Political Analysis only reviews original research manuscripts, and will not review manuscripts that are currently under review at other journals or which have been published in other peer reviewed journals. Authors with questions about this policy should contact the Editors.

Political Analysis uses a single-anonymous review process; authors do not need to anonymize their manuscripts. Anonymized manuscripts will be returned prior to review. Articles and Letters are reviewed first by the journal’s editorial staff, and the Co-Editors. Submissions that are overly long, poorly-written, incorrectly formatted, or whose content are not appropriate for the journal will not be reviewed. Authors are encouraged to examine material that has recently been published in the journal if they have questions about whether their work is appropriate for Political Analysis, or to contact the Editors for advice.

Submissions that clear this initial stage are then assigned to one of the Co-Editors for initial review; some manuscripts may be rejected by the Co-Editors at this stage. In certain cases, the Co-Editors may ask a member of the journal’s Advisory Board or Editorial Board to serve as an ad hoc editor for particular papers. Assignment of an editor for a paper is typically done to match a paper to an editor with appropriate methodological expertise, and in some cases to mitigate potential conflicts of interest.

The editor of the paper will select reviewers for the paper; typically two but in some cases three reviews will be requested. Editors will make the initial decision after the reviews have been returned, and will attempt to make the initial decision as quickly as possible. A large fraction of papers that are reviewed by Political Analysis are rejected for further consideration. Of those that are not rejected after review, in most cases the editor will give the authors an opportunity to revise and resubmit their manuscript. Revise and resubmit offers are not a guarantee of eventual publication; authors will be given specific guidance from their editor about how to revise their manuscript for resubmission, and authors must provide a memorandum of changes and responses to reviews with their resubmission.

Most manuscripts that move forward towards production after the review stage receive a conditional acceptance. Conditionally-accepted papers are ones that do not need additional peer review, but which have some minor issues that the authors must resolve prior to final submission (typically editorial issues and the provision of replication data); the editor then makes a final decision after the final submission is received and the replication materials reviewed. All manuscripts that contain original simulations or analyses will be subjected to the journal’s replication requirement, and replication materials must be provided prior to the manuscript’s acceptance for publication. Papers that are accepted for publication must also meet the criteria discussed in the next section.

The decisions of the Editors of a manuscript are final, and will not (except for rare cases of factual error or procedural issues in the review process) be reconsidered. Political Analysis will not review manuscripts that have previously been rejected for further consideration by the journal in the past, without the express invitation of the Editors. Authors who attempt to resubmit manuscripts that have been rejected may be denied the opportunity to submit manuscripts to the journal.

Transfer Policy

We currently accept inbound transfers from the American Political Science Review (and are open to such transfers from other journals in the political and social sciences so long as the reviewers’ identities are conveyed to us). Because its submission requirements differ from ours, we will conduct an initial assessment of the manuscripts as they were submitted to the other journal alongside the corresponding reviews, and we will then make a determination about soliciting additional reviews, requesting formatting changes to comply with our policies, and/or issuing a decision.