Review the APSA Style Manual for Political Science, the Perspectives on Politics submission guidelines, and the guidelines outlined below before submitting your manuscript.

The following information pertains to submission and publication of articles, reflections, and book review material.

Whom to Contact

General responsibility for all Perspectives editorial policies and decisions rests with Ana Arjona and Wendy Pearlman, Co-Editors-in-Chief. Responsibility for administration of the Perspectives office, staff, and general operating procedures rests with Jennifer Boylan, Managing Editor, perspectives@apsanet.org.

Style, Format, References, and Endnotes

Update: As of Fall 2018, Perspectives transitioned to a slightly adjusted style format, which now features in-text citations and explanatory endnotes. The first full issue published with this new style was Vol. 17, Issue 3 (our September 2019 issue). All new submissions should utilize this new style format.

As of August 2023, Perspectives is no longer counting the references section as part of the word count for articles and reflections. Articles must be no longer than 12,000 words and reflections should be 6,000 to 10,000 words. This word count includes the main body of the text, as well as notes and in-text citations. It does not include the title page, abstract, bibliography, tables, figures, mathematical notations, online appendices or other supporting information.

Submissions should be double-spaced, use Times New Roman 12-pt font, and have numbered pages. For more on references and endnote formatting, please refer to the style guide for Perspectives. As explained in the “Instructions for Authors,” tables, figures, and appendix materials may be included within manuscripts or uploaded as separate files. Should a submission be accepted, authors will be expected to work with the Perspectives offices to supply files of adequate size, quality, and format for publication. Questions or concerns in advance may be directed to the Managing Editor.

ORCID Identifier

Beginning January 1, 2019, an ORCID iD is a requirement for corresponding authors submitting to Perspectives on Politics. The Editorial Manager system will prompt authors to attach an ORCID iD to their manuscript during the submission process. Authors can also choose to update their Editorial Manager profile with their ORCID iD in advance to save themselves time during the submission process. Including an ORCID iD with your article submission improves the discoverability of your work and creates more opportunity for recognition. By using your iD you also benefit from having your ORCID record automatically updated when your article publishes. ORCID deposits your iD to Crossref and, provided you have given them permission to do so, they will update your record each time you publish an article. Learn more about ORCID and Crossref’s automatic update functionality.

Dataverse

Perspectives on Politics now hosts replication files for published manuscripts in our Dataverse archive.

We expect authors who make quantitative inferences in their manuscripts to submit data and log files to this Dataverse archive prior to publication. We encourage authors using qualitative data to submit data to Dataverse if this would facilitate greater research transparency and accessibility. This is not required and we recognize that reproduction standards in qualitative research are still under discussion.

Please refer to Perspectives’ Data Policy for more information.

Article Types

Perspectives on Politics publishes several types of articles, organized into distinct sections.

The front end of the journal consists of peer-reviewed articles, with the exception of the annual presidential address.

Contributions to the “Articles” section generally follow the traditional conventions for academic journal articles. Perspectives articles are typically works of original research or creative syntheses of such works. Drawing on authors’ scholarly expertise, they engage theoretical literatures in order to address important political issues or phenomena. In keeping with the journal’s distinctive mission, these articles ought to be well-written and addressed to a broad readership of political scientists, social scientists more generally, civic leaders, and policymakers. There is no one-size-fits-all model for Perspectives articles, but articles should represent high-end research that is broader and more integrative than the research published by more specialized disciplinary and sub-disciplinary journals. As part of the Editorial Manager submission process, we ask that all prospective authors submit a brief explanation of why they have chosen to submit their work to Perspectives and how it is consistent with the distinctive mission and audience of our journal. 

Articles can be as long as 12,000 words. This word count includes the main body of the text, as well as notes and in-text citations. It does not include the title page, abstract, bibliography, tables, figures, mathematical notations, online appendices, or other supporting information. Most of our space is devoted to individual articles (whether individually written or co-authored) chosen through unsolicited submission and peer review. The editorial team might also experiment with calls for papers on topics of broad interest to the discipline. Those opportunities will be broadly advertised and are open to all potential authors and will follow normal submission procedures. The journal is not opposed to articles jointly submitted on a common theme, but each and every submission will be evaluated individually and will have to pass muster through the peer review system.

The journal has long included a “Reflections” section. Reflections typically range from 6,000 to 10,000 words (with word count including the main body of the text, notes and in-text citations, and excluding the title page, abstract, bibliography, tables, figures, mathematical notations, online appendices, or other supporting information). They are sent out for peer review and must pass peer review. Reflections are contemplative, provocative, or programmatic essays that address important political science questions and controversies in interesting ways. Within these submissions, authors can offer short, sharp commentaries on a political phenomenon or policy problem; engage scholarly arguments to highlight methodological or substantive disagreements; put forth new perspectives, concepts, methods, research agendas, or descriptive analyses; or provide insightful discussion of other issues of interest to political scientists. Reflection essays are not lesser than traditional research articles, but different. They offer a space where scholars can make important innovations and interventions, but can do so without the format, structure, or length standard in research articles. For example, these pieces might forego a detailed literature review or the extensive data analysis requisite for hypothesis-testing. However, they should make clear contributions to political science and/or political science’s engagement in the public sphere.

The back end of Perspectives consists of Review Essays, Symposia, Critical Dialogues, and Book Reviews. These works are all commissioned and edited by the Book Review Editor in consultation with the editorial staff.

• Book reviews typically address one, two, or three books. Perspectives book reviews seek to relate books under review to broader scholarly literatures and political debates. Since Perspectives is a general readership journal of the political science discipline, it is particularly important that reviews situate the book(s) under review in the context of the theoretical debates in political science. This helps make clear the book’s relevance to the widest possible audience. While we expect reviewers to deploy their scholarly expertise in reviewing books in their subfields, we also hope that all Perspectives book reviews will be readable for and interesting to all political scientists, regardless of subfield. More information about this journal's book reviews can be found here.
• Review essays address two or more books in order to consider how they illuminate a larger conceptual, political, or normative concern. Such essays typically bring a range of texts into dialogue with one another, identifying both thematic commonalities and methodological differences. Review essays vary in length, averaging about 4,000 words. Review essays are solicited by the Book Review Editor. 
• Symposia bring together a range of commentators to discuss a single book from multiple perspectives. Symposia are solicited and developed by the Book Review Editor. Perspectives does not accept unsolicited symposia for publication through the Editorial Manager system. 
• Critical Dialogues typically bring into conversation the authors of two recent books which engage similar topics or themes. Each author reviews the other’s book, and then responds to the other’s review. 

Conflict of Interest Policy

1. The editors will not publish an article or review essay in Perspectives, either as author or as coauthor. However, the editors may be called upon to do other kinds of writing for Perspectives, such as introductions for symposia.
2. Editors will not assume chief responsibility for editing/developing articles submitted by their departmental colleagues or students. They may offer comments on articles by their colleagues/students; they may also solicit articles from colleagues/students or encourage colleagues/students to send manuscripts to another editor. Editors will not be the primary decision-makers when it comes to accepting or rejecting manuscripts submitted by their colleagues or students.
3. Editors will not solicit review essays about books or articles that were written by their departmental colleagues or students, and they will not be primary decision-makers when it comes to accepting or rejecting such essays. They may offer comments on such essays in draft form; they also may suggest to another editor review essay ideas that include books or articles by colleagues or students.
4. Rules #2 and #3 also hold for former students who obtained their PhD five or fewer years from the date of a proposal or submission.
5. Rules #2 and #3 also hold for anyone who has worked as a coauthor with an editor within five years of a proposal or submission.
6. Although all recommendations by external reviewers carry a good deal of weight, the Editors-in-Chief have final say as to which manuscripts are accepted for publication.

Ethics and Transparency in Research

Perspectives takes seriously its role as a public sphere within the political science community. Such scholarly communication entails clear and transparent sharing of our research across disciplinary subfields and epistemological and methodological approaches. This, in turn, requires clear and transparent communication about the procedures that we use to collect our evidence and to ensure that our research practices are ethical. Because epistemological and methodological diversity is a strength of the political science community, this makes imperative scholarly communication that is as transparent and accessible as possible across disciplinary subfields and approaches.

Consequently, Perspectives expects all authors to comply with ethical and transparency obligations described in APSA's A Guide to Professional Ethics in Political Science (2012) and in Principles and Guidance for Human Subjects Research (approved by the APSA Council on April 4, 2020 and then made a part of APSA's 2022 A Guide to Professional Ethics).

Researchers have ethical obligations to:

• ensure that research that directly engages human participants in the research process adheres to APSA’s Principles and Guidance for Human Subjects Research, and, if it does not for well-founded reasons, provide reasoned justification in scholarly publications and presentations (APSA 2012, 9);
• declare what compensation was paid (if any) to human participants and how the amount was determined;
• declare any potential or perceived conflicts of interest arising from their research (APSA 2012, 9);
• disclose sources of financial support for their research (APSA 2012, 9);
• “facilitate the evaluation of their evidence-based knowledge claims through data access, production transparency, and analytic transparency so that their work can be tested or replicated” (APSA 2012, 9) whenever legally, ethically and epistemologically possible; and
• acknowledge contributions to the research, including authorship and citations to previous work, as appropriate (APSA 2012, 9, 11).

During the 2023-2024 academic year, the Editors-in-Chief will be developing a new set of guidelines for authors and reviewers that build on those ethics procedures currently implemented at the American Political Science Review. We will post those new guidelines here shortly.