Notes for Contributors

Governance is an international journal devoted to the theoretical and empirical study of executive politics, public policy, administration, and the organization of the state. Papers that adopt a comparative perspective are of particular interest. The editors welcome articles employing any methodological approach that makes a clear and original intervention in a scholarly literature related to the journal's aims and scope. Typically, Governance does not publish literature reviews or bibliometric analyses. Research on corporate governance is outside the aims and scope of the journal.

Special issues: Governance will publish occasional special issues on topics related to the themes described above. Scholars interested in proposing a special issue should contact the editors directly.

Practitioner’s Perspective: The editors invite shorter submissions from practitioners that identify a specific policy or administrative challenge, show how a particular solution works in the real world, and recommend next steps to develop this approach in the future. Submissions should be between 3,000 and 5,000 words in length. Please contact the editors directly prior to submission.

Submission and Peer Review Process

New submissions should be made via the Research Exchange submission portal. Should your manuscript proceed to the revision stage, you will be directed to make your revisions via the same submission portal. You may check the status of your submission at anytime by logging on to submission.wiley.com and clicking the “My Submissions” button. For technical help with the submission system, please review our FAQs or contact [email protected].

Submissions should be no more than 9,000 words, excluding citations and bibliography.

Data availability: Although it is not a pre-publication requirement of Governance, we do require that you complete a data availability statement informing readers whether replication materials (data, code, etc.) are available and how to access them. We recommend utilizing data archiving repositories that provide a citable DOI for datasets and other replication materials.

Pre-Analysis Plans: Authors who wish to provide an anonymized version of any pre-analysis plan may do so by including them as supplementary material with their submission.

Each manuscript will be reviewed anonymously by at least two referees. The coeditors will make the final decision on publication. Submission of an article implies that it has not been published, has not been committed to another publication, and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

Books for review or book reviews for consideration for publication should be sent to Clay Wescott, Book Review Editor, at [email protected], or 16614 Cortona Lane, Naples, Florida 34110.  The review should be around 800-1000 words, and assess the book based on criteria such as the following:

• The originality of theory and/or method and how it builds on previous, scholarly research
• Introduction of new empirical material
• Overall scientific rigor
• Freshness and accessibility of style
• Scope (does the book have broad implications for many countries/sectors/issues or narrower implications?)
• How does the book contribute to the comparative study of executive branches and their changing roles in public policymaking?
• What is the audience for the book (an undergraduate text, a guide for policy practitioners, a general audience, or academic specialists)?
• What is your overall assessment of the quality of the scholarship?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses? What are the next steps for research in this area?

Authors who want to refine the use of English in their manuscripts might consider utilizing the services of English Language Editing Services (http://wileyeditingservices.com).

If English language, grammar and syntax need extensive revisions, authors may be asked to use a translation service at their own expense (http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/english_language.asp).

Authors should avoid using split infinitives in their articles.

Free format submission

Governance 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:
  • 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):
    • funding statement
    • conflict of interest disclosure
    • ethics approval statement
    • patient consent statement
    • permission to reproduce material from other sources

Important: the journal operates a double-blind peer review policy. Please anonymize your manuscript and supply a separate title page files

Submission Revision

While you are not required to follow formatting guidelines for your initial submission, please ensure that your manuscript meets the following criteria before submitting your revision:

1. Title, Abstract, Length: The title of the manuscript should be descriptive and short, usually not more than 12 words. The manuscript should lead with an abstract of about 150 words. The abstract should summarize, not introduce, the manuscript. Manuscripts should be no longer than 9,000 words, including all text, notes, references, appendices, figures, and tables.
2. Define abbreviations the first time they appear in the text and then use the abbreviation consistently thereafter (e.g., use “the United Nations (U.N.)” the first time it appears in the text, then simply “the U.N.” thereafter.)
3. Close up simple prefixes (e.g., “reconfigure” or “predestined”); however, hyphenate compound adjectives (e.g., “decision-making role”).
4. All nonstandard non-English phrases should appear in italics the first time they are used, preferably with a definition.

(If a non-English phrase can be found in a standard good-quality dictionary, it is considered to be standardized and is exempted from this rule.)

5. Specific titles of offices, etc., should appear in lower case unless they refer to a specific person (e.g., “U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan” or “The Secretary General observed that…”)
6. Use American English spellings, not British spellings. However, British words such as “whilst” are fine.
7. When a person is first mentioned in an article (particularly a political figure), list the person’s full name, not just the surname.
8. Include the person’s title, such as “Prime Minister,” e.g., Prime Minister Tony Blair.
9. The terms “Right” and “Left” should be capitalized when used as nouns, but left in lowercase for adjectival forms.
10. In the text of a paper, the numbers one through ten should be spelled out; the numbers from 11 and up can be expressed as numerals. Exception: if a sentence begins with a number, that number should always be spelled out.
11. Textual emphasis should be indicated with italics, rather than bold or underlined text. When text in a quote from a secondary source is italicized, please make clear whether that emphasis is in the original source or has been added by the Governance author.
12. The United States should be abbreviated U.S., and the United Kingdom the U.K.
13. Itemized lists should be numbered using Arabic numerals.
14. Interviews must be cited in the references section. Unless an interview is on the record, interview citations can be very general; authors need provide only general type of interview subject (e.g. “government official”, “ten-year-old boy”) date of interview, and name of interviewer, adding city/state/country if possible.
15. Major governmental documents—the American Declaration of Independence, the French Constitution—need not be cited in the references section. However, any discussion in the text of specific clauses etc. in such a document should be accompanied there by a citation of the particular article, section, etc. in which that clause appears.
16. Avoid gender-specific language/terms or characterization as “male” or “female.”

Author Services

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.

There are three preferred formats for digital artwork submission: Encapsulated PostScript (EPS), Portable Document Format (PDF), and Tagged Image Format (TIFF). We suggest that line art be saved as EPS files. Alternately, these may be saved as PDF files at 600 dots per inch (dpi) or better at final size. Tone art, or photographic images, should be saved as TIFF files with a resolution of 300 dpi at final size. For combination figures, or artwork that contains both photographs and labeling, we recommend saving figures as EPS files, or as PDF files with a resolution of 600 dpi or better at final size. More detailed information on the submission of electronic artwork can be found at http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/illustration.asp.

Article Preparation Support

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.

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; where via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS) they will be able to complete the license agreement on behalf of all authors on the paper.

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 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 The Wellcome Trust and members of the Research Councils UK (RCUK) 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: http://www.wiley.com/go/funderstatement.

Wiley's Self-Archiving Policy
Authors of articles published in Wiley journals are permitted to self-archive the submitted (preprint) version of the article at any time, and may self-archive the accepted (peer-reviewed) version after an embargo period. Use the following link for more information, and to view the policy for Governance: http://olabout.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-820227.html

Article Promotion Support

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