Submit to The Political Methodologist

The Political Methodologist is not currently accepting submissions.

TPM’s mission is to promote innovative quantitative analysis in Political Science by illustrating new statistical methods, hosting critical discussions of their application to substantive problems in the discipline, and providing a central location for information of importance to the methodology community.

Instructions for Authors

Our blog hosts shorter contributions (500-2000 words), although the word limit is a guideline and not a hard limit. Topics appropriate for blog posts include (but are not limited to):

1. critical commentary or discussion of issues of relevance to the methodological community, including working papers and new software;
2. questions for our “Ask a Methodologist” feature;
3. new academic positions, fellowships, or grant opportunities for political methodologists; and
4. announcements related to methodology journals (or other journals with a special issue or feature concerning political methodology).

In general, items falling under categories 1 or 2 should be more than announcements with a link to other content; they should summarize or engage the relevant issues, provide code and/or examples, offer substantive commentary, and so on.

All blog posts can include  equations using WordPress’s standard format, and can format their code with syntax highlighting using the Syntax Highlighting plugin. See these links for details on how to include equations and computer code in your proposed post.

Blog posts will be opened to discussion via the comments feature. Just as with normal posts, comments can include  equations or computer code with syntax highlighting. All comments will be reviewed and approved by our editorial staff before posting.

Our print edition is published twice a year, and publishes longer contributions (with a guideline of 2000-4000 words). We are particularly interested in publishing extended demonstrations of innovative quantitative techniques, including software that offers political scientists new analytical capabilities, and scholarly discussion and debate concerning issues of relevance to the methodological community.

Blog or print edition submissions should be e-mailed to justin.e.esarey@gmail.com. Please indicate whether you would like your submission to be considered for a blog post, the print edition, or both. Submissions are preferred in  format (files + a compiled PDF), but are also accepted in Word .docx format. Comments can be made directly on pre-existing blog posts.

For blog posts and comments, the editorial team strives for a quick turnaround (a few days or so). For print edition articles, we will notify you of a timeline shortly after submission. All submissions to TPM are reviewed by the Editorial Staff before publication.

The author retains copyright to submitted blog posts, articles, and comments but grants The Political Methodologist the right to publish the work under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Policy on Data Access and Research Transparency

Authors contributing their work for publication in The Political Methodologist must agree to certain requirements allowing readers to access the data and analytic procedures used to produce the submitted research. These conditions are based on and adapted from the Data Access and Research Transparency (DA-RT) statement available at http://www.dartstatement.org/.

1. Authors are required to make supporting materials for any quantitative analysis available on The Political Methodologist’s dataverse before the paper is published. These materials must include:

a) any quantitative data used in their analysis

b) any analytical procedures used to produce quantitative results (e.g., computer code, Stata do files, R script files, spreadsheet calculations, mathematical proofs, etc.).

If there are any restrictions on making the data publicly available (e.g., because of proprietary agreements or Institutional Research Board confidentiality restrictions), authors should notify the editors of these restrictions when the article is submitted. At that point, the editor will either (a) issue a decision granting an exemption to the data sharing policy (with or without conditions) and then review the article, or (b) decline to review the article.

2. Qualitative sources of supporting information (including but not limited to interview transcripts, copies of archival documents, and ethnographic field notes) may be exempted from the transparency and data-sharing requirements spelled out in item (1) above at the author’s request. However, authors must explicitly request an exemption for qualitative sources of supporting information at the time of submission. At that point, the editor will determine whether the sources qualify under this policy and (a) issue a decision granting an exemption to the data sharing policy (with or without conditions) and then review the article, or (b) decline to review the article.

Note: If an exemption is not explicitly requested at the time of submission, it is expected that authors will make qualitative sources of supporting materials available on The Political Methodologist’s dataverse before the paper is published.

3. Any supporting materials exempted from transparency and data-sharing requirements must be explicitly identified as such upon publication (e.g., by a footnote indicating this exemption and the reason for the exemption).

4. Authors must provide appropriate citations to any quantitative data and/or sources of qualitative information used in their analysis. For quantitative data, the citation must identify a dataset’s author(s), title, date, version, and location (e.g., an internet URL or other persistent identifier). Referenced sources (data, archival documents, secondary sources, historical documents, etc.) must be properly cited regardless of any exemption from transparency and data-sharing requirements.