eper European Political Economy Review

Guide for Reviewers

1) The reviewing process is done anonymously on the basis of proposals, which

have previously been accepted by the EPERs executive committee.

2) Each article has to be reviewed by at least two and no more than three different
reviewers.

3) Comments should have a length of 2 to 5 pages. They have to be sent back by

the specified deadline to the EPER executive committee at
eperonline@yahoo.com (so that they are available to the editors) and to both
members of the executive committee responsible for the reviewing process.

4) The two-step reviewing procedure has been adopted, starting from the second
issue. It basically implies that the reviewers check every submission twice: in the
original submitted version, and in the revised version, after the suggested
changes have been incorporated by authors. The procedure is described in more
detail below.

5) As for the original submission, several criteria should be checked, together with
an overall judgement on the quality of an article, and listed in the following order:

a) Overall judgement

What is an overall quality of the article in question? Which of the following

statement best describes the course of action you would recommend:

1) accept without changes (except from minor grammatical changes),

2) revise and resubmit (with minor changes),
3) revise and resubmit (with major changes),
4) reject (implying that altered re-submissions will not be accepted).

b) Formal presentation

Does the article respect the style guide?

Please make sure that the submitted article conforms to the EPER style
guide (cf. attachment). This is actually quite important as the authors will be
asked to revise their submissions from the point of view of style
requirements as well as the comments about substance.
 General presentation: is the division into sections and subsections
meaningful, are there too little or too many footnotes, not enough graphs
and/or tables?

Language: does the article have to be rewritten or does it need to be proof

read by a native speaker in part or in its entirety?

b) Originality

Although we do not require a formal transfer of the copyright to the article, a

submission of a paper implies to contain an original unpublished work, not
submitted for publication elsewhere. If you think the paper has already been
published somewhere else, you should definitely mention that in your report.

c) Content of the paper and methodology

Please give a brief summary of the argument of the paper, as you

understand it.
Does the text formulate its research interest in a sufficient clarity?
Is the theoretical/empirical research interest convincingly argued?
Is the research question answered in the text?
Does the paper take into account relevant research already undertaken in
this field? (name missing references that you think should be mentioned)
Are you convinced by the empirical findings of the research (if not, please
mention where to find the counter position)?
Is the research methodology adequate for the question studied?
Is it applied properly?
Has an adequate case been selected to answer the research question?
Does the paper draw conclusions from its findings, e.g. for further academic
research and/or for policy making?
Do open questions remain which the author should answer in this paper?

d) Structure of the paper

Is the text coherent?

Is the argument logical, i.e. put in a logical order? Is the text sufficiently
focused? (e.g. suggest which parts should be dropped or further elaborated).
Are the titles and sub-titles correctly summing up the content?
Does the abstract sum up the argument of the paper in a convincing way?

e) Detailed comments

Line by line, or paragraph by paragraph.

6) After the submission is revised by the author

Any submission that does not conform to the above instructions will be returned
together with your comments to the author and a full conformity with the style guide
will be demanded. After the author incorporates suggested changes, regarding both
the style and the content, the revised version of the paper will be again send to the
reviewers. They should then check that all their comments were successfully
incorporated and the article now conforms with the style guide. If there are still points
that have not been taken into account, the reviewer can suggest the draft to be
returned to the author again and its publication delayed for one issue. The
responsibility for suggesting this lies with the reviewers; the final decision is made by
the executive committee.

When both the factual points as well as the style guide comments are incorporated, a
*.doc file of the page proofs will be sent by e-mail to the author. Proofs should then
be corrected carefully by the authors as the responsibility for detecting any remaining
errors lies with them.

Please note that this is an indicative guide. Please feel free to add any further
aspects that are relevant for the paper you are reviewing.

Attachment: EPER Styleguide

 eper European Political Economy Review
Notes for Contributors (Styleguide)

Papers should be submitted in accordance with the following

guidelines. Papers that do not adhere to them will not be accepted.

1. Originality: The paper has to contain original and unpublished

work, not submitted for publication elsewhere.

2. File Format: Papers should be submitted as Microsoft Word files

(*.doc) or as Rich Text Format files (*.rtf).

3. General Format: Papers should be written in English, single

spaced (Times New Roman, 12 point), with wide margins (4.7cm
on top, left and right side, 5.5cm at bottom).

4. Paragraph Format: Paragraphs should be justified. A blank line

should precede each Paragraph. Paragraphs should not be
indented (i.e. there should be no leading blanks in front of a
paragraph).

5. Length: Papers should be no longer than 50,000 characters,

footnotes included, excluding the bibliography.

6. Tables and figures should be numbered consecutively and

incorporated in the text. Tables and figures should not be wider
than 11.6cm (i.e. they should not extend into the margins). All text
should be in Times New Roman, size 9-12 points.

7. Headlines should be short, using bold letters (Times New Roman,

12 point) and Arabic numbers (e.g.: 1. Introduction, 2.
Methodology, 2.1 Survey, 2.2 Interviews, 3. ). Headlines should
be preceded by two, and followed by one blank line(s).

8. Footnotes should be kept to a minimum and numbered

consecutively throughout the text with superscript Arabic
numerals. Footnotes should have a hanging indent (0.5cm) and
appear in smaller letters (Times New Roman, 10 point).
9. Quotes: Quotes of more than 50 characters length should be in
smaller font (Times New Roman, 10 point), should be indented on
both sides by 0.5cm, and should be proceeded and followed by
one blank line (10 point). Single Quotation Marks (xxx, not xxx)
should be used.

10. Authors' Details: The first footnote (which should not be included
in the consecutive numbering of footnotes, but use an asterisk
instead, placed at the end of the title) should give the title, name,
position and institutional affiliation of the authors(s) (however not
the address or e-mail).

11. Contact Information: A separate page should list the name,

institutional affiliation, address, telephone and fax numbers, and
the e-mail address of the corresponding author, as well as the
number of characters (including all footnotes, excluding the
bibliography).

12. Abstract and Keywords etc.: The first page of the actual article
should contain following information: (a) the title, (b) the name(s)
of the author(s); (c) an abstract of not more than 100 words, (d)
two to five key words (see for example JEL classifications:
www.aeaweb.org/journal/elclasjn.html). The introduction should
start on the second page.

13. Acknowledgements and information on grants received can be

given in a final section (after the conclusion, before the
bibliography).

14. References to publications should follow the Harvard referencing

system and be presented in the text (not in footnotes) in the
following way: 'Smith (1997) explains that...', or 'This case has
been studied previously (Smith 1992: 21)'.

15. Bibliography: The list of references should appear in a

Bibliography at the end of the main text and be listed in
alphabetical order by author's name. The Bibliography should
have a hanging indent (0.5cm) and appear in smaller letters
(Times New Roman, 10 point). Each reference is to be followed by
one blank line.
In the Bibliography, References should appear as follows:

For monographs
 VAN EVERA Stephen (1997), Guide to Methods for Students
of Political Science, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press.

For contributions to collective works

TOOZE Roger (1999), "International Political Economy in an
Age of Globalization", in: BAYLIS John, SMITH Steve (Eds.),
The Globalization of World Politics. An Introduction to
International Relations, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp.
202-230.

For periodicals
HALL Peter (1993), " Policy paradigms, social learning and the
state. The case of economic policy-making in Britain ",
Comparative Politics, 25 (3), April, pp. 275-296. [volume
(number), month, pages].
Note that journal titles should not be abbreviated.

For papers published online

RADAELLI Claudio M. (2000), "Whither Europeanization?
Concept stretching and substantive change", European
Integration online Papers (EIoP), 4 (8),
http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/2000-008a.htm [volume (number),
month, web address].

16. Proofs: A Microsoft Word (*.doc) file of the page proofs will be
sent by e-mail to the author. Proofs should be corrected carefully,
the responsibility for detecting errors lies solely with the author(s).
Corrections should be restricted to instances in which the proof is
at variance with the manuscript. No deviations from the version
accepted by the editors are permissible without the prior and
explicit approval by the editors.
17. Rejection: Any manuscript that does not conform to these
instructions will be rejected.
18. Template: A word-template with the required style can be
downloaded at www.eper.org. We require authors to use this
template.