Anonymity, Abstract, and Title Page

Given the journal’s use of the double-blind review process, authors must prepare their manuscript anonymously. Aside from the title page (see below) please remove all identifying references: this includes both direct references to yourself and indirect references to colleagues, co-authors, and collaborators that would make it easy for a reader to deduce your identity. If the argument of the manuscript depends upon the citation of your own previous work, then please voice those citations in the third person and include the works in the reference list as you would for any other author.

A significant feature of Interest Groups & Advocacy is the importance placed by the editorial team on ensuring that academic articles published in the journal are accessible and pertinent to practitioners and policy-makers. Please bear this in mind when preparing your manuscript.

The manuscript should be one single document, beginning with a title page that contains the following:

  • the names, full addresses, and institutional affiliation of all authors
  • an abstract of approximately 150-200 words
  • a list of up to 6 keywords for indexing and abstracting

Length

Published articles will be 7,500-9000 words. Only rarely will the journal publish manuscripts longer than 10,000 words (including notes and references). Please do not submit longer manuscripts without first inquiring with the editors.
Pithier practitioner pieces will be especially favoured.

Citations

All submissions should follow the Harvard style of in-text parenthetical citations followed by a complete list of works cited at the end. For any needed clarification of the Harvard style, please consult one of the many online guides to the Harvard style. Please make certain that the list of works cited includes all works cited and has complete bibliographic details.

Notes

Explanatory notes should be kept to an absolute minimum. Final versions of articles must use endnotes, not footnotes.

Style

The primary style goals are clarity and consistency. Authors may use either UK or US spelling, but they must do so consistently. For punctuation, please follow the standards for UK English. This entails:

  • using single inverted commas (rather than double quotation marks) for quotes
  • placing all inverted commas within other punctuation
  • for the grammatical dash, using an en dash with a single space before and after the en dash (rather than an em dash without spaces)

Authors should strive for clarity and concision and should assume a broad, interdisciplinary audience and practitioners. Therefore, manuscripts should explain complex concepts, clarify and introduce special terminology.

Finally, to ease the job of the reviewers, manuscripts should be double-spaced, and with pages numbered consecutively.