Please send all submissions to: submissions@politicalquarterly.org.uk
Notes for Contributors
The following sets out some general editorial principles and basic style notes. A more detailed style document is available on request from the Assistant Editor, whose address is at the end of these notes. You may also, of course, refer to articles already published by The Political Quarterly for examples of style.
The Political Quarterly publishes articles on issues of public
policy on the basis of knowledge of the most authoritative sources and expert opinions.
We do not set out sources or authorities in detail, nor aim to be technical or
narrowly academic; rather, we intend to continue the journal’s tradition of
publishing jargon-free articles written in plain English that are nevertheless
challenging, intellectually demanding and innovative. A typical PQ article will discuss issues of
practical importance, or offer background material or basic speculation that is
directly relevant to these issues.
Many of PQ’s readers are academics, but the
journal aims to address the interests of a broad readership of policymakers,
politicians, journalists, students and the informed public.
The journal contains
various types of article, but most submitted papers will be of the standard
length of around 5,000 words for inclusion in the main body of the journal.
Other types of article – such as those in themed groups or in the Reports and
Surveys section – are normally commissioned separately. Reviews are normally commissioned by the Literary Editor, Donald
Sassoon, to whom all books for review must be sent (d.sassoon@qmul.ac.uk).
Submission of articles
Please
submit all papers electronically (unless one of the Editors has asked you to
send your paper directly to them, in which case they will suggest an
appropriate method). Send
all papers to <submissions@politicalquarterly.org.uk>
to avoid delays.
Submissions should
be sent as an email attachment in Microsoft Word, OpenOffice or .rtf formats.
Whatever software you use, please do not
add elaborate formatting or decoration to your file—we have to strip it all
out again during editing.
We do not normally
publish articles longer than 5,000 words. If your piece is longer or much
shorter than this, please contact us at the address below. We also ask for a
150 word abstract and six keywords for all published articles, as these are
vital for online searching.
Payment
The journal pays
modest fees to all contributors. The payments are based on a standard scale
related to the length and nature of the material, and are sent via the Senior
Administrator once the issue is published. Payments are in your home currency
unless you request otherwise.
Exclusive
Licence Form
Authors
will be required to sign an Exclusive Licence Form (ELF) for all papers
accepted for publication. Signature of the ELF is a condition of publication
and papers will not be passed to the publisher for typesetting unless a signed
form has been received. Please note that signature of the Exclusive Licence
Form does not affect ownership of copyright in the material. (Government
employees need to complete the Author Warranty sections, although
copyright in such cases does not need to be assigned). After
submission authors will retain the right to publish their paper in various
media/circumstances (please see the ELF for further details).
Proofs
You
will receive PDF proofs from the publisher and you may make minor adjustments
at this stage, but please avoid substantial rewriting unless you have agreed
this with the Assistant Editor. Contributors are asked to return corrections to
the Assistant Editor or other indicated person as soon as possible, and
normally within five days of receipt.
Subheadings
Subheadings within
articles should be short (typically of 3–5 words), normally restricted to one
level, and fairly evenly distributed throughout the text. (A second level of
sub-subheadings should not be used unless the structure of the article is
unclear without them.) Three to five main subheadings are usually sufficient
for an article of average length. If your article has no subheadings the
editors may add them.
Notes and references
Notes should contain bibliographical
information only and must
not be substantive notes. Please use as few notes as possible, and certainly no
more than twelve. This reflects PQ’s
ethos of publishing jargon-free articles in plain English, as stated at the
beginning of these notes: ‘We do not set out sources or authorities in detail,
nor aim to be technical or narrowly academic’.
Set out notes in a
double-spaced list at the end of the article, not at the foot of the typescript
pages—that is, as endnotes not footnotes, numbered 1, 2, 3 etc. If you
submit an article with more than twelve footnotes, the editors normally ask you
to reduce the number or will make cuts themselves, or may even reject the
article.
These bibliographical
notes, if any, should include at least the following information:
For books or other
free-standing publications:
author, including forename(s) or initials(s) first, full title of work, place
of publication, name of publisher, date of publication.
For periodical articles: full name of author, title of article, title
of periodical, year of publication, page numbers of article, web address/URL
and date accessed
Other types of reference such as parliamentary reports, references to speeches or verbal statements should be referenced as follows:
Public Administration Committee, Public
Participation: Issues and Innovations, Sixth Report, Volume II, Minutes of
Evidence and Appendices, House of Commons HC373-II, London, HMSO, 2001, pp. 29
and 188
John Prescott, Today
programme, BBC Radio 4, 28 November 2008.
House of Commons Debates, 5th ser. vol. xxx, cols 000–00. [Subsequent
refs: HC Deb., etc.]
In all cases, where the information has been obtained via a website,
the URL and date accessed must be provided.
Please do not
include discursive notes containing commentary or other subsidiary information.
Instead, work this additional information into the text or omit it altogether.
Similarly, do not include author–date (‘Harvard’, e.g. Brown, 2010) or any
other system of separately listed references. Reduce the number of references
to the bare minimum and then convert them to bibliographical notes.
Capitalisation, spelling, hyphenation,
punctuation
·
Please
use British English spellings and ‘-ise’ rather than ‘-ize’, as in ‘realise’,
‘capitalise’.
·
Please
use single quotation marks (‘thus’) throughout, and restrict the use of double
quotation marks (“thus”) to quotations within quotations.
·
There is
an editorial presumption in favour of fewer rather than more initial capitals.
In general, please reserve initial capitals for proper nouns and formal titles,
or where their use is necessary to avoid a genuine ambiguity.
Tables and diagrams
The rule for these
is similar to that for notes – the fewer the better. Tables and diagrams should
not be used unless they are absolutely essential to the discussion. Any tables
that qualify should be kept simple and used sparingly to prevent the text from
being overwhelmed by masses of ancillary data.
If you include
graphs, charts or diagrams, we will ask you to produce high-quality electronic
versions of this material. When using complicated charts/graphs, please bear in
mind that these will appear in print in black and white, so careful use should
be made with shading, patterns and so on. If this or any other requirement
creates technical problems, please contact the Assistant Editor.
When using multiple charts/graphs/figures
in an article, please ensure consistency re. fonts throughout. Preferably use a
serif font such as Times New Roman.
Revised November 2018
