Information for Authors
Unlike most other economics journals, the Oxford Review of Economic Policy is thematic: each issue deals with one particular topic, e.g. consumption, economies in transition, exchange rates, etc. This being the case, the editors tend to approach people in the appropriate field and ask them to write on a particular subject, rather than wait to see what is submitted. This is not to say, however, that we do not accept unsolicited articles. We have done so quite often. Aspiring contributors, however, need to advise themselves of which themes are planned in order to judge how to target their submission. Please see the section on forthcoming issues on the About the Journal page.
For further information, please call Alison Gomm in the Production Office of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy: Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Park Central, 40-41 Park End Street, Oxford OX1 1JD. Tel: (01865) 792212, Fax: (01865) 251172, email: econrev@herald.ox.ac.uk
GUIDANCE ON STYLE AND CONTENTS OF ARTICLES
The Oxford Review of Economic Policy is an economics journal written for a general readership of business people, government officials, graduate and undergraduate students, interested non-specialists as well as academics and practising economists. As far as possible, articles should therefore avoid technicalities in the form of either terminology, which will be unfamiliar to a general readership, or mathematical presentations. Where economic terminology is used, then it should be defined clearly and examples of its application given.
The use of mathematics need not be avoided entirely; it sometimes helps to clarify a verbal discussion. However, proofs of propositions should not be included. Authors who do employ mathematics in their articles should ensure that it is either a necessary component of their presentation or really does improve the clarity of the unfamiliar to much of the audience.
Articles should be written with an intelligent audience in mind, who will be able to grasp new ideas rapidly, but who may not be familiar with the existing academic literature. The coverage is an extensive discussion of ideas at the forefront of economic research. Thus, while articles should avoid technical exposition, at the same time they are definitely not journalistic in style. They should be able to provide the reader with a thorough understanding of economic developments. Academic economists who are specialists in other fields should find the articles informative; they should turn to the Oxford Review of Economic Policy as a way of keeping abreast of new ideas in a rapidly expanding discipline. Articles should be clear, but concise. Under no circumstances should they exceed 9,000 words, including diagrams, footnotes and tables. Articles which fail to meet this limitation may not be accepted.
2. Electronic formats
We ask all authors to submit their final drafts on disk and in hard copy. The preferred software for typesetting is Microsoft Word or WordPerfect. Any authors who cannot submit their articles as Word or WordPerfect files should send them as ASCII (text-only) files. If there is any difficulty in submitting work on disk, or any queries regarding the software used, please call our Production Office.
Any graphs or figures should, where possible, be produced using EXCEL (.XLC file), LOTUS 123 (.PIC file), or Harvard Graphics (.EPS file). It is helpful to supply the spreadsheet data as well. Axis labels, etc. should be included on graphs, using Times Roman as the font. If it is not possible for you to produce graphs or figures in this way, please send a good, clean, hard copy.
3. Style
All text should be typed, single-spaced. Paragraphs should not be indented.
Sections:
(a) Should be numbered consecutively in Roman numerals.
(b) Section headings should be in capital letters, sub-headings in lower-case letters.
(c) If possible, the first section should have the heading: I. INTRODUCTION.
Footnotes:
Footnotes should be avoided as far as possible. They should only be included where they provide either an important qualification to or a clear illustration of statements in the text. They should not be used to elaborate on the main text or present related material. If footnotes are used, they should be kept short. They should be numbered consecutively and included at the end of the article after the references. Mathematical expositions should be avoided in footnotes.
Tables:
(a) Should be numbered consecutively 1, 2, 3.
(b) Should have short titles.
(c) Should not use vertical lines.
Figures:
(a) Should be numbered consecutively 1, 2, 3 and be referred to as Figure 1, etc., in both headings and the text.
(b) Should have short titles.
(c) Authors are requested to supply in advance (i.e. with the first draft of the article), the data from which their graphs and charts are constructed.
Mathematics:
(a) Numbers between -1 and +1 must have 0 before the decimal point.
(b) All equations should be numbered in a single sequence (1), (2), (3) on the right-hand side of the page.
(c) Make sure that expressions are correctly aligned, especially fractions, '=', subscripts and superscripts.
(d) The order of precedence of brackets is {[()]}, etc.
(e) If matrix algebra is used, then please use capitals for matrices, lower-case letters for vectors and Greek lower case for scalors.
(f) Use obliques where convenient in fractions.
References:
(a) In the text, references should be Jones (1985) or (Jones, 1985). The title and description of the article or book should be listed in references at the end, not in the main text or footnotes.
(b) The list of references should be in alphabetical order of author's name and in chronological order for each author.
(c) An example of how references are displayed follows:
REFERENCES
Ashley, W. J. (1904), The Adjustment of Wages, London, Longmans Green.
Beckerman, W., and Jenkinson, T. (1986), 'How Rigid are Real Wages Anyway?', in W. Beckerman (ed.), Wage Rigidity and Unemployment, London, Duckworth.
Beenstock, M., and Warburton, P. (1982), 'An Aggregative Model of the UK Labour Market', Oxford Economic Papers, 3(2), 253-75.
Bruno, M., and Sachs, J. D. (1985), Economics of Worldwide Stagflation, Oxford, Blackwell.
Dicks Mireaux, L. A., and Shepherd, J. R. (1962), 'The Wages Structure and Some Implications for Incomes Policy', National Institute Economic Review, 22(2), 38-44.
4. Abstracts
Authors are asked to provide an abstract of no more than 150 words which will be sent to the American Economic Association for use in its on-line bibliographic service in addition to being printed in the journal.
5. Refereeing
All articles submitted to the journal are refereed.
Author Self-Archiving/Public Access policy
For information about this journal's policy, please visit our Author Self-Archiving policy page.
Funding Information
Details of all funding sources for the work in question should be given in a separate section entitled 'Funding'. This should appear before the 'Acknowledgements' section.
The following rules should be followed:
- The sentence should begin: ‘This work was supported by …’
- The full official funding agency name should be given, i.e. ‘National Institutes of Health’, not ‘NIH’ (full RIN-approved list of UK funding agencies) Grant numbers should be given in brackets as follows: ‘[grant number xxxx]’
- Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma as follows: ‘[grant numbers xxxx, yyyy]’
- Agencies should be separated by a semi-colon (plus ‘and’ before the last funding agency
- Where individuals need to be specified for certain sources of funding the following text should be added after the relevant agency or grant number 'to [author initials]'.
An example is given here: ‘This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [AA123456 to C.S., BB765432 to M.H.]; and the Alcohol & Education Research Council [hfygr667789].
OFFPRINTS
Authors can purchase offprints by returning the offprint order form which will be sent with the proof of their paper.