Apsr review process

Review Process (apsr-review-process)

Knowing how APSR screens and decides lets you pre-empt the failure modes before submitting. APSR is double-anonymous and screens hard at the desk before external review.

When to trigger

• Before submitting, to stress-test against desk-rejection grounds
• Deciding whether to use the Registered Reports (Stage 1) route
• Interpreting a decision letter and setting expectations
• Understanding what reviewers are instructed to weigh

How APSR review works

1. Double-anonymous. Reviewers do not know the authors and authors do not know reviewers. Anonymize the manuscript accordingly (see apsr-submission).
2. Desk screening first. Every paper is considered for desk rejection on three grounds:
   • Remit — not research, not political science, out of scope, or not in adequate English.
   • Ethics — plagiarized/unattributed text, or research based on unethical procedures.
   • Substance — missing a key element of an article, insufficiently significant findings, or failure to engage the relevant literature(s).
   • Substantive desk rejections require at least two editors to agree.
3. External review. Papers passing the desk are sent to expert reviewers.
4. Decision categories: reject, accept, or revise and resubmit — where R&R is reserved for papers very close to publishable quality. Strong support from all or nearly all reviewers is generally necessary, but the decision is at the editor's discretion.
5. Review transfer. Anonymized manuscripts/reviews may be forwarded only to journals that also use double-anonymous protocols (an opt-in initiative).

Registered Reports route (prospective designs)

• Submit a Stage 1 package — theory, design, and analysis plan — that is reviewed before data collection/analysis. In-principle acceptance commits the journal to publish regardless of results if you execute the plan. Choose this before you have results (see apsr-topic-selection).

Audit yourself against the desk (three grounds, three tests)

Run each desk-rejection ground as a self-test before upload:

• Remit test. Recognizably political science, with a research contribution, in publishable English. Interdisciplinary work passes when the question is political, not merely the data.
• Ethics test. Every borrowed passage attributed; every human-subjects procedure covered by approvals you would show. This ground has no repair after submission.
• Substance test. Three sub-checks: (a) no missing element — theory, evidence, and stakes all present, not promised; (b) the finding clears "insufficiently significant" — someone outside your subfield would care; (c) every literature a plausible reviewer would name is engaged, since failure to engage relevant literatures is an explicit desk ground. The two-editor rule cuts both ways: no single skeptical editor can desk you, but the paper must survive two independent readings of its first five pages.

Write for the reviewer coalition

Because strong support from all or nearly all reviewers is generally necessary, an APSR paper faces a coalition problem, not a median-voter problem. Expect a mix like: a methods-focused reader, a subfield expert, and a generalist from elsewhere in the discipline. One unconvinced member usually sinks the round. Practically:

• Give the methods reader the identification defense in the main text, not the appendix.
• Give the subfield expert accurate engagement with the debate they know best — where "failure to engage" complaints originate.
• Give the generalist a reason to care by page two; never strand them behind jargon.
• The sixteen-editor team at thirteen universities means an editor near your subfield will likely handle the paper — frame it so the right editor recognizes it as theirs.

Reading the decision letter

• A genuine R&R is a strong signal: the category is reserved for papers very close to publishable quality. Treat the letter as a contract — do everything feasible, explain the rest (route to apsr-rebuttal).
• A reject with substantive reviews is not an invitation to resubmit to APSR; it is free refereeing for the next venue. Do not resubmit a rejected paper as if new.
• Because the final call is at the editor's discretion, weigh the editor's own letter above any single reviewer's report when deciding what to prioritize.

Anti-patterns

• Submitting a subfield-only paper to a discipline-wide journal (substance desk rejection)
• Ignoring an obvious related literature (explicit desk-rejection ground)
• Expecting an R&R for a paper that is far from publishable — R&R is for near-ready papers
• Choosing Registered Reports after results exist

Output format

【Desk-rejection check】remit / ethics / substance — any red flags?
【Significance】general enough to clear "insufficiently significant"? [Y/N]
【Literature engaged】incl. cross-subfield? [Y/N]
【Track】standard vs Registered Reports (Stage 1)
【Realistic outcome】reject / R&R / (rare) accept
【Next】apsr-submission (or apsr-rebuttal if decided)

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — peer-review policy, desk-rejection grounds, decision categories, Registered Reports