By Justin Esarey
Welcome to the new format of a venerable institution, The Political Methodologist!
For over 25 years, TPM has provided an outlet for practical advice concerning cutting-edge methodology for political scientists around the world. As a new team based at Rice University takes over the editorship, we are continuing that tradition by expanding TPM to include a real-time blog in addition to the traditional print format. Using the blog format allows contributors to get their ideas seen and discussed by a wide audience faster than the usual conference and journal publication venues. Our WordPress backbone allows authors to present graphics, computer code with syntax highlighting, and equations typeset in $LaTeX$. Posts are publicized to our followers on Facebook and Twitter, as well as our RSS feed and e-mail subscribers; we hope that you will take a moment to add yourself to one or more of these lists!
We encourage everyone in the political methodology community, and in the wider community of quantitative social science, to submit blog posts to thepoliticalmethodologist@gmail.com. In particular, we are interested in publishing posts that feature:
- critical commentary or discussion of issues of relevance to the methodological community, including working papers and new software;
- questions for our “Ask a Methodologist” feature;
- new academic positions, fellowships, or grant opportunities for political methodologists; and
- announcements related to methodology journals (or other journals with a special issue or feature concerning political methodology).
The author retains copyright to blog posts, so that anything posted to the blog can be used as a part of formal scholarly output (e.g., journal articles) at a later date. The idea is to encourage feedback and discussion from a wide audience as research unfolds, not just at the end upon formal publication of a final paper.
Our blogging format also permits open discussion of posts via our commenting feature. Comments can be submitted using the “comment” button at the bottom of every blog post. Comments can include 
For those interested in presenting longer and more formal articles, we encourage submission to our print edition. Articles published in the print edition will still be publicized on the blog, but the print edition offers the opportunity for presentations more akin to the journal format. Check out our official submission guidelines to find out how you can get your ideas on TPM!
Here’s to another 25 years of The Political Methodologist!
-The Editorial Staff