The Political
Quarterly
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 politics and 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 contemporary importance, or offer
background material and analysis 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. While the UK is central to the journal's remit, we publish articles on domestic politics and policy around the globe, aiming to bring diverse perspectives to issues of general political interest.
The
journal contains various types of article, but most papers when submitted
should be of the standard length of approximately 5,000 words for inclusion in
the main body of the journal. However, the editors may occasionally make
exceptions to this. Other types of article – such as those in themed groups (Special
Issues) 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, to
<submissions@politicalquarterly.org.uk>.
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 (including notes). 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 Managing Editor 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 Managing
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 twenty. 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 as double-spaced footnotes numbered 1, 2, 3 etc. If you submit an
article with more than twenty 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.
Please also see the PQ style guide (available on request) for further
details of the form notes should take.
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.
Revised February 2021
Contact details for The
Political Quarterly
All
submissions to:
submissions@politicalquarterly.org.uk
Submissions
sent elsewhere may be delayed. Do not send submissions to Wiley.
Publisher
home page
This
is available via Wiley http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1467-923X
Journal
home page
http://www.politicalquarterly.org.uk/
Managing Editor
Emma Anderson
12 Hempland Avenue
York
YO31 1DE
emma.anderson@politicalquarterly.org.uk
Assistant
Editor
Clara
Dekker
clara.dekker@politicalquarterly.org.uk
Books for Review
All
books for review should be sent to:
Donald
Sassoon
108 New River Head
173 Rosebery Avenue
London
EC1R 4UR