Notice to Contributors
Public Opinion Quarterly is hospitable to all points of view, provided only that they help to illuminate problems of public opinion, survey research and communication. The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) assumes responsibility only for material signed by an officer of the Association in his or her official capacity. Statements of fact and opinion are made on the responsibility of the authors alone and do not represent the views of the editors.
Please note: This journal does not accept Microsoft Word 2007 documents at this time. Please use Word's "Save As" option to save your document as an older (.doc) file type.
Manuscript Preparation
- The journal publishes articles and research notes. Article submissions, including poll reviews and research syntheses, should generally not exceed 6,500 words of text, excluding figures, tables, references, and appendices. (Exception: Articles for the Poll Trend section should not exceed 2500 words of text, excluding figures, tables, references, and appendices.) Research Notes may be shorter reports of single findings, useful extensions or replications of previous research, or other additions to the literature that warrant publication without the more extended theoretical development or detailed analysis characteristic of regular articles. Notes are refereed and subject to the same high standards applied to other articles. Research Note manuscripts should follow the guidelines for regular articles, although notes should generally not exceed 2,750 words of text. This does not include tables, figures, and appendices, all of which should be kept to a minimum in Research Notes. Nor does it include references.
- Double-space all text. Leave margins of at least one inch on all sides, with an 8.5 x 11 inch format. Text should be set in 12-point Times New Roman font. Right-hand margins should be ragged, not justified.
- Prepare two versions of the submission, one with author-identifying information and one blinded for review. The blinded manuscript should contain no identifying information on the title page and no acknowledgments. References to the author's previous work should be excised or blinded, unless the reference is necessary to evaluate the submission. See "How to Blind a Manuscript for Online Submission" at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/poq. Under "Resources," click on the link entitled "Instructions and Forms." A screen with the appropriate link will appear.
- Both the blinded and unblinded manuscript files (preferably Microsoft Word) should contain the entire article, including tables and figure legends, but excluding the figures themselves. Tables should not be embedded in the text but instead placed on separate pages at the end of the paper.
- Figure(s) should be in TIF, EPS, or PPT format, and each figure should be in its own separate file, named with the figure number. For useful information on preparing your figures for publication, see http://dx.sheridan.com.
- Include an abstract of 250 words or fewer.
- At submission, place footnotes at the bottoms of pages. They and the references may be single-spaced at this stage. Upon acceptance, authors will be required to move footnotes to the back of the article and to double-space both footnotes and references.
- Include citations and references using the author-date system as recommended by the American Sociological Association, the American Political Science Association, and the Chicago Manual of Style (chapters 16 and 17 of the 15th ed., 2003). Provide issue number or season of journals referenced only if the journal does not paginate issues consecutively.
- Include complete first names of authors in the reference list.
All submissions that make use of survey data must contain the following information:
- A definition of the population from which the sample was drawn and a description of the selection procedure sufficient to permit at least approximate replication.
- The response rate and details of its calculation (if response rate is not appropriate, the refusal rate). Accurate reporting of the response rate requires consulting the AAPOR Standard Definitions (http://www.aapor.org), to identify the appropriate response rate definition. If the AAPOR recommendations are not followed, authors should explain why a nonstandard approach was employed.
- Dates the survey was conducted.
- Exact wording of all questions used in the analysis. For lengthy sets of questions that play only a minor role in the analysis, wording may be provided in a supplement for referees to review.
- For models fitted to the data, the equations of the models should be presented, including the numerical values of the parameter estimates, the respective standard errors, and goodness-of-fit statistics for the model.
Manuscript Submission
Public Opinion Quarterly accepts submissions through Manuscript Central, our online submission system, located at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/poq. On Manuscript Central's login page, the link entitled "User Tutorials" will provide authors with detailed descriptions of every feature and function of Manuscript Central and guide them through the submission process. For further assistance, click on the link entitled "Get Help Now." This will bring up contact information for e-mail and telephone customer support from ScholarOne, the designers of Manuscript Central. Authors can also contact the journal's editorial office. Provisions will be made to receive submissions from authors who cannot access the online system. Contact the editorial office (847-467-4698) for instructions.
Upon acceptance of an article by the journal, the author(s) will be asked to grant publication license to AAPOR. This license will insure the widest dissemination of information possible under the U.S. copyright law.
Multiple submission policy: Submission of a manuscript to one professional journal while that manuscript is under review by any other journal is regarded as unacceptable. Further, it is assumed by Public Opinion Quarterly that work submitted for review has not been previously published. If other published or submitted articles exist that are based on essentially the same or closely related data sets, such articles should be noted and referenced in a letter to the editor and their relation to the submitted paper briefly explained.
Online-Only Supplementary Material
Supporting material that is not essential for inclusion in the full text of the manuscript but would nevertheless benefit the reader can be made available by the publisher as online-only content linked to the online manuscript. The material should not be essential to understanding the conclusions of the paper but should contain data that is additional or complementary and directly relevant to the article content. Such information might include more detailed methods, extended data sets/data analysis, or additional figures (including color). Ensure that the supplementary material is referred to in the main manuscript where necessary.
All supplementary material should be submitted at the same time as the main manuscript for peer review. The text and figures should be in suitable electronic formats and clearly marked as supplementary data. Before uploading the supplementary files, confirm that they will work on all internet browsers.
Supplementary material will not be copyedited—and it cannot be altered or replaced once a paper has been published—so please present supplementary material clearly and succinctly, and make sure that the style of its terms conforms to their usage in the rest of the paper.
Manuscript Processing
- All manuscripts are reviewed anonymously.
- The review process is ordinarily completed within 3 months.
- Manuscripts are accepted for publication in Public Opinion Quarterly subject to stylistic editing for conformity to the journal's editorial format and requirements. Proofs are sent to the author for review.
Book Reviews
If your recently published or forthcoming book is of interest to readers of the journal, please arrange to have review copies sent to: Patricia Moy, Book Review Editor, Public Opinion Quarterly, University of Washington, School of Communications, Box 353740, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. To review books for the journal, please e-mail your vita to the book review editor.
Conflict of Interest Policy
Public Opinion Quarterly policy requires that editors sign individual statements annually revealing their sources of income. The purpose of this disclosure is to identify financial interests of potential relevance to papers published in this journal. Financial disclosure statements are kept on file by AAPOR.
Public Opinion Quarterly policy also requires that editors not make decisions on submissions from authors within the same academic department or company, nor submissions that could be deemed to be in direct competition with the editor's own work. The editor and associate editor of Public Opinion Quarterly may not publish their own work in the journal. Section editors (Poll Review, Poll Trend and Book Review editors) may publish articles in the journal, subject to the usual procedures of peer review for each section. Section editors can have no role in the review of their own work.
Editors must agree to pass any manuscripts for which they have a financial or other conflict of interest to another editor (or associate editor, or editorial board member) for selection of referees, editorial changes, and for final decisions.
Reviewers of manuscripts submitted to Public Opinion Quarterly are expected to disclose conflicts of interest that may affect their ability to evaluate submissions fairly and objectively. Editors then have the option to reassign manuscripts to other reviewers or to solicit more reviews.
Author Self-Archiving/Public Access Policy from October 2005
For information about this journal's policy, please visit our Author Self-Archiving Policy page.
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