Aims and Scope

The Japanese Journal of Political Science is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes original theoretical and empirically tested political science research.  Manuscripts across the full range of sub-fields and research methodologies are welcome for consideration. We are open to single country or comparative studies, and particularly encourage those manuscripts that draw on interdisciplinary approaches to political science questions.

Successful manuscripts will introduce innovative theoretical and empirical findings that shed light on important questions in the discipline of political science or draw upon other disciplines to offer insights on political behavior and institutions.

Types of Article

The journal accepts the following types of article:

• Research Article*
• Research Note*
• Review Article*
• Book Review**

* All or part of the publication costs for these article types may be covered by one of the agreements Cambridge University Press has made to support open access. For authors not covered by an agreement, and without APC funding, please see this journal's open access options for instructions on how to request an APC waiver. 

** No APCs are required for these article types.

Research articles between 8,000-12,000 words that contain original theoretical and/or empirical contributions to political science.

Research notes between 4,000-8,000 words that address an ongoing debate with new evidence. Notes may consist of replication or reanalysis (detailed below), introduction to a new dataset, or presentation of a case study. The journal will also consider “result-blind” submissions (also detailed below) for special review that focuses on the research design.

Book reviews of less than 2,000 words that provide a summary and analysis for recent publications (typically books published in last two years). We especially encourage the review of books written in Japanese that may not otherwise receive attention in English-language outlets. See the Book Review page for more information.

We will also consider proposals for review articles that integrate themes across several books for an independent contribution to the literature. In such cases, the review length should be 4,000-8000 words.

All page length requirements must be confirmed with Microsoft Word or PDF word-count software including text, tables, figures, references, appendices, and endnotes. Supplementary materials for online publication may be excluded from the word-count and must be included with the original submission for the review process. Authors may refer readers to their own website for additional materials.

Reanalysis and Replication

The goal of Reanalysis and Replication is to improve knowledge through building on previous research. The authors focus on a journal article or a book which they reanalyze or replicate. Below, we call it “the reference study.”

A reanalysis manuscript uses the same data as the reference study uses and applies new analysis to it. For instance, the authors may change specification (e.g., adding new control variables and/or interaction terms) or statistical model (using new probabilistic distribution other than normal). Reanalysis may discover a new finding, challenge the original study conclusions, or confirm that the original results are robust to additional specifications. The authors should explain the merit of the reanalysis in terms of its contribution to better understanding an important question of substance and/or methodology.

A replication manuscript creates a new dataset and conducts the same analysis as in the reference study. The authors may apply the same analysis of the reference study to a different empirical domain (e.g., different countries and/or different time periods). Alternatively, the contributors may repeat the same experiment on a different sample. The replication category is intended to provide a forum in which the scholarly community examines the external validity (or lack thereof) of the reference study. As with reanalysis, the authors should explain the merit of the replication in terms of its contribution to better understanding an important question of substance and/or methodology.

Result-Blind Reviewed Article Instructions to Contributors

The authors may elect to choose either the standard “full paper” review or the “result-blind” review for the method of peer-review for their research note at the Japanese Journal of Political Science. Should the authors wish their manuscripts to be reviewed as a result-blind research note, they should indicate their intention in the cover letter. Our intention for this new peer-review method is two-fold: to encourage the “design-based approach” and to reduce publication bias. We recognize that the current peer-review process in political science underestimates the value of empirical work without statistical significance. The result-blind review process offers one approach to ameliorate this potential bias. Toward this goal, the journal evaluates a manuscript on the basis of the persuasiveness of the question framing and research design rather than the statistical result.

Authors wishing to submit their manuscript in this article category should submit the full paper except for the sections on the results and conclusions. The initial manuscript should be no more than 8,000 words. The authors submit their initial manuscript either before or after they complete data collection for the study; they are encouraged to describe in detail the data collection process. In addition, the manuscript should elaborate on its pre-analysis plan. The journal may “pre-accept” the result-blind manuscript if editors, with recommendations from anonymous reviewers, affirm:

• Relevance of the question being addressed;
• Appropriateness of the design;
• Persuasiveness of the plan of analysis.

No later than three months after the pre-acceptance of the initial manuscript, the authors should submit the complete manuscript, which adds sections on data, results, discussion, and conclusion to the pre-accepted result-blind paper. The authors may rewrite abstract and references, but should not otherwise change the pre-accepted result-blind paper. The complete manuscript should be no more than 10,000 words. Without consideration to the statistical results of the analysis, the editors are committed to accepting any pre-accepted manuscripts as long as the authors implement data collection and analysis as proposed in the result-blind paper. The editors do not send the complete manuscript to reviewers, whose role is limited to the evaluation of the result-blind paper. When data collection and analysis deviate from the design, the editors reserve the right to reject the complete manuscript. The editors will add a note which enables readers to know exactly which part the journal pre-accepted.

The journal expects that the result-blind peer-review is most suitable for a registered experimental study, where the initial submission (that is subject to the result-blind review) primarily contains a pre-analysis plan. Nonetheless, the journal does not insist that authors write the manuscript before obtaining the results. They may collect, view, and even analyze the data and obtain results. The authors may not refer to the results in the initial submission. The journal also considers all types of scholarships and research programs including qualitative works (e.g., historical analysis and case studies), in the result-blind peer-review process. The process would be similar with a referee review of the results-blind paper in terms of its question, research design, and case selection. The complete paper would then add the analysis of evidence from case study interviews and/or archival research.

This category of submission is still relatively new in the discipline, and the journal welcomes any questions. Please do not hesitate to send inquiry to jjps@cambridge.org with the header “Inquiry about Result Blind Review.”

Preparing your article for submission

Authors should write in a clear and engaging style that favors an active voice and minimizes the use of jargon and acronyms. Acknowledge sources with specific page references and full citation whenever appropriate.

At the review stage, tables and figures can be submitted in a separate file or included in text. For all tables and figures, include a title and caption with clear variable labels that describe in words the concept being measured. Indications of significance should follow standard convention with consistency and transparent explanation. In many cases graphic presentation of substantive effects will strengthen the presentation of quantitative results. Authors should avoid excessive use of tables to help readers focus on core findings while reporting additional results and information for specialists in online appendices.

Referencing: Harvard (author-year) system

Whenever you are quoting the exact words of another writer; closely summarizing a passage from another writer; or using an idea or material which is directly based on the work of another writer, you must identify and acknowledge your source in a systematic style of referencing. We recommend the Harvard system of referencing, and we require conformity with this standard for accepted articles, although we will accept other systems of referencing at the initial review stage.

There are two parts to the author-year system of referencing. References (author and year of publication) are briefly cited within the text (called embedded or in-text referencing), and then all of the resources referred to in the body of the writing are given at the end of the manuscript in the reference list. References should give full bibliographical details in the alphabetical order. Each item should include: full name (surname and first name) of the author, date of publication in parenthesis, title of the source e.g. such as book and journal in italics, place of publication and the publisher, and pages numbers if necessary.

Example of Citation and Reference

For citation, use the surname of the author and the year of publication. If there are two authors, cite both. If there are more than two authors, cite only the first followed by ‘et al.’, which means ‘and others’.

If an author has published more documents in the same year, distinguish between them by adding lower-case letters.

Example 1:

Benedict Anderson, a political scientist at Cornell University, has gone so far as to say that the American academic writing is targeted at narrowly defined professional audience and its style is "boring" to other potential readers (Anderson, 2009a, 2009b).

Example 2:

Just as Midland, Texas has brought up George W. Bush and Tommy Franks and thus shaped United States war policy in Iraq, Ann Arbor, Michigan has exemplified and thus arguably shaped quintessentially American political science. It is the trinity of robust academic professionalism, solid positivism and heavy methodological armory has been a trademark of American political science (Gunnell, 2004; Easton et al, 1995, Oren, 2003).

Provide English translation of foreign language titles

Example:

Banno, Junji (1996) Kindai Nihon no Kokka Koso: 1871-1936 (The Structure of the State in Modern Japan, 1871-1936), Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.

Footnotes

Footnotes and Appendices can be used where needed to expand or enforce your article. Footnotes need consecutive numbers through the whole manuscript.

Abstract and Keywords Preparation

For 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.

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.

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.

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. 

Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools

We acknowledge the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the research and writing processes. To ensure transparency, we expect any such use to be declared and described fully to readers, and to comply with our plagiarism policy and best practices regarding citation and acknowledgements. We do not consider artificial intelligence (AI) tools to meet the accountability requirements of authorship, and therefore generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and similar should not be listed as an author on any submitted content.

In particular, any use of an AI tool:

• to generate images within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, and declared clearly in the image caption(s).
• to generate text within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, include appropriate and valid references and citations, and be declared in the manuscript’s Acknowledgements.
• to analyse or extract insights from data or other materials, for example through the use of text and data mining, should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, including details and appropriate citation of any dataset(s) or other material analysed in all relevant and appropriate areas of the manuscript.
• must not present ideas, words, data, or other material produced by third parties without appropriate acknowledgement or permission.

Descriptions of AI processes used should include at minimum the version of the tool/algorithm used, where it can be accessed, any proprietary information relevant to the use of the tool/algorithm, any modifications of the tool made by the researchers (such as the addition of data to a tool’s public corpus), and the date(s) it was used for the purpose(s) described. Any relevant competing interests or potential bias arising as a consequence of the tool/algorithm’s use should be transparently declared and may be discussed in the article.

Acknowledgements

Authors can use this section to acknowledge and thank colleagues, institutions, workshop organisers, family members, etc. that have helped with the research and/or writing process. It is important that that any type of funding information or financial support is listed under ‘Financial Support’ rather than Acknowledgements so that it can be recorded separately (see Funding statement above).

We are aware that authors sometimes receive assistance from technical writers, language editors, artificial intelligence (AI) tools, and/or writing agencies in drafting manuscripts for publication. Such assistance must be noted in the cover letter and in the Acknowledgements section, along with a declaration that the author(s) are entirely responsible for the scientific content of the paper and that the paper adheres to the journal’s authorship policy. Failure to acknowledge assistance from technical writers, language editors, AI tools and/or writing agencies in drafting manuscripts for publication in the cover letter and in the Acknowledgements section may lead to disqualification of the paper. Examples of how to acknowledge assistance in drafting manuscripts:

• “The author(s) thank [name and qualifications] of [company, city, country] for providing [medical/technical/language] writing support/editorial support [specify and/or expand as appropriate], which was funded by [sponsor, city, country]."
• “The author(s) made use of [AI system/tool] to assist with the drafting of this article. [AI version details] was accessed/obtained from [source details] and used with/without modification [specify and/or expand as appropriate] on [date(s)].