Introduction

News

Advance Online Publication (AOP)

Polity is now utilising our industry leading Advance Online Publication (AOP) service. This service enables us to publish online the final version of a paper, fully citeable and exactly as it will be published in the printed edition. In some instances papers are published AOP a significant number of months before appearing in print.
View Advance Online Publication.

2008 marked the fortieth anniversary of the founding of Polity by political scientists at the University of Massachusetts. To mark the occasion the anniversary issue 40 (4) of the journal included a forum of former editors sharing their observations about the role that the journal has played within the discipline of political science and the distinctive contribution that Polity continues to make.

We are pleased to announce that the winners of the second Polity Prize for the best article published in volume 39 is Kathleen Arnold for her paper Domestic War: Locke’s Concept of Prerogative and Implications for U.S. “Wars” Today. The award was presented at the Northeastern Political Science Association meeting in November 2008. Click here to download a free copy of the winning paper.

Polity Annual Overview July 2007 to June 2008

Polity received 125 manuscripts for the year ending June 30, 2008, the highest total in at least six years. Of those, 10 were accepted (8.1%) and a further 12 (9.7%) were accepted following a revise-and-resubmit review process. Our review process proceeds in two stages. The editor reviews all manuscripts and decides whether to place them under full external review. This initial review process took 6.1 days on average, with a high of 16 days. Full review required on average 81 days to complete (with a high of 220 days). Given our goal of two months to decision, this latter figure is disappointing, although skewed by a couple of manuscripts under review for an unusually long time due to difficulties experienced by the referees. Roughly half of all submissions are in political theory; another third are in American politics. We continue to encourage manuscripts in all fields and are especially interested in submissions in international politics. - Andrew J. Polsky, editor