Additional Resources
The Additional Resources section provides authors extra information that is directly or tangentially related to manuscript preparation, or is important for authors to know as they write manuscripts for publication in academic journals. CMS citation numbers are included in parentheses, where appropriate.
Language Resources
- Authors may wish to have their manuscript’s style, spelling, and grammar reviewed prior to submission via a specialized language editing service. This is not a mandatory step and does not guarantee that a manuscript will be accepted for publication. Authors are responsible for all costs associated with such services. See services from Cambridge University Press and Taylor & Francis as examples.
Ethics Resources
- Authors should be familiar with the discipline’s expectations on professional ethics before submitting a manuscript to an APSA journal. Please reference APSA’s Guide to Professional Ethics in Political Science for more comprehensive information.
- Additional information on publication ethics in general can be found at The Committee on Publication Ethics’ (COPE) website. The COPE Core Practices provide authors, editors, and publishers ethical standards that are woven into the publishing realm.
Institutional Review Board
- Authors should review the requirements set in place by their institution’s Institutional Review Board (IRB), ideally before the initiation of their research. IRBs are federally-regulated, institutionally-created bodies critical to the protection of the rights and welfare of human research subjects. IRBs must have at least five members, one member that is unaffiliated with the institution and one member that is not, in any definition of the word, a scientist. IRBs review all funded and unfunded research proposals for potential research implications on human subjects and approve, disapprove, monitor, or modify them if necessary so that they follow both federal and institutional regulations. While authors should refer to their own institution’s IRB requirements and processes for more detailed and consequential information, federal regulations for IRBs are outlined on the US Department of Health & Human Services’ website.
- If IRB approval is required, the manuscript should include a note with the name of the IRB and the approval number. Authors from countries that do not have formal IRB requirements must include a note that indicates that they have followed the research ethics guidelines of their institution, including adequate human subject protections consistent with their institutional standards and in compliance with APSA’s ethical guidelines. For the purpose of the review process, the names of the institutions should be redacted in this note upon submission to a journal.
Data Repositories
- Increasingly, authors may be asked or provided the option of depositing their data for review. These sites include Dataverse, the Odum Institute, the Qualitative Data Repository at Syracuse University, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, and others. Authors are encouraged to consult with each journal’s requirements and/or suggestions regarding the use of these data repositories.
Directories
Google Scholar
- Google Scholar has become the standardized self-managed directory for political science research. Though the use of the platform is controversial, it has become essential for citation-counting and further socializing publications. APSA recommends that scholars create and maintain their Google Scholar profile, as many publishers now include embedded Google Scholar profile links in reference lists on the publication’s online platform.
Registries
ORCID
- ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes an author from other researchers. The ORCID iD is a 16-digit number that is randomly assigned and works to transparently connect researchers, their contributions, and affiliations, ensuring that their work is recognized. APSA strongly encourages authors and reviewers to register for an ORCID iD and include it in the submission process.
CrossRef
- CrossRef is utilized by publishers to connect scholarly works by linking DOIs via citations on reference lists. Authors should be aware that this tool is available through most APSA publishers and that its search interface allows for easy citation-counting and publication analysis. Similar to Google Scholar profiles, the embedded CrossRef links are included in reference lists.
Funding
FundRef
- FundRef provides a standard way to report funding sources for published scholarly research. Publishers deposit funding information from articles and other content using a standard taxonomy of funder names. This funding data is then made publicly available through CrossRef’s search interfaces and APIs for funders and other interested parties to analyze. APSA journals require authors to participate in the FundRef registry for any manuscript that received federal or government funding.
Copyright
- Copyright protects original expression contained in a work, meaning the words, sounds, or images that an author uses to express an idea or convey information. Any work that is original and not consciously or unconsciously copied from another source is eligible for copyright, no matter the quality of the work (4.5).
- Copyright lasts the life of the author plus 70 years, unless the work is created anonymously or under contract (4.23).
- The four basic rights granted under copyright are: (1) the right to reproduce the work, (2) the right to distribute copies to the public, (3) the right to make derivative work, and (4) the right to perform and display a work publicly (4.34). A copyright notice uses either the copyright symbol ©, the word Copyright or the abbreviation Copr., the year of first publication, and the name of the copyright owner. The notice must be placed so that it gives reasonable notice to a reader.
© 2018 American Political Science Association
Formal Transfer of Rights
- APSA journals require all authors of accepted manuscripts to sign a formal transfer of rights agreement. If the manuscript is coauthored, the corresponding author signs the agreement on behalf of, and with the authority of, the other coauthors. This will generally be requested by the managing editor of the journal.
- In signing the agreement, the corresponding author guarantees that the work is original, that the author or coauthors own(s) it, that no part of the work has been previously published, that the work does not contain content considered libelous or an invasion of privacy, that there is no other agreement to publish the work that is outstanding, and that copyrighted material from other authors within the work is used with permission, unless the usage falls under the fair use doctrine.
- The agreement guarantees the publisher, under most circumstances, the right to make copies of the work, the right to distribute said copies to the public, and the right of public display. This right of public display is practiced when the piece is made viewable online. Printed and downloaded copies of the online piece are considered distributed copies of the publicly displayed work.
- These rights are only transferred in the context of the journal, and do not grant the publisher a license to publish the manuscript in an anthology or a database. Publishers may also ask authors and coauthors to grant them subsidiary rights. These include the rights to publishing in other languages, audio rights, and motion-picture rights, to name a few. These rights granted to the publisher fall under what is considered an exclusive license (4.51). With the exclusive license, the publisher is treated as the owner of the copyright and has standing to sue any infringer and sublicense the work. By sublicensing the work, the publisher can give away permissions to others in lieu of the author, such as the use of photocopied or scanned materials for classroom use and allowing others to reproduce an original illustration from the manuscript in a new work (4.17).
- The agreement requires the publisher to return to the author or coauthors the right to use the article for educational purposes, reprint the work, and to post an abstract of the published version of record, along with complete citation, in a variety of locations such as on personal and institutional websites, under an agreement with the author’s or coauthors’ associated universities, if applicable.
Open Access
- Open access is a rapidly growing trend in publishing to make publications available to as wide an audience as possible. Open access refers to digital materials that are free from copyright or licensing restrictions and that are accessible over the internet. Authors retain copyright and determine any limitations to use, but at minimum, the public is free to download, print, link to, and use these materials. Open access publications are deposited into digital repositories committed to the principles of open and perpetual access and unlimited distribution.
- Many APSA journal publishers offer green open access (4.61), where authors can deposit the finalized manuscript on an institutional repository, and gold open access, where authors pay for their work to be open access from publication. APSA is committed to providing authors with more open access options in the future.