Journal Of Political Economy Latex Template
Thora Buckner
Political Analysis publishes peer reviewed articles that provide original and significant advances in the general area of political methodology, including both quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches. It is the official journal of the Society for Political Methodology and the Political Methodology Section of the American Political Science Association.
Descriptions of these article types are provided below, along with length guidelines. Word count includes the abstract, body of manuscript text, acknowledgements, figure legends, references, and footnotes (it excludes the title page and words inside tables). For both research articles and letters, supplementary material can be submitted as a web appendix and does not count towards the word count (this type of supplementary material is different from the replication materials required upon conditional acceptance). Both submission types should be prepared to conform to the Political Analysis style requirements, should be submitted through the Political Analysis electronic submission process, and are subject to the Political Analysis replication policy.
All correlation coefficients, which are statistics in the conventional sense, must be accompanied by their corresponding standard error: SE(r) = sqrt( (1-r^2)/(n-2) ). Also, pay attention to the gender balance in your citations. An editor may ask you to change your citations if the cited authors have too few women.
Symposia: Individuals interested in proposing a symposium on a particular topic must contact the Editors. Political Analysis publishes symposia (collections of papers on a topic) and mini-symposia (usually one or two papers along with invited responses and commentary). All research articles published as part of a symposium follow the same submissions and review procedures as research articles that are not part of symposia.
Political Analysis welcomes files submitted in Microsoft Word and TeX/LaTeX formats, however, during the review process it is recommended that LaTeX users submit an Adobe PDF version of their manuscript. Manuscripts should be double-spaced, in 12-point font, include page numbers, and not include line numbers (line numbers will be added by the online submission system). Footnotes should be placed at the bottom of the appropriate page (not endnotes). If using our Overleaf template, please do not modify the formatting settings.
Authors should always strive to format their manuscript with the eventual reader in mind. Manuscripts that are overly long for their contribution, which are formatted inappropriately, which are unreadable or illegible, or which are not otherwise appropriate for review will in most cases be returned to the authors for reformatting (though in some cases the Editors may close the file without external review for some unreadable, illegible, or overly lengthy submissions). An Overleaf LaTeX template for Political Analysis is available, which can support authors in formatting their manuscripts prior to submission.
Numbers and variables. Numbers in the articles and tables should be reported with no more precision than they merit. Careful thought, not computer packages or the need to align tables, should govern how many significant digits are reported. Remember that significant digits are not the same thing as the total number of digits reported. Do not report more significant digits than the standard errors suggest.
Equations. The journal adheres to certain mathematical and notational standards. Attention to these standards at initial submission will make it easier to deal with conditionally accepted articles. Clarity of the mathematics, tables, and figures is as important a part of the presentation as is verbal clarity.
The author should strive to make the mathematical presentation as clear as possible. Different subareas use different types of notation; authors should strive to use the clearest notation consistent with their particular subarea. Choice of notation, like choice of word, is the prerogative of the author. As with choices about English sentences, choices about mathematical form should be made so as to clarify the presentation.
Authors of technical works should bear in mind that Political Analysis has a varied readership. Try to avoid formulae and specialized terminology in the introduction. Write crisply but clearly; Political Analysis will provide the space for you to explain any technical results. Good mathematical writing calls for the extra effort involved in revising and reworking the manuscript until it will be clear to most if not all of our readers. For a good test of the "readability" of a paper, the comments of a colleague in another specialty should alert you to problems in comprehension that our heterogeneous group of readers might face.
It should be remembered that equations are part of the text and that equal signs function as verbs. Thus, equations should contain appropriate punctuation. All symbols used in equations must be clearly defined.
The author should choose a notation that makes the argument easier to follow. In particular, a consistent notation should be chosen to represent different types of mathematical objects (e.g., matrices, scalars, and vectors). Authors are advised to adhere to the best conventions of notation unless there is a good reason not to do so. (If possible authors should attempt to use a markup language rather than hard coding typesetting specifics.)
The publisher will handle things like page breaking, white space, etc. Since we will strive for some consistency of notation, it would be better for authors to use constructs like \vector instead of \overarrow. Authors using LaTeX should use the amsmath package.
Authors should submit one file (Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF) that includes the complete manuscript with components in the following sequence: title page, abstract, text (with embedded tables and figures), funding, acknowledgements, data availability statement, conflicts of interest, figure legend, references. Supplementary material for online-only publication should be submitted separately from the main manuscript file and should include the author names on the first page.
Abstract and Keywords. Abstracts are required for both Research Articles and PA Letters. The abstract (200 words or fewer) should be placed on the title page or the second page of the manuscript. Authors will also input the abstract into ScholarOne Manuscripts during the submission process. Should the abstract change, ensure it is updated in both the online system and the manuscript. The abstract will be included in the invitation for reviewers.
Text. For Research Articles, all sections should be numbered, with the Introduction being Section 1. While in general only one level of numbering will be needed, as in all cases, section and subsection numbering should be used to clarify argument, not to provide typographical consistency. Articles without sections should not number the introduction.
Tables and figures. Tables and Figures should be clear, easily legible, and quickly understood by the reader; those that require lengthy notes or text descriptions so that readers can understand the material presented therein are in need of simplification and redesign. That is, Tables and Figures should stand alone, and not require the reader to reference the text at all.
Authors should avoid the use of Tables or Figures that span pages. Multiple panels should only be used when there is important information that needs to be compared across the panels. When multiple panels are used in a Figure, the axes must be on identical scales for all panels so that the reader can easily compare the information across panels. Also, authors should avoid Tables or Figures that are so wide that they cannot be viewed in portrait mode.
Numbers in the text of articles and in tables should be reported with no more precision than they are measured and are substantively meaningful. There generally should not be more than 2 digits reported, unless there is good reason to do so. Variables should be scaled so that they have units that are meaningful to the reader, and so that they produce results that are simple to understand. Variables that have vastly different units should be rescaled so that estimations produced are on similar scales.
When model coefficients are not easily interpretable by the reader, other more understandable quantities should be produced for the reader along with their estimation uncertainty. These include marginal effects, confidence or credible bounds in figures, or other measures of statistical reliability that can readily understood by readers. The manuscript should clearly state how these quantities of interest were produced or estimated, and the manuscript should focus the discussion on the derived and understandable quantities rather than the less interpretable original estimates.
All tables should provide appropriate summary statistics in meaningful units, not unitless quantities that range from 0 to 1, -1 to 1, etc. For example, quantities like the root mean squared error accompanied by the standard deviation of the outcome variable for regression results, or the expected percentage correctly predicted for limited dependent variable models. If the author wishes to present and discuss a unitless summary statistic (like the percentage of cases correctly predicted), they should also provide for readers a comparison (like the percentage of cases correctly predicted by a null model). Furthermore, all manuscripts should strive to provide for the reader the necessary materials so that they can independently judge the quality of the reported results.
In many cases, authors will find that there is more material they wish to report than will easily fit into a single manuscript of the typical length. In those cases (e.g., appendices, additional tables or figures, reports of robustness checks, and detailed discussion of data sources and manipulations), authors are strongly encouraged to produce supplementary materials for online-only publication. See the Appendices and supplementary materials section below for more information.