Submission guidelines

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Please read the guidelines in full before submitting your manuscript.
Manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.

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This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics.

The Journal recommends that authors follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the author responsibilities section on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.

We also encourage you to familiarize yourself with our Editorial Policies and our Publication Ethics Policies.

Sage Publishing disseminates high-quality research and engaged scholarship globally, and we are committed to diversity and inclusion in publishing. We encourage submissions and peer review from a diverse range of authors and reviewers from across all countries and backgrounds. Read our diversity, equity, and inclusion pledge.

Please read the guidelines below then submit your manuscript here.

DEI Statement  

Research & Politics states unequivocally that diversity and inclusiveness are essential for all aspects of our work.  As a general interest journal in political science, virtually all papers that we publish illuminate the operations, prospects, and limitations of democratic or authoritarian forms of government.  We believe that diversity and inclusiveness are foundational to any understanding of the aspirations of democracy over its alternatives in advancing justice, fairness, and legitimate government.    

Our core values guide our decisions and operations.  We purposefully strive to eliminate our own implicit biases, foster inclusion for all ideas, and ensure that those who seek to publish in our journal are treated with fairness and respect.  Research & Politics is committed to promoting diversity, equity and inclusion through our publishing practices.  This includes, 

  • Striving to diversify our team of editors and associate editors to reflect the diverse voices of our discipline and our society; 
  • Empowering diverse perspectives and voices from our contributor community, including those of different genders and gender identities, BIPOC scholars, those from different global regions, those from the LGBTQIA+ community, and those of any identity community especially those that have been historically excluded;  
  • Publishing research that can enhance our systemic understanding of justice and equity, and injustice and inequity, within social and economic relations, within the built environment, and within local, national and global communities. 

As stewards of our journal, we believe that in adhering to these values and practices centered on advancing diversity and inclusion, Research & Politics advances a better and fuller epistemic understanding of our political life, which in turn leads to wider social and political impacts that can help us all realize the essential aspirations of democracy. 

Access: Open Access
APC: See article processing charge information below
Accepts preprints? Yes
Identity transparency: Double anonymized

Please note that this journal is online-only and does not offer print copies.

Research & Politics is an open access, peer-reviewed journal. All accepted articles are made freely available online immediately upon publication, are published under a Creative Commons license, and hosted online in perpetuity.

If, after peer review, your manuscript is accepted for publication, a one-time article processing charge (APC) is payable to cover the cost of publishing, paid by the funder, institution, or author. There is no charge for submitting a manuscript.

The article processing charge (APC) is $1250.

The article processing charge (APC) is payable when a manuscript is accepted after peer review, before it is published. The APC is subject to taxes where applicable. Tax-exempt status can be indicated by providing appropriate registration numbers when payment is requested. Please see further details on tax-exempt status here.

For general information on open access at Sage please visit the Open Access page.

Authors may be eligible for discounts to their APC via open access agreements that Sage has with participating institutions. Discounts depend on the terms of the agreement, find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. Eligibility is determined by the corresponding author’s affiliation at acceptance matching an agreement.

Your article may be eligible for a full or partial waiver due to our participation in initiatives to increase accessibility to publication across the international academic community. More information about discounts and eligibility.

Your article must be within the scope of the journal and be of sufficient quality. If not, it will not be reviewed. Please read the journal’s Aims and Scope to see if your article is appropriate.

The manuscript must be your original work, you must have the rights to the work, and you must have obtained and be able to supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, including figures, illustrations, tables, lengthy quotations, or other material previously published elsewhere.

Article types

Please visit the Sage Journal Author Gateway for guidance on producing visual and/or video abstracts.

Research & Politics strongly encourages replication studies for publication. In addition to the research articles published on the website, Research & Politics will be publishing special issues.

Click here to view the Call for Proposals of Special Issues

3.1 Research Articles

The journal encourages short articles. Articles should normally not exceed 4,000 words including notes and references but excluding figures, tables and images or any supporting material that will appear as supplemental online appendices. The number of notes should not exceed 12. The main criterion for evaluating articles is that they contribute to our systematic knowledge about important substantive, theoretical, or methodological questions. Research articles can be - but are not limited to - articles that:

  • Offer new theoretical or normative arguments in a systematic way;
  • Analyze original data;
  • Re-analyze existing data in a novel fashion;
  • Analyze systematically current events;
  • Make predictions in politics;
  • Update seminal articles with new data;
  • Discuss newly collected data and how these can be used to advance our knowledge about important substantive or theoretical questions. It is important to show how this new data set helps by analyzing and discussing an important issue from the current literature. 

3.2 Replication studies

In case of replication studies, Research & Politics invites authors to consider submitting a paper that is along the lines of one or more of the following replication types:

Theoretical replication: The submitted article argues that the original theoretical model is missing at least one key element. The missing element(s) are addressed and included in the empirical analysis.

Technical replication: The submitted article identifies faults in the original research design or analysis, thereby arguing that the original results might not hold; and/or

Concept replication: The submitted article questions the validity of the original study. An alternative measurement or operationalisation is proposed which yields different substantive results.

Once a replication study has been accepted to begin the review process, two reviewers will be selected and the author of the original manuscript will be notified. The author of the original study will be approached for a rejoinder, which will be reviewed (preferably a shorter paper of 2,000 words max).  The General Editor will review the response and will decide if the response will be published alongside the submitted replication study.


3.4 Registered Reports

Research & Politics accepts Registered Reports. Registered Reports are manuscripts that are reviewed and approved “in principle” prior to data collection and/or analysis.

The Registered Reports model is an extension of a pre-registration study and refers to a type of research article. In the format, manuscript writing and review occurs in two stages. There are different forms of "Registered Reports", depending on what is being registered (e.g., a planned analysis on data that already exist vs. planned analysis on data that have yet to be gathered). Please see this page for further guidance on submitting Registered Reports.

  1. On initial submission, authors should:
    • denote in the cover letter that the manuscript is a Registered Report submission and confirm that the data do not exist, or that the outcomes have not been observed.
    • include a full manuscript for the abstract, introduction, and methods without the results and discussion sections. 
    • disclose that the methods contain a complete analysis plan of what is to be included in the full article.
  2.   If the submission passes initial review, then the authors will receive an in-principle acceptance prior to data                        collection or  analysis of the outcomes.
  3.  For the second stage of review, authors submit a complete manuscript.  Reviewers assess the extent to which the             authors followed the preregistered design and/or analysis plan, and evaluate non-outcome relevant criteria (e.g.,               manipulation  checks) to confirm whether the research was an effective test of the research question.  

3.5 Special Issues

Research & Politics may publish special issues. In the format of this journal, a special issue is a bundle of closely related research papers on a specific topic. Special issues are important to provide a platform for debate, highlighting different perspectives, approaches or methods that can be used to understand important issues in our field.

When published, these articles will be linked on our website, making clear that these focus on a specific topic. Furthermore, there is flexibility, within the possibilities of online-only publishing, to develop new modes of presenting these articles on our website.

The journal will open once per year a call for special issues, typically in Spring. The call will be announced on our website as well as Twitter channel.  Important criteria to develop a special issue that fits with the overall mission of the journal and whether the papers as a set stimulate discussion in our field. 

For more information about a proposal, please see our guidelines below.

After acceptance, the Guest Editor as well as one of the Research & Politics Editors will guide the special issue. The same procedures and guidelines apply as for research articles for the review process or any other issues arising.

Special Issue Guidelines:

A proposal for a special issue includes the following elements:

1. Name and affiliation of the proposed Guest Editor who is willing to serve next to one of our R&P Editors as Associate Editor for the special issue. There can be a maximum of three Guest Editors involved in making a special issue.
2. Short CV of the proposed Guest Editor including major publications and editorial experience.
3. Description of the main topic and focus of the special issue embedded in the current literature of this topic.
4. A motivation for why a special issue would be relevant to our readers, and to what extent the special issue will promote novel findings and new insights. There should also be a brief motivation for why a special issue would be a better way of presenting these findings and insights needs to be included.
5. List of papers to be included with full author information, including their affiliation and a clear and informative abstract.
6. A clarification about how these papers stimulate discussion but indicating how these papers highlight different perspectives, approaches or methods that can be used to understand the topic at hand. 
7. Indication of the time-frame of submission and when papers will be ready to be submitted.

Proposals will be discussed by the Editors, who decide on whether they favor a specific proposal. 

Other important guidelines:

1. If the initial proposal is accepted, the Editors will ask for a more detailed proposal, in which also more information is shared about authors and their possible papers, the time-line and some other more operational issues. At this stage also possible comments from the Editors of R&P need to be included in the proposal.
2. The Guest Editor will work closely with our Editorial Office and one of our Editors. Each Special Issue will be assigned an Editor of Research and Politics. The Guest Editor will serve as an Associate Editor. The R&P Editor will need to approve all decisions recommended by the Guest Editor.
3. Reviewing will be done according to the R&P policy and submission rules. Furthermore, Guest Editor is expected to adhere to the R&P editorial policy as well as the reviewing process including turnaround times.
4. It is R&P policy that a Guest Editor does not submit her/his own paper for consideration in the special issue at hand.
5. The Editors of R&P reserve the right to reject a contribution to the special issue, even after the review stage, if it is not of acceptable standard.
 

3.6 Rejoinders and comments

1. Comments on an article published in R&P or elsewhere
If there is a paper reacting to an article published in R&P or elsewhere, the author(s) of the original article is/are invited to consider a comment. The author(s) will be informed the moment the reacting paper is received. However, the author will not be a formal reviewer or directly determine the decision whether to publish.

If the author(s) of the original paper decide(s) to submit a response, this is also reviewed as it needs to meet scientific standards and contain sufficiently interesting material to merit publication. Upon publication of a respose, the discussion is closed. Any further discussion must be done elsewhere.

2. Secondary or replication work on previous research
In the case of secondary or replication work on previous research, the submitted article will be regarded as an original contribution (Article). Unless it is explicitly addresses the methodological issues with the original paper and replication, the work will be treated as a new submission. If the replication concerns a specific paper, the authors of the work discussed are informed and invited to comment (see our policy under point 1).

If the article concerns a specific literature, scholars in that field are not informed. In that case we will follow the following procedure:
i. When a comment from the author(sP whose work is being discussed is received, the comment is reviewed and send to the authors of the original contribution with the invitation to respond.
ii. This comment (Comment 1) may be published after reviewing. If the author of the original contribution would like to respond, we review this Comment 2. The commenting author as well as the authors of the original article can comment during reviewing but they are not included in a decision about the paper. When published the discussion will be closed.
iii. Furhter discussion can be done elsewhere. Only Article, Comment 1 and Comment 2 are published.

IMPORTANT: Comments must be scholarly, understandable to outsiders, and of sufficient general interest to merit publication. Research & Politics reserves the right to make editorial suggestions and reject if we cannot reach agreement.

Formatting your manuscript

Accepted file types

The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. You do not need to follow a template, but please ensure your heading levels are clear, and the sections clearly defined.

The LaTeX files are also accepted. A LaTeX template is available on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.

Your article title, keywords, and abstract all contribute to its position in search engine results, directly affecting the number of people who see your work. For details of what you can do to influence this, visit How to help readers find your article online.

Title

Your manuscript’s title should be concise, descriptive, unambiguous, accurate, and reflect the precise contents of the manuscript. A descriptive title that includes the topic of the manuscript makes an article more findable in the major indexing services.

Abstract

Please include an unstructured abstract of 200 words between the title and main body of your manuscript that concisely states the purpose of the research, major findings, and conclusions. If your research includes clinical trials, the trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract. Submissions that do not meet this requirement will not be considered.

For clinical trials, the trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract.

Keywords

Please include a minimum of 6 keywords, listed after the abstract. Keywords should be as specific as possible to the research topic.

Artwork, figures, and other graphics

For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures, and graphs in electronic format, please read Sage’s artwork guidelines.

Figures supplied in color will appear in color online.

Please ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures, or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Frequently Asked Questions page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.

Title page

To ensure fair and anonymous peer review, your manuscript must be fully anonymized. Please ensure any identifying information is removed from the main manuscript document and included on the Title Page instead. Do not include any author names in the manuscript file name and remove names from headers and footers. This version of the manuscript will be sent to the peer reviewers. The Title Page will not be sent to peer reviewers. See the Sage Journal Author Gateway for detailed guidance on making an anonymous submission.

The Title Page should include:

  • Article title
  • The full list of authors including names and affiliations of each
    • The listed affiliation should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a note at the end of the manuscript – please indicate this on the title page.
    • All persons eligible for authorship must be included at the time of submission (please see the authorship section for more information).
  • Contact information for the corresponding author: name, institutional address, phone, email
  • Acknowledgments section
  • Declaration of conflicting interest
  • Funding statement
  • Ethical approval and informed consent statements
  • Data availability statement
  • Any other identifying information related to the authors and/or their institutions, funders, approval committees, etc, that might compromise anonymity.
Acknowledgments

If you are including an Acknowledgements section, this will be published at the end of your article. The Acknowledgments section should include all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship. Per ICMJE recommendations, it is best practice to obtain consent from non-author contributors who you are acknowledging in your manuscript.

Writing assistance and third party submissions: if you have received any writing or editing assistance from a third-party, for example a specialist communications company, this must be clearly stated in the Acknowledgements section and in the covering letter. Please see the Sage Author Gateway for what information to include in your Acknowledgements section. If your submission is being made on your behalf by someone who is not listed as an author, for example the third-party who provided writing/editing assistance, you must state this in the Acknowledgements and also in your covering letter. Please note that the journal editor reserves the right to not consider submissions made by a third party rather than by the author/s themselves.

Statements and declarations

To ensure proper anonymization, please include a section with the heading ‘Statements and Declarations’ on your title page, after the Acknowledgements section [and Author Contributions section if applicable] including each of the sub-headings listed below. If a declaration is not applicable to your submission, you must still include the heading and state ‘Not applicable’ underneath. Please note that you may be asked to justify why a declaration was not applicable to your submission by the Editorial Office. This information will be added to the end of your published paper.

Ethical considerations

Please include your ethics approval statements under this heading, even if you have already included ethics approval information in your methods section. If ethical approval was not required, you need to explicitly state this. You can find information on what to say in your ethical statements as well as example statements on our Publication ethics and research integrity policies page.

All papers reporting studies involving human participants, human data or human tissue must state that the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board approved the study, or waived the requirement for approval, providing the full name and institution of the review committee in addition to the approval number. If applicable, please also include this information in the Methods section of your manuscript.

Please include any participant consent information under this heading and state whether informed consent to participate was written or verbal. If the requirement for informed consent to participate has been waived by the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board (i.e. where it has been deemed that consent would be impossible or impracticable to obtain), please state this. If this is not applicable to your manuscript, please state ‘Not applicable’ in this section. More information and example statements can be found on our Publication ethics and research integrity policies page.

Submissions containing any data from an individual person (including individual details, images or videos) must include a statement confirming that informed consent for publication was provided by the participant(s) or a legally authorized representative. Non-essential identifying details should be omitted. Please do not submit the participant’s actual written informed consent with your article, as this in itself breaches the patient’s confidentiality. The Journal requests that you confirm to us, in writing, that you have obtained written informed consent to publish but the written consent itself should be held by the authors/investigators themselves, for example in a patient’s hospital record. The confirmatory letter may be uploaded with your submission as a separate file in addition to the statement confirming that consent to publish was obtained within the manuscript text. If this is not applicable to your manuscript, please state ‘Not applicable’ in this section.

Declaration of conflicting interest

The journal requires a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors so that a statement can be included in your article. For guidance on conflict of interest statements, see our policy on conflicting interest declarations and the ICMJE recommendations.

If no conflict exists, your statement should read: ‘The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article’.

Funding statement

All articles need to include a funding statement, under a separate heading, even if you did not receive funding. You’ll find guidance and examples on our Funding page.

Data availability

The Journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages.

As a condition of publication authors are required to:

  • Share your research data in a relevant public data repository
  • Include a data availability statement. This should:
    • Indicate if data is available and shared
    • In certain cases, indicate if research data is available but not shared, and why. If you cannot share your data and this is a requirement of publication, consult the journal editorial office.
    • Indicate if there is an absence of data
  • Cite data in your research.
  • Exceptions may exist for restricted-access source data, but the editorial team must be notified of said restriction at time of submission to consider whether an exception to the current data policy of RAP (above) will be granted. Exceptions in other cases may be granted but again authors must notify the editors at time of submission and give specific reasons for why data cannot or should not be shared. The Journal’s requirement for data availability means that the Journal’s predisposition will be against such exceptions unless duly warranted.

Research & Politics complies with the Data Access and Research Transparency (DA-RT) statement and TOP Guidelines and, as such, endorses policies requiring authors to make as accessible as possible the empirical foundation and logic of inquiry of evidence-based research. Contributions based on qualitative and quantitative data must be well documented and, if data is collected by the author, well described. 

 Research & Politics requires authors to delineate clearly the design and analytic procedures upon which their published claims rely. Authors have to identify and disclose the types and key aspects of the research design to every extent possible. Please see the Publication Types Policy for the different types of replication studies. The information will be sent to reviewers, revised alongside the paper in every round and published alongside the paper (as appendix or online supplement).If such materials are not published with the article, they must be shared to the greatest extent possible through a digital repository. 

 Authors have to use data citation practices that identify a dataset’s author(s), title, date, version, and a persistent identifier ,for example a Digital Object identifier (DOI). In sum, we will require authors who base their claims on data created by others to reference and cite those data as an intellectual product of value. 

It is Research & Politics' policy that authors submit detailed information on empirical analysis alongside their written article. Authors should upload at least the first four files listed below when they submit their article. 

  • data set 
  • syntax file(s) from the software that has been used for the analysis; 
  • explanatory memo: explaining enclosed files/material and their content including help with regard to the analysis, which is important when non-standard techniques have been used; this may also apply to qualitative work; also some information on the software used for the analysis, including its version, is required; 
  • log file(s): output with results from the software that has been used for the analysis; 
  • Additional data analysis, including robustness analyses 

Authors must provide a separate readme PDF listing all included files and documenting the purpose and format of each file provided, as well as instructing a user on how the replication can be conducted. 

Making datasets publicly available is also a policy of Research & Politics. Authors should ensure that data is available at the time of publication through a recognised third party data repository and will be prompted to upload their data to Dataverse on acceptance of their article. The manuscript will not be moved through to Production until data is uploaded to a third party data repository and the link has been provided as instructed on acceptance. If cited data is restricted (e.g. classified, require confidentiality protections, were obtained under a non-disclosure agreement, or have inherent logistical constraints), authors must notify the editor at the time of submission. The editor shall have full discretion to follow their journal’s policy on restricted data, including declining to review the manuscript of granting an exemption with or without conditions. The editor shall inform the author of this decision prior to review. 

It is the responsibility of the author to make their data available via third party repository. It is preferred that data is uploaded to the Research & Politics Dataverse site, but other trusted digital repositories can be found below: 

*Note that there is a charge for using this service. 

Please make sure that your data does not contain variables with personal identifying information (PII), particularly IP Addresses and location georeferences, among others. Such data may not be published in a public archive. 

Research & Politics also requires authors to delineate clearly the analytic procedures upon which their published claims rely, and where possible provide access to all relevant analytic materials. If such materials are not published with the article, they must be shared to the greatest extent possible through a digital repository (above). 

Research & Politics encourages authors to use data citation practices that identify a dataset’s author(s), title, date, version, and a persistent identifier. In sum, we will require authors who base their claims on data created by others to reference and cite those data as an intellectual product of value. 

Researchers conducting experimental studies are encouraged to consider pre-registering their research design in advance with an established  registry, for example egap (Evidence in Governance and Politics, see http://egap.org/content/registration). 

 Preregistration of Studies and Analysis Plans 

Research & Politics also publishes papers where authors indicate the conducted research was preregistered with an analysis plan in an independent, institutional registry (e.g., http://clinicaltrials.gov/,https://socialscienceregistry.org/,http://openscienceframework.org/, http://egap.org/design-registration/, http://ridie.3ieimpact.org/). Preregistration of studies involves registering the study design, variables, and treatment conditions. Including an analysis plan involves specification of sequence of analyses or the statistical model that will be reported. 

For preregistered studies, the following requirements apply: 

  1. Authors must, in acknowledgments or the first footnote, indicate that research was preregistered in an independent, institutional registry (with name and link to its location) with an analysis plan; 
  1. The author must: 
  1. confirm in the text that the study was registered prior to conducting the research with links to the time-stamped preregistration(s) at the institutional registry, and that the preregistration adheres to the disclosure requirements of the institutional registry or those required for the preregistered badge with analysis plans maintained by the Center for Open Science. 
  1. report all pre-registered analyses in the text, or, if there were changes in the analysis plan following preregistration, those changes must be disclosed with explanation for the changes clearly distinguish in text analyses that were preregistered from those that were not, such as having separate sections in the results for confirmatory and exploratory analyses (these changes are added as a separate document linked to the text of the main paper). 
Reference style and citations

The journal follows the Sage Harvard reference style. View the Sage Harvard guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms.

Every in-text citation must have a corresponding citation in the reference list and vice versa. Corresponding citations must have identical spelling and year.

Authors should update any references to preprints when a peer reviewed version is made available, to cite the published research. Citations to preprints are otherwise discouraged.

EndNote

If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the Sage Harvard EndNote output file.

Supplemental material

This Journal can host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc.) alongside the full text of the article. Your supplemental material must be one of our accepted file types. For that list and more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files.

English language editing services

Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Author Services. Visit Sage Author Services for further information.

As part of the submission process you will need to confirm that this is your original work, that you have the rights in the work, that this is for first publication in this Journal, that it is not being considered for/has not already been published elsewhere, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you.

Please see our guidelines on prior publication and note that the journal may accept submissions of manuscripts that have been posted on preprint servers.

Preprints

The journal will consider submissions of manuscripts that have been posted on preprint servers.

Please enter the preprint DOI in the designated field when submitting your manuscript. We advise that you inform the Journal Editorial office about your posted preprint at submission.

Note that you should not post an updated version of your manuscript on a preprint server while it is being peer reviewed.

Learn more about our preprint policy.

Submission site

Submit your manuscript online via Sage Track.

IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in Sage Track before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.

Manuscripts should only be submitted with the consent of all contributing authors. The individual responsible for submitting the manuscript should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the manuscript are listed as authors.

Ensure you upload all relevant manuscript files, including any additional supplemental files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).

Authorship

Please view our authorship policies, which includes information on criteria for authorship, who should be the corresponding author and more.

Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.

Files

  • Cover letter. To help the Editor in their preliminary evaluation, please indicate why you think the manuscript suitable for publication.
  • Title Page with all required identifying information as laid out in Preparing your manuscript for submission (above). This will not be sent to the peer reviewers.
  • Your manuscript, properly formatted and anonymized according to all stipulations above, and within the scope of the journal. Any information that compromises the anonymity of the author(s) should be removed or anonymized and included on the Title Page instead. See above for more information on anonymization. This version will be sent to the peer reviewers.
  • Figures and images.
  • Supplemental material. This journal can host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images, etc) alongside the full-text of the article. Your supplemental material must be one of our accepted file types. For that list and more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files.

Other information required for submission

  • We encourage all authors and co-authors ensure their ORCID IDs are linked to their accounts in the submission system prior to article acceptance, as this is the only way to have their ORCID ID present on the published article. ORCID IDs cannot be added to manuscripts after acceptance/publication.
    • Please note that each co-author must log in to the journal submission system to add their own ORCID ID to their account. To add an ORCID ID, edit your account, click the link when prompted, and sign into your ORCID account to validate your ID. You will then be redirected back to the submission system and your ORCID ID will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata.
    • Please create an ORCID ID if you do not already have one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.
  • Complete list of authors, with their institutional affiliations.
    • The author information you enter at submission must exactly match what is included on your manuscript and/or title page, including full names, academic affiliations, and corresponding author contact details.
    • The listed affiliation should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a note at the end of the manuscript.
    • All listed authors must meet the criteria for authorship (above).
    • All persons eligible for authorship must be included at the time of submission.
    • All authors must have given consent for the manuscript to be submitted in its current form.
  • Keywords: During submission, you may be asked to select or enter keywords for your manuscript. These keywords are used to match appropriate reviewers to your manuscript.
  • The number of figures, tables, and words in your manuscript.
  • Funder information: Name, grant/award number.
  • You may be required to enter your declaration of conflicting interest as part of the submission process, in addition to listing it on your manuscript and/or title page. Please have it on hand.
  • If you have posted your manuscript to a preprint server, you will be asked to supply the DOI (this does not prohibit submission, but no changes should be made to the preprint version while your manuscript is under evaluation in this journal). Please see our guidelines on prior publication. If the article is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the journal's author archiving policy. If your manuscript is accepted, you must include a link in your preprint to the final version of your published article.

The following summary describes the peer review process for this journal:
Identity transparency:Double-anonymized
Reviewer interacts with: Editor
Review information published: None

Your manuscript will undergo an initial evaluation. If it does not conform to the requirements laid out in these guidelines, it will be returned to you for amendments prior to peer review. Manuscripts may be desk rejected without peer review at this point if they are out of scope for the journal or otherwise unsuitable.

After passing the initial evaluation, your manuscript will then be peer reviewed. You can log in at any time to check the status of your manuscript. We will notify you when a decision has been reached.

Research & Politics operates a high-quality, quick, double-blind peer review process in which the reviewer's name is withheld from the author and the author's name from the reviewer. All submissions to Research & Politics are double-blind peer reviewed. Papers submitted by Associate Editors are submitted to double-blind peer review.

Each paper is sent out to at least one external reviewer, but in comparison to most existing political science journals, the evaluative process is more heavily concentrated in the hands of the editorial team. The peer review process is as follows:

Vetting by the Editorial Office to ensure that the article conforms to the Research & Politics guidelines on length and style. This vetting process includes processing of papers using plagiarism software.

Review by a General Editor who will take a decision on whether to send it out for external review. If an article is deemed of insufficient quality or novelty it can be rejected by the General Editor in conjunction with an Associate Editor at this stage. The author will be informed of this decision with a brief note spelling out the reason for rejection. If the manuscript passes this stage, it will be reviewed.

The General Editor delegates the decision-making authority to an Associate Editor. Two external reviewers will be selected by the Associate Editor and the General Editor will make the final decision.

Reviewers are expected to respond in 30 days. Referee reports are typically 2 pages (or 500 words maximum). If the reviewer is unable to complete a review the journal applies the following policy:

If a reviewer indicates that she/he is unable to submit a report in the first or second week of this process, a new reviewer will be selected;

If a reviewer appears to be unable to submit a report after some time, the General Editor may decide that the Associate should provide his/her view on the manuscript in a brief report, which is submitted to the General Editor.

A manuscript may be rejected on the basis of one negative review, especially if this review comes from one of the Associate Editors.

In exceptional cases, a manuscript may be assigned a ‘revise and resubmit’. Such a decision will only be offered if there is a reasonable expectation that the author can meet the expectations set out in a letter with meaningful guidelines for improving the initial submission. Typically, a revised manuscript will only be reviewed by the Associate Editor or one of the referees.

The editors will also continually assess the quality levels of the refereeing procedure and annually review the Associate Editors team to ensure that its range of expertise is aligned with submission and research trends.

Our goal is to publish papers online within 25 working days of acceptance where possible.

Previous Reviewer Comments

Research & Politics permits authors whose papers are not accepted by one journal and who wish to submit their manuscripts to Research & Politics to request that the previous set of reviews be forwarded by the other journal. In such case[s], Research & Politics requires all reviews from the other journal. Authors should request that the editors of the other journal submit all reviews, subject to the original reviewers giving permission for their review to be shared with another journal. Without prior consent, reviews will not be used. The reviews and confirmation of reviewer permissions should be sent to the Research & Politics editorial office (mail: rap@fgga.leidenuniv.nl) by the other journal. Research & Politics will not accept peer reports directly submitted by the author. Research & Politics is committed to ensuring that the identity of the original reviewers and the author are not revealed to either party, upholding double blind peer review. The editors or associate editors of Research & Politics will also commission additional peer review reports before making a decision, as indicated by our policy. The main advantages of this option are to reduce the workload on reviewers and to potentially speed up publication time.

Please note that R&P does not ask reviewers who have previously reviewed a manuscript to excuse themselves, but we encourage reviewers who have seen a previous version of a manuscript to notify the editor. If no changes have been made to the manuscript following the previous review, then it may be appropriate to submit the same review. If the author has made revisions, then it may also be appropriate to treat the manuscript as akin to a resubmission, based on the previous review.

To ensure the integrity of the peer review process we assign reviewers and cannot accept author recommendations.

All manuscripts are reviewed as rapidly as possible, while maintaining rigor. Reviewers make comments to the author and recommendations to the Editor who then makes the final decision on all manuscripts, including those appearing in a special issue or special collection. The Editor or members of the Editorial Board may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for possible publication in the Journal. In these cases, the peer review process will be managed by alternative members of the Board and the submitting Editor/Board member will have no involvement in the decision-making process.

As a COPE member we engage with multiple forms of post-publication discussion in line with wider guidance from Sage: Commentaries, Critiques and Responses.

You can view our complaints and appeals policy here.

Read Sage's complete peer review policy.

Plagiarism

The journal and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. Please read Sage's complete policy on plagiarism and the actions we may take.

After acceptance you will receive instructions via email inviting you to complete the Open Access process. This will include signing the appropriate Creative Commons license and, where applicable, paying the Article Processing Charge (APC) or assigning a bill payer. Once the APC has been processed, your article will be prepared for publication and can appear online within an average of 30 days. Please note that, where an APC is applicable, production work cannot be completed on your manuscript until payment has been received.

Contributor’s Publishing Agreement

Before publication we require the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. The journal publishes manuscripts under Creative Commons licenses. The standard license for the journal is Creative Commons by Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC), which allows others to re-use the work without permission as long as the work is properly referenced and the use is non-commercial. For more information, you are advised to visit Sage's OA licenses page. Alternative license arrangements are available at the author’s request (e.g. to meet particular funder mandates).

Preprints

If your manuscript was posted on a preprint server prior to acceptance, you must include a link in your preprint to the final published version of your published article.

Production

Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be made available to the corresponding author via our editing portal, Sage Edit, or by email, and should be returned promptly to avoid delaying publication. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence, and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate. This is the final opportunity to make changes to your manuscript. Further corrections will not be possible after publication. Changes to the author list are not permitted at this stage.

Publication

One of the many benefits of publishing your research in an open access journal is the speed to publication. With no page count constraints, your article will be published online in a fully citable form with a DOI number as soon as it has completed the production process. At this time it will be completely free to view and download for all.

Promoting your article

Publication is not the end of the process. Between us, we can ensure that your article is found, read, downloaded and cited as widely as possible. Many of the most effective tactics are those you can do quickly and easily to your network of contacts and peers. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway for numerous resources to help you promote your work.

The Sage Journal Author Gateway has some general advice on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance your article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.

If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journals Solutions Portal.

You can view our complaints and appeals procedure.

Contact us

You can direct any questions to the journal’s editorial office:

rap@fgga.leidenuniv.nl