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Cambridge University Press

Prepare your manuscript for American Political Science Review.

Review the checklist, choose your article type, and turn your draft into a cleaner submission package.

Checked 2026-10-23
Check readiness freePrepare this manuscript

Article types

Lectio
Letter
Review
Registered Report
Editorial
Book Review
Systematic Review
Protocol
Research Article
Review Article
Perspective
Brief Report
Case Report

Readiness requirements

Review the key details below, or download the complete checklist with every stored source-backed requirement.

Abstract length

  • Provide an author-written abstract of no more than 150 words.

Reference style

  • Articlo formats your supplied references to the journal's stored style and checks that citations match the reference list; source validity is not verified.
  • Credit and citation All use of AI-generated content must comply with our plagiarism policy and best practices regarding citation and acknowledgement.
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  • Caution should be used in all cases and it is important to check your article thoroughly for unintended consequences, particularly in relation to the references.
  • All listed references must be cited in the text, and vice versa.
  • Do not include non-cited material in references.
  • Publication information for each reference must be complete and correct at time of submission.
  • How to declare Descriptions of your use of AI tools should include: appropriate citations to any third-party text, datasets or other material used or included in the tool’s output.
  • Do not use footnotes for simple citations.
  • Video files Authors should follow these guidelines when preparing video files: If associated with a figure, include a citation at the end of the figure caption explaining the video’s function, its file format, and that it is accessible at journals.cambridge.org.
  • Do not redact your self-citations.

Figure and table rules

  • Keep every figure and table numbered, captioned, and cited in the manuscript.
  • Figures and Tables appearing in the appendices should be lettered to distinguish them from those in the manuscript (Table A.1, A.2, Figures A.1, A.2 etc.).
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  • Video files Authors should follow these guidelines when preparing video files: Preferred formats: mpg/mpeg, mp4, mov, mkv.
  • Video files Authors should follow these guidelines when preparing video files: Minimum dimensions: 320 pixels wide by 240 pixels deep.
  • Video files Authors should follow these guidelines when preparing video files: Include a title and pertinent copy for each video, preferably limited to 20 words.
  • If a large number of works require discussion, and the relevant dimensions of those works can be summarized easily, we suggest that you employ a table.
  • In all cases, tables should be discussed in the text.
  • Variables that appear in tables and figures should be described in appropriate detail in the text or appendices.
  • Types of supplementary materials may include, but are not limited to, appendices, additional tables or figures, datasets, videos, and sound files.
  • Labelling: All illustrative materials should be referred to in your manuscript text as “Figures”.
  • Tables and figures must be cited in the text, must be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals, and captions must be provided in all cases.
  • Video files Authors should follow these guidelines when preparing video files: Acceptable formats: wmv, avi.
  • Video files Authors should follow these guidelines when preparing video files: Should be viewable in QuickTime or Windows Media Player.
  • We do not require a specific format for this report, but a reporting table such as the one required by the Journal for Experimental Political Science can be an effective way to summarize results.
  • If you have used AI tools to generate visual content that appears in your manuscript, this should be declared in the captions of any figures that you have generated or modified using AI tools.
  • Place figures and tables where they should fall in the manuscript, or, if need be, use a place holder [Figure/Table 1 about here], with the figure directly following on a new page.
  • To ensure that material published in Cambridge journals is accessible to and understandable by all, authors should carefully consider elements such as colour use, contrast, and text clarity when preparing images and tables.
  • Image, table, and multimedia descriptions: Accessibility materials must be made available for all figures, tables, and multimedia content to be published within the article, including the provision of image descriptions or “alt-text” for all figures.
  • Video files Authors should follow these guidelines when preparing video files: In the case of multiple video files, number them in the order in which they should be viewed.

Funding statement

  • Include or confirm the funding statement required by the journal. Articlo checks this item and flags anything that still needs author input.

Competing interests

  • Add or confirm the author-written Competing interests statement; Articlo flags it if author input is still needed.
  • Additionally, as appropriate, descriptions should include: any competing interests or potential bias that should be considered as a consequence of the tool’s use, including as a result of its ownership or development.

Ethics statement

  • Add or confirm the author-written Ethics statement; Articlo flags it if author input is still needed.
  • To ensure that research published in the ASPR is consistent with these obligations, all authors will be asked to affirm the ways in which their research practices conform to these standards: If the submission draws on research directly engaging human participants, authors should answer "yes" to the screening question (even if ruled exempt from further review by the relevant ethics review board) and.

Blinded manuscript

  • Remove author names, affiliations, acknowledgements, and other direct identifiers from the blinded manuscript file.

Cover letter

  • You must not present ideas, words, data, or other material originally produced by third parties without appropriate acknowledgement or permission.
  • Likewise, do not write a separate cover letter if it can be avoided.

Author contributions

  • Include or confirm the author contributions required by the journal. Articlo checks this item and flags anything that still needs author input.

Supplementary files

  • Lectio: Include every cited supplementary file and use matching labels in the manuscript.
  • Letter: Include every cited supplementary file and use matching labels in the manuscript.
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  • Review: Include every cited supplementary file and use matching labels in the manuscript.
  • Protocol: Include every cited supplementary file and use matching labels in the manuscript.
  • Editorial: Include every cited supplementary file and use matching labels in the manuscript.
  • Case Report: Include every cited supplementary file and use matching labels in the manuscript.
  • Perspective: Include every cited supplementary file and use matching labels in the manuscript.
  • Brief Report: Include every cited supplementary file and use matching labels in the manuscript.
  • Review Article: Include every cited supplementary file and use matching labels in the manuscript.
  • Research Article: Include every cited supplementary file and use matching labels in the manuscript.
  • Registered Report: Include every cited supplementary file and use matching labels in the manuscript.
  • Embed or attach the author-supplied supplementary material so Articlo can extract and label it for the package.
  • Files should be labelled in such a way that it is clear that they are supplemental to the main article, what they are and to which article they belong, e.g. [Corresponding author surname] supplementmovie1.mov.
  • Supplementary materials will not be typeset or copyedited, so should be supplied exactly as they are to appear online.
  • If this information should be different for any of your supplementary files, we recommend you explain this with statements within each file where relevant.
  • Publishing supplementary material Many of our journals encourage authors to submit and publish supplementary materials that are not essential for inclusion or cannot be accommodated in the main article, but would be of benefit to the reader.
  • Unless you are instructed otherwise, supplementary materials should be submitted at the same time as your main article, so that they can be made available to peer reviewers.
  • Supplementary materials will be published with the same metadata as your parent article, and are considered a formal part of the academic record, so cannot be retracted or modified other than via our article correction processes.

Title page and author information

  • ORCID We require all corresponding authors to identify themselves using ORCID when submitting a manuscript to this journal.
  • ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration with key research workflows such as manuscript submission and grant applications, provides the following benefits: Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your iD or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID record, and will enable you to share this information with other systems and platforms you use, saving you re-keying information multiple times.

Article structure and word limits

  • However, we expect most completed articles to be less than 11,000 words, and research notes should be less than 7,000 words.
  • Audio files Audio files should be saved in one of the below formats: Preferred formats: mp3, mp4.
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  • Abstracts must be 150 words or less.
  • Accessibility requirements All articles published by Cambridge are required to meet the accessibility standards outlined in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA.
  • For the same reason, authors must strive to be understandable to as many scholars as possible, consistent with the nature of their material.
  • Authors should not feel obliged to be innovative in all respects.
  • In particular, they should not feel obliged to present a novel theory complete with new concepts for a set of findings that is adequately explained by an extant theory.
  • There is no need to write a mini paper, but you should give readers the main takeaway.
  • However, it is important to clarify the contribution of your paper relative to an existing body of work, and the latter must be accurately represented.
  • Answers to this question should be clear and explicit.
  • Pre-registrations do not necessarily include statements about expected findings, but if they do, then refer to these when you discuss your actual findings.
  • This can often be done for good reasons and we do not require authors to adhere to analysis plans that turn out to be flawed or inappropriate given the data.
  • Authors who anticipate problems adhering to our guidelines for this or other reasons must make a note of this in the Author’s questionnaire upon submission.
  • Additionally, as appropriate, descriptions should include: any proprietary information relevant to the use of the tool.
  • Additionally, as appropriate, descriptions should include: any ways in which you modified the version of the tool that you used (such as training it on your own data).
  • Stylistic requirements To save authors’ time, we do not require initial submissions to abide by the APSR’s stylistic requirements.
  • Authors should cite their own work sparingly and in the third person (as if citing someone else) so as to preserve their anonymity.
  • Each appendix should have a descriptive title.
  • Provide authors' first and last names, rather than last name and first initial.
  • Include a link to all non-published work, i.e., working papers, conference papers, etc.
  • Diagrams, graphs, maps, boxes, graphical diagrams, and code snippets must also be labelled and numbered.
  • If you don’t already have an iD, you will need to create one if you decide to submit a manuscript to this journal.
  • Audio files Audio files should be saved in one of the below formats: Acceptable formats: AAC, AIFF, WAV.
  • Research Article: Research articles are written by experts, for experts and must adhere to the highest standards of peer review and scholarly communications.
  • Just as with standard submissions, everything that is required for the understanding of the paper must be contained in the submission itself.
  • We recommend Creative Commons licences, in particular CC BY, for maximum openness and re-usability of research outputs.
  • Because the APSR reaches a diverse audience, authors must demonstrate how their analysis illuminates or answers an important research question of general interest in political science.
  • Having said this, we want to signal that work qualifying for a leading general-interest journal such as the APSR should propose, elaborate, or test a general theory or question, or shed light on an event with broad significance.
  • You should also notify the editors of any related submissions to other publishers, whether for book or periodical publication, during the pendency of your submission’s review at the APSR – regardless of whether they have yet been accepted.
  • Preregistration is generally expected for experiments, but any study seeking to test hypotheses on prospective data should attempt to preregister as many of its key elements as possible, and even exploratory or descriptive analyses can be preregistered.
  • Verification of Reproducibility If a conditionally accepted manuscript relies substantially on computations, authors will be required to deposit a reproducibility deposit containing data, code, and documentation necessary for other scholars to reproduce the manuscript's findings.
  • Verification of Formal Claims Papers containing formal claims should be submitted with complete proofs, either in the text or in an Online Appendix, to be available to the reviewers and editors during the review process.
  • Transparency: declaration and description We outline below the forms of AI use that must be declared and described to readers, as well as where and how to do this within your manuscript.
  • However, authors should be prepared to address these issues, if prompted, prior to external review and they will certainly eventually to be addressed if their paper advances to conditional acceptance.
  • Page numbers are required on all pages.
  • Should be readable in grayscale.
  • If accessibility materials are required for the publication of your article and not provided with the accepted manuscript files, these will be machine generated for you and made available to review at proof stage.
  • Papers in this category will follow a streamlined schedule and must meet the high standards expected of all papers published by the journal, presenting fully developed primary research.
  • Use the Author-Date system in the following format: (Author Year, Pages).
  • We do not review papers that have been submitted previously to the Journal and rejected unless the author has received an explicit invitation to resubmit.
  • Reserved for issues not handled in the manuscript. (Do not summarize your manuscript).
  • Place these in an appendix and indicate major deviations clearly in the manuscript text.
  • They also discuss circumstances where data cannot be shared for ethical and/or legal reasons.
  • They may not be modified, corrected or removed other than via our formal corrections, retractions and removals processes.
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  • Book Review: What we do/do not publish We don’t publish policy papers (papers advocating for a particular policy), papers devoted to current events (unless connected to a larger theory), book reviews, or special issues.
  • What are the scope conditions? (Is it limited to the units or the period under study?) This issue needs to be addressed whether the sample is small (e.g., case study) or large (e.g., millions of observations from social media or censuses).
  • We do not insist that you test or even corroborate your model with data (though it would be great if you did), but but make the job of empiricists easier by clearly stating the empirical implications.

Reporting guidelines

  • Include or confirm the reporting guidelines required by the journal. Articlo checks this item and flags anything that still needs author input.

Preprints and prior publication

  • Whatever the topic or method, the paper must be original, i.e., not previously published or under review elsewhere.
  • No. Our editorial guidelines require that manuscripts submitted to Cambridge must not be previously published, or be under simultaneous review for publication, in part or in whole within an academic journal, book or similar entity.
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  • However, sharing your preprint anywhere else shall not be viewed as prior publication.

Artificial intelligence disclosure

  • Add or confirm the author-written Artificial intelligence statement; Articlo flags it if author input is still needed.
  • Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools We acknowledge the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in research and writing processes.
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  • Minimal and non-generative uses of AI tools in manuscript preparation do not require declaration.
  • If you are unsure about whether a particular use of an AI tool requires declaration, please contact the journal’s editorial office.
  • Where to declare Use of AI tools should be declared in your manuscript in the same way that you would declare your use of other tools and assistance.
  • How to declare Descriptions of your use of AI tools should include: the name and version of the tool you used.
  • How to declare Descriptions of your use of AI tools should include: the date(s) you used the tool for the purpose(s) described, to the extent reasonably possible.
  • How to declare Descriptions of your use of AI tools should include: how the tool can be accessed or used by others, to the extent reasonably possible.
  • How to declare Descriptions of your use of AI tools should include: a full description of how you used the tool.
  • Authorship We do not consider artificial intelligence (AI) tools to meet the accountability requirements of authorship, and therefore generative AI tools such as ChatGPT should not be listed as authors on any submitted content.
  • What to declare You should always declare and describe your use of an AI tool if you have used it to generate text or images (this includes the translation of sources or of your own work) or to analyse or extract insights from data or other materials.
  • If you have used AI tools to generate text within your manuscript, this should be declared in the same way you would declare your use of other language-editing services, for example in a separate acknowledgments section or in a footnote.
  • If you have used AI tools to collect or analyse data, the way you have done this should be described in your methods section or general description of your methodology, in the same way you would describe your use of other software or analysis processes.

Submission forms

  • Include or confirm the submission forms required by the journal. Articlo checks this item and flags anything that still needs author input.

Manuscript structure

  • Nor should they feel obliged to invent new methods unless there is a significant payoff relative to established methods.
  • If you are unsure about how this might apply to your paper, you should address this in the Comments section.
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  • This includes papers that have been extensively revised – unless the empirics or the theory sections are entirely new, in which case you should call this to our attention.
  • However, in case of deviations, you should provide (a) a reconciliation report that indicates which analyses have been modified or dropped, (b) a justification for modifying or dropping analyses and, (c) when possible, a report of what the conclusions would have been if the original analyses were implemented.
  • Use footnotes, not endnotes.

Statistical reporting

  • We generally do not review papers that seem to fit better into adjacent fields, e.g., economics, sociology, anthropology, psychology, or statistics.

Article type and manuscript length

  • Font should be 12 point for main text and appendices.
  • There is no strict word limit for APSR submissions, as some topics require more space than others.
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  • All manuscripts should include a word count on the front page.
  • The main text of the article should stand alone without the supplementary material.
  • confirm compliance with APSA’s Principles and Guidance for Human Subjects Research, or if it is not in compliance, provide reasoned justification for deviation(s) in the main text, with additional explanation provided in an appendix (included at the time of submission) if needed.
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What your package checks

Abstract: 150 words
Paper: 11,000 words
Declarations: Competing interests, Ethics, Acknowledgements, Artificial intelligence
Format: 12 pt

Source transparency

This preparation guide uses published journal-specific author requirements. Journal instructions can change, so authors should complete a final review before submission.

Open official guideline source