysis, the results obtained from the analysis, and the implications of the findings.
- The American Journal of Political Science maintains a strict policy requiring authors of accepted manuscripts to provide all data and code necessary to reproduce their results. If a manuscript is tentatively accepted for publication, the replication materials will be verified to make sure that they do, in fact, reproduce all results that appear in the manuscript and immediate supporting materials before final acceptance and publication. Authors should review the AJPS Guidelines for Preparing Replication Files before submitting a manuscript for review. If there are limitations or restrictions on data access, or if an exception to the general replication policy will be requested for any reason, then the author should contact the editorial office to explain the situation before submitting the manuscript. Exceptions to the AJPS replication policy will be granted at the discretion of the Editors.
Formatting
- Article submissions to the AJPS should be no longer than 10,000 words, and research note submissions should be no longer than 4,000 words. The word count includes the main body of text, notes, parenthetical references, appendices intended for print, and the headers and notes of tables and figures. It does not include the title page, abstract, reference section, online supporting information section, or mathematical notations.
- All submissions should follow the style guidelines from the American Political Science Association’s Style Manual for Political Science (revised in 2018 and updated last in 2023) or The Chicago Manual of Style (18th edition). The guidelines include, but are not limited to, matters of text style, citations, appendices, notes, references, and figures/tables.
- All text, footnotes, and bibliographic references must be doubled-spaced and printed in a standard 12-point type font (material in figures and tables may be single-spaced). Page margins should be a minimum of one inch all around.
- An alphabetical listing of references is required. All bibliographic references should provide authors’ first and last names, not the last name and first initial- e.g., Smith, John, not Smith, J.
Citations and Author Anonymity
- The manuscript must exclude any author-identifying information, such as title page information listing authors’ names and affiliations, expressions of appreciation to others for advice or data, statements of where the manuscript may have been presented at a conference, acknowledgments of support for the research, or citations to the authors’ unpublished work that is not available online. Citations to one’s own published work should be made in the third person (e.g., “In earlier work, Brooks et al. (2000) examined …”), not in the first person (e.g., “In earlier work, we examined … (Brooks et al. 2000”). In most cases, information that is removed from the manuscript to maintain anonymity should not be indicated with placeholders, such as “AUTHOR CITATION” or “REDACTED.”
- Manuscripts should not cite unpublished work as support for the current analysis unless it is available online. Exceptions include presentations at major professional conferences or entries in working paper series that are widely available to scholars. Bibliographic information for any unpublished material must include a URL that enables referees and other interested readers to access the work directly.
- If the submission is part of a larger research agenda (e.g., other related papers under review or book manuscripts in development) these details should be identified in the “Author Comments” text box during the manuscript submission process.
- Please contact the editorial office at ajps@ajps.org for any questions regarding appropriate citation practices.
Tables and Figures
- We encourage the use of figures to demonstrate an argument or illustrate a finding. Authors should ensure that the graphical content of any figure is legible and high quality.
- For purposes of review, authors are encouraged to insert figures and tables into the body of the text, thereby enabling referees to refer to the material easily while reading the manuscript. Tables and figures should be numbered consecutively.
- Authors who report that results are “statistically significant” should use a threshold no greater than 0.05.
Supporting Information
- We encourage the use of Supporting Information (SI) for manuscripts when it contains material directly relevant to the research design, statistical methods, or empirical findings. Material provided in the SI is not considered part of the word count for the manuscript submission. The SI will be sent to referees along with the manuscript. If the manuscript is accepted for publication, the SI will be posted on the publisher’s website with the electronic copy of the article and also on the AJPS website.
- Information in the SI should be aimed at sophisticated readers with specialized field expertise. For example, formal theories may include proofs; computational models may include computer code; experiments may include detailed protocols; empirical work may include data coding procedures, alternative econometric specifications, robustness checks, and additional tables and figures that elaborate the manuscript’s primary findings. All material in the SI must be specifically referenced in the main text of the manuscript.
- All SI files must include a title page and an informative table of contents identifying content by page number. The title page and table of contents do not count toward the page limit. The specific content and page numbers must be referenced at the appropriate places in the main text of the manuscript.
- All materials in the SI should be clearly organized, labeled and described. A reviewer/reader should be able to read the SI as a separate document and understand everything that is presented, independent of the main paper. The purpose of each table/figure should be clearly stated and all information needed to interpret the presentation of any table/figure should be include alongside the results in the SI.
- If you have pre-registered a pre-analysis plan (PAP) and believe that viewing it would help reviewers assess your manuscript, you should submit an anonymized version as a separate file. PAPs do not count toward the page limit placed on Supporting Information files. There is no length limit on PAPs. Both the online SI and the PAP should be categorized as “Appendix” files when being uploaded to Editorial Manager.
- SI files associated with original submissions may not exceed 25 pages. Exceptions to the 25-page limit on original manuscripts may be given at the discretion of the co-editors based on the relevance of the material to the paper’s methodology and/or to the integrity of the peer review process. A request for an exception to the general policy must be made during original manuscript submission in the “Comments to the Editorial Office” text box with a brief explanation as to why the exception is necessary.
- SI files associated with papers invited to revise-and-resubmit may, at the discretion of the co-editors, exceed 25 pages if required to respond to specific reviewer comments, and where such material is referred to in the response memo and text.
Revised December 12, 2025
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