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Welcome to Research & Politics

Research & Politics aims to advance systematic peer-reviewed research in political science and related fields through the publication of the very best cutting-edge research and policy analysis. The journal provides a venue for scholars to communicate rapidly and succinctly important new insights to the broadest possible audience while maintaining the highest standards of quality control.

To meet this goal Research & Politics publishes short, accessible articles that present novel findings or insights, or fresh views on current disputes or classic papers. The Journal is published online only and uses an open access model to enhance readership and impact. Articles are published simultaneously with technical research reports and appendices, with an emphasis on the highest standards of research ethics and, where applicable, replicability.

Research & Politics is a recipient of a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York under its “Bridging the Gap” initiative. The grant sponsors open access APCs for all authors for a period of two years (2016 and 2017), and therefore the current APC waiver policy continues for all accepted articles in Research & Politics during this timeframe. For more, please see the R&P Open Access Publishing page.

Papers are accepted from political science, public policy, public administration, international relations and other related fields.

Rapid, open publication of systematic, scientific works on discoveries about government and politics - these are words that have not all been used in the same sentence to describe any scholarly journal. However, they all define the laudable goals of Research & Politics.

Gary King, Harvard University

General Editors:
Scott McClurg, Southern Illinois University
Bernard Steunenberg, Leiden University, Netherlands
Catherine de Vries, University of Oxford, UK
Erik Voeten, Georgetown University, USA
Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, University of Essex, UK and Peace Research Institute Oslo

Watch the Editors discuss what makes Research & Politics unique

ISSN: 2053-1680
Twitter: @Res_Pol

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About Research & Politics

Research & Politics aims to advance systematic peer-reviewed research in political science and related fields through the open access publication of the very best cutting-edge research and policy analysis. The journal provides a venue for scholars to communicate rapidly and succinctly important new insights to the broadest possible audience while maintaining the highest standards of quality control.

Research & Politics is characterised by:

  • Quality – papers undergo rigorous external peer review with an extensive role for a highly-experienced group of Associate Editors. Research & Politics is selective and the editors will reject papers that are sound but which do not meet the highest standards. Research & Politics’ citation activity will be closely monitored and it will be prepared for submission to the Social Science Citation Index as soon as possible.
  • Brevity – research articles of up to 4,000 words and research notes of up to 2,000 words will focus on the key research findings.
  • Openness – no paywalls, so content is freely accessible online to all on the award-winning SAGE Journals platform and compatible with all existing open access mandates.
  • Speed – rapid decision-making and an online-only continuous publication model ensure that research can be shared quickly.
  • Transparency – emphasis on the provision of research data and methodology, as well as metrics to demonstrate the research impact of papers.
  • Innovation – priority is given to research that breaks new ground, is important across a wide range of subfields, and will likely influence political science in a distinctive fashion. In addition to research articles this advancement of knowledge can take the form of null-findings, forecasts, updates of seminal articles, critiques/replications or exploratory research.
  • Presentation – papers are copyedited and typeset to the highest standards; online-only publication offers additional presentational possibilities including colour graphs and simulations.

Editorial Team

Research & Politics operates with the following editorial team:

General Editors
Scott McClurg, Southern Illinois University
Bernard Steunenberg, Leiden University, Netherlands
Catherine de Vries, University of Oxford, UK
Erik Voeten, Georgetown University, USA
Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, University of Essex, UK and Peace Research Institute Oslo

Advisory Board
Patrick Dunleavy, London School of Economics, UK
Scott Gates, PRIO, Norway
Adrienne Héritier, European University Institute, Italy
Gary King, Harvard University, USA
Michael Laver, New York University, USA
Helen Milner, Princeton University, USA
Andrew Moravcsik, Princeton University, USA
Wolfgang Müller, University of Vienna, Austria
Mathias Risse, Harvard University, USA
Rein Taagepera, University of California – Irvine, USA
Jacques Thomassen, University of Twente, Netherlands

Associate Editors

1. National and Subnational Politics
  • Carles Boix (Princeton University)
  • David Darmofal (University of South Carolina)
  • Bas Denters (University of Twente)
  • Ron Johnston (University of Bristol)
  • Radoslaw Zubek (University of Oxford)
2. Areas
  • Antoaneta Dimitrova (Leiden University)
  • Keith Dowding (Australian National University)
  • Mary Gallagher (University of Michigan)
  • Venelin Ganev (Miami University)
  • Frank Haege (University of Limerick)
  • Liesbet Hooghe (University of North Carolina)
  • Daniel Hopkins (Georgetown University)
  • Matthew Kerby (University of Ottawa)
  • Thomas König (University of Mannheim)
  • Jonathan Ladd (Georgetown University)
  • Gary Marks (University of North Carolina)
  • Frank Schimmelfennig (ETH Zurich)
  • Ulrich Sedelmeier (London School of Economics)
  • John Sides (George Washington University)
3. Behavior
  • Sara Binzer Hobolt (London School of Economics)
  • Tereza Capelos (University of Surrey)
  • Elias Dinas (University of Oxford)
  • Alex Mintz (IDC Herzliya)
  • Marco Steenbergen (University of Zurich)
  • Andrew Eggers, London School of Economics, UK
  • Lawrence Ezrow, University of Essex, UK
  • Jeffrey Karp, Australian National University
  • Mark Kayser, Hertie School of Governance, Germany
  • Christopher Wlezien, University of Texas, Austin, USA
  • Philip Habel, University of Glasgow, UK
4. Institutions
  • Josep Colomer (Georgetown University)
  • Henry Farrell (George Washington University)
  • Sona Golder (Penn State University)
  • Indridi Indridason (University of California Riverside)
  • James Johnson (University of Rochester)
  • Anthony McGann (University of California Irvine)
5. International Relations and Governance
  • Erica Chenoweth (University of Denver)
  • Antoaneta Dimitrova (Leiden University)
  • Han Dorussen (University of Essex)
  • Jennifer Gandhi (Emory University)
  • Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, University of Essex, UK and Peace Research Institute Oslo
  • Havard Hegre (University of Oslo)
  • Paul Huth (University of Maryland)
  • Susan Hyde (Yale University)
  • Sarah Kreps (Cornell University)
  • Matthew Kroenig (Georgetown University)
  • Bahar Leventoglu (Duke University)
  • Marc Lynch (George Washington University)
  • Sara Mitchell (University of Iowa)
  • Will Moore (Florida State University)
  • Amanda Murdie (University of Missouri)
  • Jeremy Pressman (University of Connecticut)
  • Wayne Sandholtz (University of South California)
  • Gerald Schneider (University of Konstanz)
  • Barbara Walter (University of California San Diego)
  • Nils Weidmann (University of Konstanz)
6. Public Administration and Public Policy
  • Simon Bastow (London School of Economics)
  • Jan Beyers (University of Antwerp)
  • Arjen Boin (Utrecht University)
  • Thomas Braeuninger (University of Mannheim)
  • David Lowery (Pennsylvania State University)
  • René Torenvlied (University of Twente)
  • Angelia Wilson (University of Manchester)
  • Radoslaw Zubek (University of Oxford)
  • Michael Herron (Dartmouth College)
  • Dimiter Toshkov (Leiden University)
7. Law and Judicial Politics
  • Cliff Carruba (Emory University)
  • Tom Clark (Emory University)
  • Kirk Randazzo (University of South Carolina)
  • Anthony Smith (University of California Irvine)
  • Georg Vanberg (Duke University)
8. Methodology and Modeling
  • James Fowler (University of California San Diego)
  • Diana Kapiszewski (Georgetown University, USA)
  • Thomas König (University of Mannheim)
  • Michael Regenwetter (University of Illinois)
  • Branislav Slantchev (University of California San Diego)
  • Marco Steenbergen (University of Zurich)
9. Normative Theory and Ethics
  • Andreas Føllesdal (University of Oslo)
  • Liza Saban (IDC Herzliya)

Open Access Publishing

Research & Politics is a fully open access journal: anyone with an internet connection may read Research & Politics free of charge. Articles may be distributed and reused under one of three Creative Commons attribution licences (see below). Open access publication allows for the rapid and widespread dissemination of research findings, and so is a key part of Research & Politics mission of accelerating the research conversations in political science.

Articles will be published as soon as papers have been accepted and formatted for publication. Because Research & Politics is an online-only publication it is not constrained to fixed page budgets, only to publishing the very best submissions.

Funding Open Access
Publishing a journal in a professional manner involves various costs at every step of the process which include but are not limited to: running peer-review systems, copyediting and typesetting, hosting the article in perpetuity on dedicated servers, and marketing.For the first two years, while the journal established itself, SAGE covered all costs and this fee was universally waived.

Carnegie Corporation of New York Grant
From 2016 we are delighted to announce that Carnegie Corporation of New York grant will sponsor the open access APCs for all authors for a period of two years (2016 and 2017), and therefore the APC waiver policy will continue for all accepted articles in Research & Politics during this timeframe.
In the future, we do expect to charge an APC as part of a plan for ensuring the sustainability of this open access journal. Authors from the following categories who do not have the available funds to cover the APC may request a waiver after acceptance: students; early career researchers; retired researchers; unaffiliated researchers; researchers from developing countries and others who demonstrate economic hardship. The APC for those who do not qualify for a waiver will be set at a rate appropriate for the political science community.

Licensing Your Work
All Research & Politics papers are published under Creative Commons licenses that allow for the properly attributed reuse of the work without charge. Authors are able to choose which of three Creative Commons licenses they would like their work to be published under (click on the links for more information about each):

  • CC-BY (Creative Commons Attribution)
  • CC-BY-NC (Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial)
  • CC-BY-NC-ND (Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivatives)

Authors in receipt of research funding from some sources must select a specific licence, eg those funded whole or in part by the Research Councils UK must choose CC-BY.

Attributions to work published in Research & Politics must be made in the following form: First published in Research & Politics <dd/mm/yy> by SAGE Publications Ltd. © <Author name>

SAGE seeks to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of articles published in the Journal.

Peer Review Process

Research & Politics operates a high-quality short-track peer-review process. All submissions to Research & Politics are single-blind peer reviewed unless the author opts for double-blind. 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 setting out the reason for rejection.
  • If the manuscript passes this stage, it will follow one of two peer review paths (The General Editor decides which path to use. The journal prefers Path 2):
    • Path 1. The General Editor will send the article out for review to one Associate Editor and one external reviewer. The General Editor makes the final decision on publication and may ask the Associate Editor for feedback on the recommendations in the second referee report.
    • Path 2. The General Editor delegates the decision-making authority to an Associate Editor. In this scenario, two external reviewers will be selected by the General Editor, and the Associate Editor makes 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 is unable to submit a report in the third or fourth week of this process, the Associate provides his/her view on the manuscript, which is submitted to the General Editor (Path 1).
  • A manuscript may be rejected on the basis of one negative review, especially if this review comes from one of the Associate Editor.
  • 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 control 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.

Replication Policy

This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and is a signatory of the TOP Guidelines and the DA-RT statement.

Contributions based on qualitative and quantitative data should be well documented and, if data is collected by the author, well described.

Making datasets publicly available is a policy of Research & Politics. Only on the basis of a well-motivated request of the author at the time of submission may the Board of Editors decide, in exceptional cases, to publish an article without publicly available data.

For contributions based on quantitative data, Research & Politics requires the author to submit their data set (or a link to it) and their syntax/command files for the analysis presented in the contribution. If applicable, efforts should also be made to link to or provide detail of the datasets used to construct the current set.

Data can be hosted on the SAGE Research & Politics website and/or authors should use a recognised third party data repository service to host their data. Recommended services include:

For contributions based on qualitative data, and in as far as these sources are not yet available, the author is recommended to archive her/his material in a repository, making it available to others.

The full ethics policy for Research & Politics can be found here: http://www.uk.sagepub.com/msg/rap.htm#ReplicationPolicy

Preparing Your Manuscript

Research & Politics encourages short articles. All papers must be theoretically and/or empirically oriented, or address important methodological or normative issues. Only original papers will be accepted. Full guidelines on how to prepare your submission – including the journal’s ethics policy - can be found here: https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/research-politics/journal202237#submission-guidelines

Research & Politics accepts two type of article:

Research Articles
Articles should normally not exceed 4,000 words including notes (up to 12) and references (up to 40) but excluding figures, tables and images or any supporting material that will appear as supplemental online appendices. The main criterion for evaluating articles is that they contribute to our systematic knowledge about important substantive, theoretical, or methodological questions. Research articles can 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.

Research Notes
These should focus on a controversy in the literature, present a new empirical finding, or discuss the policy implications of recently gained insight. These notes have a limit of 2,000 words including notes (up to 8) and references (up to 25) but excluding figures, tables and images or any supporting material that will appear as supplemental online appendices. Research Notes may also respond to or replicate existing research. These may include reports on null-results for cases where previously statistical relationships were claimed.

For guidance on the submission procedure please contact the Research & Politics Editorial Office: rap@fgga.leidenuniv.nl

Submit Your Manuscript

Before submitting your manuscript, please ensure you carefully read and adhere to the Research & Politics author guidelines. Manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.

All manuscripts should be submitted via the Research & Politics ScholarOne™ Manuscripts online system. Other forms of submission will not be accepted by the editors. Visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rap to login and submit your article online. Authors may check on the status of their manuscript by accessing their author page in ScholarOne Manuscripts.

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

If you would like to discuss your paper with the editorial team prior to submission, please contact them via rap@fgga.leidenuniv.nl