Margin: The Journal of Applied Economic Research
Applied Economics
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Margin: The Journal of Applied Economic Research is a quarterly, peer-reviewed, international journal published by NCAER in New Delhi in conjunction with SAGE International. It publishes papers that pay special attention to the economics of emerging economies, but is open to high-quality papers from all fields of applied economics. Empirical papers with significant policy implications are preferred, particularly papers with evidence-based policy analysis that apply modern quantitative techniques to sound data sets. At the same time, high-quality review articles are not excluded. The journal appeals to a broad international audience, and hence, empirical papers that cover a range of countries or analyse topics that are relevant outside a single country are often chosen. NCAER’s location, the rising global interest in India, and the growing size of India’s global presence mean that the journal inevitably carries some papers that explore the economics of the major economic, demographic, and social transformation that India is undergoing.
For further details, please refer to www.ncaer.org.
| Poonam Gupta | National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi, India |
| Shashanka Bhide | National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi, India |
| Anil Kumar Sharma | National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi, India |
| Anupma Mehta | National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi, India |
| Shankar Acharya | Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, New Delhi, India |
| B B Bhattacharya | Formerly with the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi, India |
| Kanchan Chopra | TERI University, New Delhi, India |
| Sonalde Desai | University of Maryland, College Park and National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi, India |
| Mahendra Dev | ICFAI Business School, Hyderabad, and Institute for Development Studies, Andhra Pradesh, India |
| Andrew Foster | Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA |
| Kaliappa Kalirajan | Australian National University, Canberra, Australia |
| Sudipto Mundle | National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi, India |
| Dilip Nachane | Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India |
| Federick J. Ngo | University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA |
| Arvind Panagariya | Columbia University, New York, USA |
| Vishwanath Pandit | Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning, Andhra Pradesh, India |
| Raghuram Rajan | University of Chicago, Chicago, USA |
| M Govinda Rao | National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi, India |
| U Shankar | Honorary Professor, Madras School of Economics, Chennai, India |
Margin—The Journal of Applied Economic Research
This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics
Manuscripts and all editorial correspondence should be addressed to: Dr Amaresh Dubey, Managing Editor, Margin. E-mail: margin@ncaer.org
Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Margin will be reviewed.
There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this Journal. Open Access options are available - see section 3.3 below.
As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere.
If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journal Solutions Portal
1.1 Aims & Scope
1.2 Article types
1.3 Writing your paper
2.1 Peer review policy
2.2 Authorship
2.3 Acknowledgements
2.4 Funding
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
2.6 Research data
3.1 Publication ethics
3.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement
3.3 Open access and author archiving
4.1 Formatting
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
4.3 Supplementary material
4.4 Reference style
5.1 Information required for completing your submission
5.2 Permission
6. On acceptance and publication
6.1 Sage Production
6.2 Online First publication
6.3 Access to your published article
6.4 Promoting your article
Before submitting your manuscript Margin, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.
Papers submitted to it should make either a methodological contribution in applied economic research or a contribution to policy discussion. In this sense, papers may not report only empirical research but also conceptual viewpoints. They can relate to any branch of applied economic research, and may also draw from important findings from research projects.
- Manuscripts of articles should not ordinarily exceed 8,000 words in length, inclusive of references, tables and figures.
- Along with the submission, authors also need to send an undertaking that the same article is not submitted to any other publication.
- Provide an abstract of not more than 150 words and 4–6 keywords for articles.
- JEL codes to be provided for all articles.
There is no limit on the number of references allowed.
1.3 Writing your paper
The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice and on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance their article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.
1.3.1 Make your article discoverable
For information and guidance on how to make your article more discoverable, visit our Gateway page on How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.
Sage does not permit the use of author-suggested (recommended) reviewers at any stage of the submission process, be that through the web-based submission system or other communication. Reviewers should be experts in their fields and should be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. Our policy is that reviewers should not be assigned to a paper if:
• The reviewer is based at the same institution as any of the co-authors
• The reviewer is based at the funding body of the paper
• The author has recommended the reviewer
• The reviewer has provided a personal (e.g. Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail) email account and an institutional email account cannot be found after performing a basic Google search (name, department and institution).
All parties who have made a substantive contribution to the article should be listed as authors. Principal authorship, authorship order, and other publication credits should be based on the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their status. A student is usually listed as principal author on any multiple-authored publication that substantially derives from the student’s dissertation or thesis.
If the named authors for a manuscript change at any point between submission and acceptance, an Authorship Change Form must be completed and digitally signed by all authors (including any added or removed) . An addition of an author is only permitted following feedback raised during peer review. Completed forms can be uploaded at Revision Submission stage or emailed to the Journal Editorial Office contact (listed on the journal’s manuscript submission guidelines). All requests will be moderated by the Editor and/or Sage staff.
Important: Changes to the author by-line by adding or deleting authors are NOT permitted following acceptance of a paper.
Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.
Please supply any personal acknowledgements separately to the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.
2.3.2 Writing assistance
Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance. It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.
Margin requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
Margin encourages authors to include a declaration of any conflicting interests and recommends you review the good practice guidelines on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.
The journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages.
Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:
- share your research data in a relevant public data repository
- include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, we encourage you to consider using the statement to explain why it cannot be shared.
- cite this data in your research
Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway.
3.1.1 Plagiarism
Margin and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.
3.1.2 Prior publication
If material has been previously published it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.
3.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement
Before publication, Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive licence agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than Sage. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information please visit the Sage Author Gateway.
3.3 Open access and author archiving
Margin offers optional open access publishing via the Sage Choice programme and Open Access agreements, where authors can publish open access either discounted or free of charge depending on the agreement with Sage. Find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. For more information on Open Access publishing options at Sage please visit Sage Open Access. For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines and Publishing Policies.
4. Preparing your manuscript for submission
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word.
The manuscript must include the following:
- Title of the paper, name of author, author’s affiliation and institutional address with pin code, email id and abstract of not more than 150 words. In case there are two or more authors, then corresponding author’s name and postal address details must be clearly specified.
- The contributors should provide 4–6 keywords for online searchability.
For each text citation there must be a corresponding citation in the reference list and for each reference list citation there must be a corresponding text citation. Tables should be provided in editable format. Both tables and figures should be referred to in the text by number separately (e.g., Table 1) not by placement (e.g., see Table below).
All figures and tables should be cited in the text and should have the source (a specific URL, a reference or, if it is author’s own work, ‘The author(s)’) mentioned irrespective of whether or not they require permissions.
- The journal follows spellings in British English rather than American spellings (hence programme, not program; labour, not labor; centre, not center, etc.). Use universal ‘s’ in ‘-ise’ and ‘-isation’ words.
- For non-English and uncommon words and phrases, use italics throughout the text. Meaning of non-English words should be given in parentheses just after the word when it is used for the first time.
- Articles should use non-sexist and non-racist language.
- Spell out numbers from one to nine, 10 and above to remain in figures. However, for exact measurement (e.g., China’s GDP growth rate 9.8 per cent) use numbers. Very large round numbers, especially sums of money, may be expressed by a mixture of numerals and spelled-out numbers (India’s population 1.2 billion). Use thousands and millions, not lakhs and crores.
- Single quotes should be used throughout. Double quote marks are to be used within single quotes. Spellings of words in quotations should not be changed. Quotations of 45 words or more should be separated from the text.
- Notes should be numbered serially and presented at the end of each page. Notes must contain more than a mere reference. However, mere URLs may be incorporated in the notes. Use notes to elaborate an issue that is already made in the main text.
- Use ‘per cent’ instead of % in the text. In tables, graphs, etc., % can be used. Use ‘twentieth century’, ‘the 1990s’.
- Abbreviations are spelled out at first occurrence. Very common ones (US, GDP, BBC) need not be spelled out. Also, do not use period/full stop in abbreviations (USA, USSR). Use period/full stop after initials (R. K. Laxman).
- Give specific dates in the form 22 November 1980. Decades should be referred to as ‘twentieth century’, ‘1980s’.
References should come at the end of the manuscript.
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines
- Figures, including maps, graphs and drawings, should not be larger than page size. They should be numbered and arranged as per their references in the text. All photographs and scanned images should have a resolution of minimum 300 dpi and 1,500 pixels and their format should be TIFF or JPEG.
- Due permissions should be taken for copyright protected photographs/images. Even for photographs/images available in the public domain, it should be clearly ascertained whether or not their reproduction requires permission for purposes of publishing (which is a profit-making endeavour).
- All photographs/scanned images should be provided separately in a folder along with the main article.
Please Note: All figures and tables should be cited in the text and should have the source (a specific URL, a reference or, if it is author’s own work, ‘The Author’) mentioned irrespective of whether or not they require permissions
Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For specifically requested colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Sage after receipt of your accepted article.
This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplementary files.
Margin adheres to the APA reference style. View the APA uidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.
Manuscripts must be submitted electronically to Dr Amaresh Dubey, Managing Editor, Margin. E-mail: margin@ncaer.org
5.1 Information required for completing your submission
You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. The affiliation listed in the manuscript should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a manuscript note at the end of the paper. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and provided any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant)..
Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway.
6. On acceptance and publication
Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be sent by PDF to the corresponding author and should be returned promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.
Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite Online First articles.
6.3 Access to your published article
Sage provides authors with online access to their final article.
Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Margin editorial office as follows:
Dr Amaresh Dubey, Managing Editor, Margin.
E-mail: margin@ncaer.org