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Preparing your materials

Policy on prior publication

When authors submit manuscripts to this journal, these manuscripts should not be under consideration, accepted for publication or in press within a different journal, book or similar entity, unless explicit permission or agreement has been sought from all entities involved. However, deposition of a preprint on the author’s personal website, in an institutional repository, or in a preprint archive shall not be viewed as prior or duplicate publication. Authors should follow the Cambridge University Press Preprint Policy regarding preprint archives and maintaining the version of record. 

Preparing your article for submission

SPPQ uses a double-anonymous review process and does not consider manuscripts under review elsewhere.

SPPQ considers two types of submissions: Original Articles and Short Articles.

1. Original Articles

Submissions should be no more than 10,000 words (including text, figures/tables, citations, footnotes, and references) and should include an abstract of no more than 200 words. 

2. Short Articles

Submissions should be no more than 4,000 words (including text, figures/tables, citations, footnotes, and references) and should include an abstract of no more than 200 words. Compared to Original Articles, Short Article submissions often have briefer introductions and theory sections. For instance, Short Article submissions may introduce new data sets available to the field or methodological or data questions pertinent to the study of state politics; these submissions should not only describe a new data set but also demonstrate its utility to the state politics field. Short Article submissions may also provide alternative theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches, and/or findings to the existing literature, albeit in a shorter, more focused manner than an Original Article submission.

The review process is the same for each type of submission. The editors review the submission for its appropriateness and quality and decide whether to desk reject it or send it out for review. Typically, 2-3 reviewers are asked to provide feedback on the submission.

To submit your manuscript, please see Submitting your materials.   

Submissions must be anonymous with all author-identifying information removed.  This includes any acknowledgements or expressions of gratitude, research funding or grant disclosures, and direct references to the author’s university or department. In addition, authors are welcome to include a reasonable number of citations to their own work, so long as they cannot be used to identify the manuscript’s author. Authors should avoid citing their own doctoral dissertations, conference papers, manuscripts in review, and forthcoming publications. In the event a manuscript is accepted for publication, any self-identifying citations or information can be added to the final version. More information on anonymising your manuscript can be found here

Any supplementary material (i.e., online appendices) should be submitted as a separate file (using the Supplementary Material option) at the time of submission. More information on supplementary material can be found here

Submissions may also include a separate title page and/or cover letter. These documents can include author contact information. 

Submissions must also include 5-10 keywords. Keywords help identify potential reviewers and should be general descriptors of the main topics of the article. More information on keywords can be found here

All manuscripts accepted for publication will undergo a data verification process.  Replication materials for an accepted article must be made publicly available. Publication is contingent on a successful data verification process.  Please see the the SPPQ Data Verification and Replication Policy for more information.

SPPQ follows the APSA Style Manual for Political Science. Any manuscripts accepted for publication must follow this style. We encourage authors to submit manuscripts in this format, but initial submissions adhering to other styles will be considered for review.  

An Overleaf template for State Politics & Policy Quarterly is available, which can support authors in formatting their manuscripts prior to submission. Please see below for more information.

If you have any questions, please contact Conor Dowling, Tracy Osborn, and Jonathan Winburn, editors of State Politics & Policy Quarterly, at [email protected].

Abstract and Keywords Preparation

For further guidance on how to prepare your Abstracts and Keywords, please refer to these guidelines.

How to prepare your materials for anonymous peer review

To ensure a fair and anonymous peer review process, authors should not allude to themselves as the authors of their article in any part of the text. This includes citing their own previous work in the references section in such a way that identifies them as the authors of the current work.

Please refer to our general guidelines on how to anonymise your manuscript prior to submission.

English language editing services 

Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, may wish to have their English-language manuscripts checked by a native speaker before submission. This step is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the Editor and any reviewers.  

In order to help prospective authors to prepare for submission and to reach their publication goals, Cambridge University Press offers a range of high-quality manuscript preparation services, including language editing. You can find out more on our language services page.

Please note that the use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge-published journal. 

Tables and Artwork

Please refer to the following guidance about preparing artwork and graphics for submission.

Seeking permissions for copyrighted material

If your article contains any material in which you do not own copyright, including figures, charts, tables, photographs or excerpts of text, you must obtain permission from the copyright holder to reuse that material. Guidance on how to do that can be found here.

Competing Interests

All authors must include a competing interest declaration in their title page. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and may be published in the article.

Competing interests are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the content or publication of an author’s work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations.

If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting must include competing interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors. 

Example wording for a declaration is as follows: “Competing interests: Author 1 is employed at organisation A, Author 2 is on the Board of company B and is a member of organisation C. Author 3 has received grants from company D.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none”. 

Ethics and Transparency Policy Requirements

Please ensure that you have reviewed the journal’s Publishing ethics policies while preparing your materials. 

Please also ensure that you have read the journal’s Research transparency policy prior to submission. We encourage the use of a Data Availability Statement at the end of your article before the reference list. Guidance on how to write a Data Availability Statement can be found here. Please try to provide clear information on where the data associated with you research can be found and avoid statements such as “Data available on request”.

A list of suggested data repositories can be found here.

SPPQ Data Verification and Replication Policy

All manuscripts accepted for publication will undergo a data verification process. Replication materials for an accepted article must be made publicly available. Publication is contingent on a successful data verification process. Please see below for general information on the policy and procedure. For specific instructions and guidance, please refer to the Odum Institute’s SPPQ Journal Verification Framework

Overview

State Politics & Politics Quarterly is committed to publishing research of all methodological approaches so that it is open and available to the scientific community. As such, all accepted articles will undergo a data verification process to ensure replication materials enable researchers to reproduce all published analyses presented in the journal. SPPQ partners with the Odum Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, to verify all submitted materials are transparent, and interested researchers can replicate all published findings from the journal. 

Upon an article acceptance, authors must follow the verification and replication procedures outlined below before an article enters the production stage of the publication process.  Publication of an accepted article is contingent on successful completion of the verification and replication process. 

The following guidelines will apply to most accepted articles at SPPQ and are provided to assist authors in this process. These general guidelines apply to both quantitative and qualitative research except where there are different expectations for those types of articles. We are currently developing more specific guidelines for qualitative articles. Until those are available, authors will receive specific instructions from the editors for the verification process for their individual manuscript. While these guidelines should cover most accepted articles, the editors may make minor exceptions to the general rules or process to accommodate individual articles. 

Any exceptions or modifications to the verification policy must be approved by the SPPQ editors who retain final authority to grant any exceptions or modifications. 

General Procedure

A manuscript moves into the verification stage once the author(s) have submitted the final draft of an accepted manuscript. After submission of the final draft, the corresponding author will be responsible for providing the materials necessary to verify the results in the manuscript are reproducible. Once the verification process is successfully completed, the manuscript moves into the production phase and the verified replication content is simultaneously made publicly available on the SPPQ Dataverse. Authors may also post their verification files elsewhere, but the material must remain on the SPPQ Dataverse

The corresponding author starts the process by posting all verification and replication material on the SPPQ Dataverse. Please reference this checklist SPPQ Quantitative Checklist when working on the replication materials.

Replication files include the following materials:

            README File:

Every manuscript will include a plain-text file titled “readme.txt.” This file provides the names of all other files contained in the study along with a brief description of each one. The SPPQ README Guide provides more information and helpful tips.

            Analysis Dataset(s):

                        This requirement may not apply to qualitative manuscripts.

All data necessary to reproduce the results must be included in the dataverse.  Authors can choose their own data storage formats as long as the files are readily accessible to researchers in the social science community. The SPPQ Analysis Data Construction Guide provides more information and helpful tips.

In limited situations, the SPPQ editors may grant an exemption from the general requirement of publicly providing the source data. Most notably, if an author is using restricted access data or is in a situation where the data cannot be made public (e.g., the data contains confidential information), they can request a waiver from the editors. However, the editors may still ask that the data be made privately available (if that is possible) to complete the verification process, even if it not ultimately publicly posted. In these cases, the authors must provide the relevant information and procedures so that an interested researcher could apply for data access.

Additionally, the author must provide the software command files (see below) and the data construction information (see below) used to complete the analysis.

    Codebook:

                        This requirement may not apply to qualitative manuscripts.

Codebooks must include information on all variables (and only those variables) provided in the analysis datasets as well as full data citations for all data sources. The SPPQ Codebook Guide provides more information and helpful tips.

Information to Reconstruct the Analysis:

Every manuscript must contain complete information for constructing the analysis dataset(s) from the original sources of the data. For qualitative manuscripts, until more specific instructions are posted, please consult with the editors on this procedure. For quantitative manuscripts, this information provides a roadmap that interested researchers will follow to produce the results in the manuscript.  It traces the author(s)’process from collection of source data and data curation and management to the provided analysis dataset(s) in the dataverse.

Software Commands:

All manuscripts with any type of analysis dataset(s) must provide one or more files containing the software commands or code to reproduce all the analytic results reported in the manuscript. Typically, these will be plain text files. The exact format of the file contents will depend on the software used in the original analysis (i.e., Stata .do files, R command scripts, or text files). 

Regardless of the format used, comment statements should be used extensively throughout the files to explain the steps of the analysis. Examples include comments like, “The following commands recode variables X and Y in preparation for . . .,” “The following commands produce the results in Table 1,” or “The following commands create Figure 1.”

Additionally, the authors need to list and provide information on any software packages that must be installed to complete the analysis (i.e., Stata .ado files or R packages).

Authors need to provide clear and specific information about the version of the software system used to conduct the analyses (e.g., Stata 16). This requirement is critical for successful replicability of the results.

We advise authors to pay particular attention to this step in the process as the verification process goes much smoother with well-written and detailed software command files.     

Conclusion

These guidelines describe the minimum requirements for manuscript replication materials on the SPPQ Dataverse. These guidelines implement the principles of data access and research transparency (DART) to which SPPQ is a proud signatory. We encourage authors to provide as much information as possible to facilitate transparent, open, and diverse inquiries into the research published in the journal. Open, transparent research furthers efforts to establish powerful theories of political and social phenomena.

Authorship and contributorship

All authors listed on any papers submitted to this journal must be in agreement that the authors listed would all be considered authors according to disciplinary norms, and that no authors who would reasonably be considered an author have been excluded. For further details on this journal’s authorship policy, please see this journal's publishing ethics policies.

Author affiliations

Author affiliations should represent the institution(s) at which the research presented was conducted and/or supported and/or approved. For non-research content, any affiliations should represent the institution(s) with which each author is currently affiliated. 

For more information, please see our author affiliation policy and author affiliation FAQs.

Overleaf

Overleaf is a free online tool for writing and submitting scholarly manuscripts. An Overleaf template is available for this journal, which allows authors to easily comply with the journal’s guidelines.

Benefits of using Overleaf include:

  • An intuitive interface, in which authors can write in LaTeX or rich text and see a preview of their article typeset in the journal’s style
  • Features enabling collaboration with co-authors (the ability to share, highlight and comment on versions of articles)
  • Sophisticated version control
  • Clean PDF conversion and submission into the journal’s online manuscripts system (supporting materials can also be added during this process)

Overleaf is based on LaTeX but includes a rich text mode. An author writing in Overleaf would need to have some knowledge of LaTeX, but could collaborate through the tool with an author who is not a LaTeX expert. Overleaf’s tutorial pages include a two minute video and an introduction to LaTeX course, and Overleaf also provides support for authors using the tool.

You can access the State Politics & Policy Quarterly Overleaf template here. There is a direct link to submit your manuscript from within the Overleaf authoring environment. Once you have completed writing your article, please use the "Submit to Journal" button and select the link for State Politics & Policy Quarterly to be directed to the journal's submission system.

LaTeX class file

You can download the LaTeX class file for State Politics & Policy Quarterly here.

Funding statement

A declaration of sources of funding must be provided if appropriate. Authors must state the full official name of the funding body and grant numbers specified. Authors must specify what role, if any, their financial sponsors played in the design, execution, analysis and interpretation of data, or writing of the study. If they played no role this should be stated. 

Supplementary materials

Material that is not essential to understanding or supporting a manuscript, but which may nonetheless be relevant or interesting to readers, may be submitted as supplementary material. Supplementary material will be published online alongside your article, but will not be published in the pages of the journal. Types of supplementary material may include, but are not limited to, appendices, additional tables or figures, datasets, videos, and sound files.

Supplementary materials will not be typeset or copyedited, so should be supplied exactly as they are to appear online. Please see our general guidance on supplementary materials for further information.

Where relevant we encourage authors to publish additional qualitative or quantitative research outputs in an appropriate repository, and cite these in manuscripts.

ORCID

We require all corresponding authors to identify themselves using ORCID when submitting a manuscript to this journal. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration with key research workflows such as manuscript submission and grant applications, provides the following benefits:

  • Discoverability: ORCID increases the discoverability of your publications, by enabling smarter publisher systems and by helping readers to reliably find work that you have authored.
  • Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your iD or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID record, and will enable you to share this information with other systems and platforms you use, saving you re-keying information multiple times.
  • Keeping track: Your ORCID record is a neat place to store and (if you choose) share validated information about your research activities and affiliations.

See our ORCID FAQs for more information.

If you don’t already have an iD, you will need to create one if you decide to submit a manuscript to this journal. You can register for one directly from your user account on ScholarOne, or alternatively via https://ORCID.org/register.

If you already have an iD, please use this when submitting your manuscript, either by linking it to your ScholarOne account, or by supplying it during submission using the "Associate your existing ORCID iD" button.

ORCIDs can also be used if authors wish to communicate to readers up-to-date information about how they wish to be addressed or referred to (for example, they wish to include pronouns, additional titles, honorifics, name variations, etc.) alongside their published articles. We encourage authors to make use of the ORCID profile’s “Published Name” field for this purpose. This is entirely optional for authors who wish to communicate such information in connection with their article. Please note that this method is not currently recommended for author name changes: see Cambridge’s author name change policy if you want to change your name on an already published article. See our ORCID FAQs for more information. 

Author Hub

You can find guides for many aspects of publishing with Cambridge at Author Hub, our suite of resources for Cambridge authors.