Thank you for your interest in publishing a policy paper with Strife. We want to help you achieve impact with your academic research in the field of security studies and your unique insights of matters of interest and concern to policymakers.
On this page, prospective contributors will find all the information you will need to determine if the policy paper you have in mind is a good fit for publication with Strife. If, after the first step in the process, we determine your proposed paper is likely to be a good fit, you will also find information on this page that you can use to help ensure technical aspects of the review and copy-editing processes will be efficient—thus your work can be published in time to achieve impact. Please read all information on this page before contacting us to pitch your paper. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us via email at [email protected]
Getting Started with your Submission - Step 1
Please note that the first step in the process—taken only after reading all information on this page—is to contact us via email at [email protected] to pitch what you propose to publish (please Cc [email protected]).
Help us understand how your proposed policy paper might contribute to current policy deliberations in a particular government or international body and why you believe there will be an audience for your paper among policymakers and policymaking professionals involved with those deliberations. Give us some information about your background that we can also use to help us determine how likely it is that policymakers and policymaking professionals will be interested in what you have to say. Please also tell us approximately how long you anticipate your paper will be. If you are planning to develop and submit a lengthy paper, please consider that the editorial process could extend for several weeks. We recognize time is often of the essence when it comes to publication dates for policy papers.
If we approve a submission proposal, we will approach our reviewing process with this in mind. However, as Strife is a volunteer-managed project, we have limited resources and we cannot guarantee that a 20,000-word item will be ready for publication if it needs to be published within a short timeframe, such as a week. Please also note: A favorable decision in reply to a proposal does not guarantee that a paper will be published. For reasons discussed below, editors may reject a paper. Other unique circumstances may also warrant rejection of a paper.
Acceptance Criteria
Before contacting us, please review the following information:
As noted on the About page for this third pillar of the Strife project, the following are the three main items for consideration when we evaluate whether a policy paper is a good fit for publication:
- The work pertains to matters being examined in policy-making deliberations at the time of its submission and it can reasonably be assumed the paper will be of interest to policymakers and policymaking professionals involved in those deliberations
- The work contributes something new—be it new information, novel analysis of information that is already in the public record, and/or novel policy recommendations
- If tailored for consumption by policymakers, the work is also well-suited for an academic audience (i.e., appropriate source referencing to avoid plagiarism)
The maximum word length for a SPP publication is 20,000 words, including notes and reference information. Please note that you do not need to try to meet this length. In some cases, more may be less. In others, more may be needed. Length is at your discretion. Meanwhile, we do expect for your work to demonstrate rigor in one or more of the following areas: Research, analysis of available information, and efforts conceptualizing prescribed measures. This may be difficult to accomplish with a paper that is less than 2,000 words.
As noted on the About page, almost all aspects of matters typically controlled by editors at academic outlets are left at the discretion of SPP contributors—from style guides to structures, to the volume of engagement with other scholars’ works.
Detailed Submission Guidelines - the ‘Fine Print’
Strife is an English language multiformat publication. All submissions should be in English. Further, a submission should be thoroughly proofread before presentation to Strife. Given that a submission may be long, and that this publication is managed by volunteers, the editors may reject a submission if it will require too much work on the part of a copy editor to ensure that it is fit for publication. A prospective contributor who does not possess professional working proficiency with English should request proofreading assistance from parties who do before submitting a lengthy paper.
All submissions should be made via Microsoft Word or Word-readable files.
While a contributor will select a reference style guide that you believe is best suited for your audience (e.g., APA, Chicago, etc.), as well as punctuation and spelling style (e.g. British versus American)—plus date style (e.g., Day Month Year versus Month Day, Year)—you are expected to be consistent in your adherence to style matters throughout your paper.
The matter of whether endnotes or footnotes are utilized in the pdf version of your paper is also at your discretion. Again, whatever you decide, be consistent.
Be mindful that, while SPP content is quite different than most academic publications, we expect contributors to adhere to widely accepted norms in academic publishing. Please be diligent in referencing sources where appropriate. Plagiarism will not be tolerated. If plagiarism is evident to reviewers, a paper will be rejected. If an instance of plagiarism that has not been detected by reviewers is brought to the attention of Strife post-publication, a paper will be removed from our online archives.
Fact-checking is largely the responsibility of contributors. If considerable errors are detectable to reviewers, a paper will be rejected. If significant errors are brought to the attention of editors post-publication, it is possible that a paper may be removed from our archives. If your paper amplifies conspiracy theories, such as “CIA created al-Qa’ida”, as part of attempts to form or in some way support your arguments, it will be rejected. (Note: Examining/critiquing conspiracy theories and cases of mis- or disinformation is certainly acceptable.)
We do not require proof that you have received approval to conduct primary source research if your paper contains information obtained from such research. Meanwhile, we encourage you to provide details about any approvals that you may have received to conduct primary source research if your paper contains data from research that has been approved by an internal review board. If a source identified in your paper contacts us to report that they have been misquoted, or that their comments were quoted or summarized without their consent, we may decide to remove your paper from our archives. We reserve the right to contact a given source to verify accuracy of quoted or summarized comments and/or determine whether you are permitted to reference them.
Appropriate source attributions and captions for all images, artwork, graphs, and other non-textual items should be provided by contributors. Contributors will also need to provide evidence that such items may be published by Strife and at no charge, such as by providing links that may be used to identify an item’s Creative Commons license. If you cannot provide us with reasonable assurances that we may publish such materials, we will not publish them.
Each reviewed and approved submission will be published as a pdf and as an entry on a standalone page within the “Policy Papers” section of the Strife Blog site, www.strifeblog.org (this will help optimize the searchability of terms therein). If a website is later established for SPP publications, content originally published at the blog site will remain there to ensure links to it will remain active. Such content will also be added to the SPP site for archival purposes.
Caveats & Disclaimers
The following disclaimers are applied to all SPP publications: While Strife is a Department of War Studies publication, views expressed in SPP publications do not reflect those of the Department or King’s College London, nor should the publication of any views expressed by SPP contributors be interpreted as an endorsement of them by Strife, the Department or King’s. While editors review and thoroughly scrutinize SPP submissions prior to publication, fact-checking is ultimately the responsibility of contributors and Strife is not responsible for errors and inaccuracies contained in SPP publications. It is a contributor’s responsibility to ensure all identifiable sources in primary source research have provided permission for their remarks to be either quoted or summarized.