European Journal of International Relations

This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics

Please read the guidelines below then visit the Journal’s submission site http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/EJIR to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.

Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of European Journal of International Relations 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. Please see our guidelines on prior publication and note that the journal may accept submissions of papers that have been posted on pre-print servers; please alert the Editorial Office when submitting (contact details are at the end of these guidelines) and include the DOI for the preprint in the designated field in the manuscript submission system. Authors should not post an updated version of their paper on the preprint server while it is being peer reviewed for possible publication in the journal. If the article is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the journal's author archiving policy.
If your paper is accepted, you must include a link on your preprint to the final version of your paper.

1. What do we publish?
   1.1 Aims & Scope
   1.2 Article types
   1.3 Writing your paper
2. Editorial policies
   2.1 Peer review policy
   2.2 Authorship
   2.3 Acknowledgements
   2.4 Funding
   2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
   2.6 Editor conflict of interest policy
   2.7 Research Data
3. Publishing policies
   3.1 Publication ethics
   3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
   3.3 Open access and author archiving
   3.4 Transparency and data access policy
4. Preparing your manuscript
   4.1 Formatting
   4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
   4.3 Supplemental material
   4.4 Reference style
   4.5 English language editing services
5. Submitting your manuscript
   5.1 ORCID
   5.2 Information required for completing your submission
   5.3 Permissions
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
7. Further information

1. What do we publish?

The Editors invite submissions from the global community of International Relations scholars that make a substantive contribution to the development of theory and/or theoretically-informed empirical analysis across the field of international relations. Genuine interdisciplinary engagement is warmly welcomed. Only manuscripts of sufficient scholarly quality that meet the aims and scope of the European Journal of International Relations will be reviewed.

1.1 Aims & Scope

Before submitting your manuscript to European Journal of International Relations, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope. As part of the submission process, authors are required to submit a cover letter that outlines their contribution and that above all clarifies the ways in which the new submission contributes to the aims and scope, 'mandate', of the journal.

1.2 Article Types

Submissions to the EJIR consist of original, scholarly articles. Articles submitted should normally be within 8-10,000 words, and under no circumstances longer than 12,000 words, including all notes and references. Manuscripts must be original and may not be currently under review elsewhere. The EJIR is not currently open to special issues.

We draw author's attention to research showing gendered and regional biases in citation practices and ask authors to bear this in mind when preparing their manuscripts for submission to EJIR.

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

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2. Editorial policies

2.1 Peer review policy

Authors submitting their work to the EJIR may expect the highest standards of editorial professionalism. Articles will first be screened for quality and for compliance with the aims and scope of the journal. Given the very large number of submissions, not all material received will be sent out for review. The EJIR adheres to a double-anonymize reviewing policy in which the identity of both the reviewer and author are always concealed from both parties. All referees will be asked to review re-submissions that may be requested of authors by the Editors. Additional reviewers will be brought in where necessary. While the views of external reviewers and members of the Editorial Committee will be both respected and of primary influence on editorial decisions, the Editors alone remain responsible for all eventual decisions to publish (or not) material submitted by authors.

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.

2.2 Authorship

All parties, and yet only those 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 or independent research.

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.

2.3 Acknowledgements

 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. [FOR SINGLE ANONYMIZE JOURNALS: Any acknowledgements should appear first at the end of your article prior to your Declaration of Conflicting Interests (if applicable), any notes and your References.]

2.3.1 Third party submissions
Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:

• Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input
• Identify any entities that paid for this assistance
• Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc. Where appropriate, Sage reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.

Where appropriate, Sage reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.

2.4 Funding

European Journal of International Relations 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

European Journal of International Relations encourages authors to include a declaration of any conflicting interests and recommends you review the good practice guidelines on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.

2.6 Editor conflict of interest policy

The Editors will refrain from submitting as author or co-author any material to the EJIR during their period on the editorial team. The only exception to this rule will be editorials or introductions to any special issue which might emerge. While submissions from departmental colleagues or students will be accepted as submissions, these will be delegated to members of the Editorial Committee for any decision concerning editorial rejection, review or publication. Editors will not assume primary responsibility for submissions from former PhD students or co-authors/research collaborators unless a period of at least five years has elapsed.

The embargo on submissions applies equally to all members of the Joint Management Committee that is responsible for the journal, including the appointment of Editors. 
 

2.7 Research Data

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

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3. Publishing Policies

3.1 Publication ethics

Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. In turn authors will be held responsible for academic integrity and publication ethics. 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

European Journal of International Relations 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 and originality

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. The journal also fully understands that authors build on previously published work. Authors should fully and transparently account for the relationship between their submission and previously published work and/or work under submission elsewhere in a cover letter to the Editors that accompanies the submission process. While originality depends upon the theoretical claims and the findings as well as on the originality of the data, the EJIR shares with other journals the '50% rule' whereby on balance at least half or more of the content of the new submission must be original relative to previously published work and/or work under submission elsewhere. Authors should also be fully transparent in the cover letter about earlier rejected (by the EJIR) submissions that might overlap with their current submission. Any 'new' resubmissions are only considered at the explicit invitation and discretion of the Editors.

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

European Journal of International Relations 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.

3.4 Transparency and data access policy

Authors submitting quantitative empirical work must, upon request, be willing to provide datasets to accompany their submissions or give the location of the datasets they are using. Quantitative articles will not be accepted for publication without information enabling access to the original datasets and replication code used to produce all empirical results presented in the paper; this information will be posted publicly upon publication. Please refer to section 4.3 below on how to submit data for publication.

For authors submitting qualitative work, the Editors may occasionally request to see qualitative source material, such as (anonymized) interview transcripts or documents not publicly available, on which a submission to EJIR draws. The Editors act as guarantors of quality, and we believe this should extend to due diligence in terms of checking the authenticity of sources not just for quantitative but also for qualitative data. We will not routinely ask for and check such sources, but reserve the right to do so, in particular when Editors or reviewers have concerns about authenticity. Only materials explicitly referred to in publications will be subject to possible requests for sharing. This material will be treated confidentially by the Editors, and will be shared with reviewers or others only when expressly permitted by the author(s). The Editors understand and accept the need to keep some forms of subject-related data confidential, especially in relation to research council funding ethics and integrity guidelines. 

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4. Preparing your manuscript for submission

The Editors recognise that journal publication can be a frustrating quest and that every journal has its own peculiar house style. Authors submitting new material will not be required to adhere strictly to all details of the EJIR 'house style', e.g. headings, referencing, and bibliographies, until the article has been in principle accepted for publication. The Editors do, however, insist that all required elements of the article be present and that the system of referencing conforms broadly to the Sage Harvard reference style (see below). Authors will be requested to convert fully to house style once an article has been accepted. Failure to do so at this stage may be considered grounds for withdrawing the offer of publication.

4.1 Formatting

The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. Word and (La)Tex templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway. To preserve anonymity, authors should limit where possible citations to their own work. Authors should prepare fully anonymized manuscripts. This includes removing material that may result in identification that is contained in any supplementary files. The "anonymized" version of the manuscript should be stripped of all information that might lead to identification such as acknowledgements to colleagues, to funding agencies, of conference presentations, and so on. This also means that there should be no references to the author's prior work on the topic or other material which could be readily used to identify the author, either in the text or in the list of references. While authors need to exercise discretion in relation to context, should self-citations be necessary to the development of the argument, authors should simply refer to past texts as Author (year .. ab/b/c etc.) unless in their judgement anonymity is well preserved despite the author's name appearing in the references in the text. The full bibliographical reference material may be reinserted in the text and references once the piece has completed the review process and has been accepted for publication.

4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics

To make reviewers' work easier, authors are requested to submit articles with tables and figures embedded in the text to the extent this is practicable in the software chosen. At the final submission/acceptance stage some file formats will nonetheless need to be submitted separately. For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines.

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.

4.3 Supplemental material

Please refer to the journal's transparency and data access policy at 3.4 above. 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.

4.4 Reference style

European Journal of International Relations adheres to the Sage Harvard reference style. View the Sage Harvard guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.

If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the Sage Harvard EndNote output file.

4.5 English language editing services

Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Language Services. Visit Sage Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.

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5. Submitting your manuscript

European Journal of International Relations is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/EJIR to login and submit your article online.

IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created.  For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.

5.1 ORCID

As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized. 

The collection of ORCID IDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this journal. If you already have an ORCID ID you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID ID will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID ID is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.

If you do not already have an ORCID ID please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.

5.2 Information required for completing your submission

You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system 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 uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant). You will also require an abstract of not more than 250 words.

5.3 Permissions

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.

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6. On acceptance and publication

6.1 Sage Production

Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be made available to the corresponding author via our editing portal Sage Edit or by email, and corrections should be made directly or notified to us 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.

6.2 Online First publication

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.

6.4 Promoting your 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.

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7. Further information

 Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the European Journal of International Relations editorial office as follows: ejir.editor@gmail.com