EUROPP – European Politics and Policy is a multidisciplinary academic blog run by the London School of Economics and Political Science. Our central aim is to increase public understanding of European politics and policy by providing accessible academic commentary and research. We have no editorial ‘line’ beyond a commitment to communicating social science research and commentary in ways that enhance public debate and understanding.
The EUROPP team
Managing Editor – Stuart Brown
Stuart Brown is the Managing Editor of EUROPP. After completing his PhD at the University of Strathclyde, Stuart joined LSE in 2012. His recent publications include The European Commission and Europe’s Democratic Process (Palgrave 2016), as well as articles in European Political Science, the Journal of European Integration, and the Journal of Contemporary European Research. Email: s.a.brown@lse.ac.uk
General Editor – Patrick Dunleavy
Patrick Dunleavy is the General Editor. Patrick is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at LSE, where he has worked since 1979. He has published numerous books and over 50 journal articles on political science theory, British politics and urban politics. Email: Europpblog@lse.ac.uk
Write for EUROPP
We encourage submissions from 800 to 1,200 words that are communicated in an accessible way. Contributors should normally have obtained their doctorate, be studying at doctoral level, or have significant professional expertise in the subject they are writing about. Our remit covers all aspects of European government and politics. We are keen to include tables, charts, and relevant figures where appropriate.
Authors of material relating to overseas countries or international issues should ensure that their blog relates substantively to our remit of European politics and policy. Our team would be happy to advise and help, so you are welcome to propose ideas informally to them. To submit an article for consideration, please e-mail it as a Word file to the Managing Editor, Stuart Brown, at the following address: s.a.brown@lse.ac.uk Please also include Excel files for figures and charts so that these can be modified.
Style guide
Length and format
Articles should be between 800 and 1,200 words. Please send us your draft article in Word format and include a short (2-3 sentence) bio for all authors. Our editors will write a short abstract-style intro for your article, but please feel free to provide your own short introduction as a guide. Please note that although EUROPP publishes book reviews, these are all administered by the LSE Review of Books.
Style and language
It is important to write with a general audience in mind and avoid overusing acronyms and terminology that may not be well known outside of academia. Please avoid extensive discussions of methodology and instead report the results of research. We cannot include footnotes so if possible please incorporate these into the main body of the text. We are happy to run articles that express strong opinions, but all contributions must be grounded in evidence and adopt a suitably balanced tone.
When an article is based on an accompanying research paper, we will typically add a link to this at the end of the text. However, all articles must be self-contained, standalone pieces, even if they are based on research published elsewhere. Avoid the excessive use of phrases such as “in my accompanying paper, I show that…” and report the results of your research directly in the text. The aim of a submission should always be to present research and commentary that is of value in its own right, rather than to simply direct readers to external publications.
We use British spelling with ‘ise’ endings, but beyond this we are fairly flexible and authors are not asked to comply with a long-list of detailed style requirements. Our editors proofread all submissions and will make edits for style if necessary.
Referencing
EUROPP uses direct links for referencing rather than citations (e.g. Simon Hix and Michael Marsh show that European Parliament elections…). The easiest way to do this in Microsoft Word is to highlight the words you would like to act as the link, press “ctrl+k”, and then paste in the URL of the relevant page you would like to link to. If you are citing a direct quote from a particular page in a publication, please link to the full publication and include a page number at the end of the sentence (p. 54). We cannot publish bibliographies or reference lists at the end of articles.
Figures and tables
We welcome the use of figures and tables. If possible, please include the original data as an Excel file so the editors can edit images to meet our requirements. Our editors have the capacity to edit charts created in R and other statistical packages, however in these cases it is usually sufficient simply to provide a large, high quality image (e.g. a JPG or PNG file that is at least 1,000 pixels wide).
Titles
We welcome suggested titles, but in the interests of ensuring a consistent style, the editors reserve the right to alter these if necessary. If we do alter the title, we will run this past you before publication to ensure it accurately reflects the content of your article. Our editors have to comply with a number of style requirements so we appreciate your flexibility. In general, we use narrative-style titles that sum up the main argument of the article (e.g. “Turkeys look set to vote for Christmas this year”) rather than general topic-style titles (e.g. “The voting preferences of turkeys”).
The editing process
Once your article is submitted, our editors will review and edit the piece. We will send a final version back to you for approval before publication. Although we review all of the submissions we receive, it is not possible to publish everything that is submitted. Unfortunately, we cannot provide detailed feedback on unpublished drafts, but we endeavour to treat all submissions fairly and judge them on equal merit. Often, the reason an article has not been published is that the site has simply received too many submissions to process. We appreciate your patience and understanding in these cases and if you need any advice on other publications to approach, we are happy to provide this.
All of our articles are published under a Creative Commons licence and other blogs and publications are free to use them, with attribution. If you do not wish for your article to be republished anywhere else then please let us know during the editing process.
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