Business and Politics

Submission Instructions

Use the Submit an Article link in the right-hand navigation bar, after reading the Policies, also found on the right side of this page.

Final Manuscript Preparation Guidelines for Business and Politics

Articles will be evaluated by the editors to establish whether they fit with the journal's objectives and will then be reviewed by anonymous referees. Authors can expect to be informed of the editors' decision within three months of submission. Accepted articles should follow these formatting guidelines.

This document provides details on copyediting, typesetting, and layout requirements and recommendations pertaining to final manuscript submission to a bepress journal. Authors interested in the technical details of producing quality electronic documents in Adobe PDF should consult the manual:
A Guide to PDF for Scholars Using the bepress System.

Copyediting

The bepress system has been designed to improve the scholarly publication process for authors. Among the many improvements we offer over traditional journals, the most significant is that we have dramatically shortened the period between initial submission and the final publication of a peer-reviewed article. Much of this time savings is due to innovative use of electronic publication. These innovations, however, require subtle, but important changes in the way authors need to prepare accepted manuscripts for electronic publication.

bepress does not copyedit the manuscripts, and with the exception of adding the title page, pagination, and headers/footers, bepress does not make any formatting changes to the submissions. Therefore, authors are their own copyeditors and typesetters. This means that authors need to pay greater attention to the editing and look of their manuscripts than is typically required by print journals, which may do copyediting and typesetting but not, however, without headaches such as the introduction of errors and the need for authors to do careful reviews of page proofs.

Abstracts

Abstracts will be typed or pasted into the relevant form in the submission screen rather than being included in the full text of the article. Abstracts should be <200 words for an article, <80 words for a note.

Formatting Requirements

• Do not include a title page or abstract. (Begin the document with the introduction; a title page, including the abstract, will be added to your paper by the bepress system.)
• Do not include page numbers, headers, or footers. (The bepress system will add the appropriate header with page numbers).
• Write your article in English (unless the journal expressly permits non-English submissions).
• Submit your manuscript, including tables, figures, appendices, etc., as a single file (Word, RTF, or PDF files are accepted).
• Page size should be 8.5 x 11-inches.
• All margins (left, right, top and bottom) should be 1.5 inches (3.8 cm).
• Single space your text.
• Use a single column layout with both left and right margins justified.
• Font:
  • Main Body — 12 pt.Times or the closest comparable font available
  • Footnotes — 10 pt. Times or the closest comparable font available.
• If figures are included, use high-resolution figures, preferably encoded as encapsulated PostScript (eps).
• Copyedit your manuscript.
• Use the following document structure (remember there is no title page):
  1. Introduction (titling this section is optional)
  2. Subsequent sections including all tables, figures, and footnotes referenced in the text.
  3. Colophon
     After the concluding section and before any appendix, please title a section as "Colophon" and include in it any acknowledgements together with your email address and regular mail address. The colophon is also where you can put information about programs used, or other information about the author(s) and the paper. Please note that you should not give acknowledgements as a footnote on the first page of your manuscript.
  4. Appendices (if any)
  5. Bibliography/References
• Notes should presented as footnotes.

Style Guide

Footnotes should state the author's last name and the year of publication, adding page numbers when quoting from or referring to a particular passage (e.g., Smith (1984), p. 43.). The footnote may include a brief comment that helps the reader to understand the source's relationship to the article's argument.

The bibliography/reference list should contain the complete facts of publication for each source cited, using the author-date form shown in the following examples. Provide first names (instead of initials) of authors when available. Show sources primarily in alphabetical order by the first author's surname and secondarily in chronological order with the earliest date first.

Please use the following formats.

Book: Baron, David P. 1996. Business and Its Environment, 2nd edition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Edited Collection: Aggarwal, Vinod K. ed. 1998. Institutional Designs for a Complex World: Bargaining, Linkages, and Nesting. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Chapter in Multi-author Collection: Gale, Jeffrey and Rogene A. Bucholz. 1987. "The Political Pursuit of Competitive Advantage: What Business Can Gain from Government." In Business Strategy and Public Policy, edited by Alfred Marcus, Allen M. Kaufman, and David R. Beam. New York: Quorum Books.

Journal Article: Tiller, Emerson H. 1998. "Controlling Policy by Controlling Process: Judicial Influence on Regulatory Policy." Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization 14 (1): 114-135.

Working Paper: Bell, Linda and Richard Freeman. 1994. Why Do Americans and Germans Work Different Hours. Working Paper 4804. Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research.

Paper Presented at a Meeting: Dobson, Wendy. 1995. "Pacific Triangles: U.S. Economic Relationships with Japan and China." Paper presented at the Industry Canada Conference, December, Vancouver, B.C.

Government Document: United Nations. 1995. World Investment Report 1995: Transnational Corporations and Competitiveness. footnote: United Nations (1985).

Newspaper or Magazine Articles: No reference listing is needed. Include relevant information in a footnote: New York Times, 15 September 1998, p. A1. Author's names and article titles are omitted except when an author prefers to add them because they enhance understanding of points made in the text or the source.

Publication Distributed Electronically: In addition to the usual information, please list the service name, the name of the vendor providing the service, and any identifying numbers.

Unpublished Interview: No reference listing is needed. Include relevant information only in a footnote: Author's interview with Adam Smith, Washington, D.C., August 1998. If the interviewee was promised anonymity, describe the informant as precisely as possible, for example, as a member of a category of individuals, without identifying the person.

Unpublished Manuscript: Wu, Abraham H. 1994. Contributions, Lobbying, and Participation. Unpublished manuscript, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.

Ph.D. DISSERTATION: de Figueiredo, John M. 1997. The Politics of the Court and the Strategy of the Firm. Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley.

In the text of the article, please use the following conventions.

Spelling. Use the American spelling of words such as "color" and "analyze." When referring to the United States, use "U.S." only in the adjectival form (e.g., the United States v. the U.S. economy).

Capitalization. Use capital letters sparingly. For example: the Clinton Administration v. the administration; South China Sea v. continental Europe; etc.

Punctuation. Observe the following guidelines:

• Periods/full points. In general, do not use full points for acronyms (e.g., APEC or SEC). Do use them, with a comma, for abbreviated Latin phrases such as e.g., i.e., and viz. Always use only one space after a period, even at the end of a sentence.
• Quotations marks. Use quotation marks for quoted materials shorter than fifty words or two sentences (whichever is smaller). Quoted materials longer than this should be indented and should not use quotation marks. Place all periods and commas inside quotation marks.
• Dashes. Use an unbroken em dash (—) as opposed to two hyphens or any other convention, and do not use spaces on either side of the em dash. (In general, when using Latin abbreviations such as "e.g." or "i.e.", especially to substantiate a point at the end of a sentence, place the clause within parentheses rather than using an em dash). Use an en dash (-) to separate numbers that indicate a range (e.g., 1939-45 or pp. 101-19); in ranges, use minimum numbers beyond two digits (e.g., pp. 21-25, 167-73, or 196-201).

Numerals. In general, spell out numbers including and below one hundred, and for large round numbers above that one thousand, ten million, etc. Use numerals for specific measures (e.g., $55 or 85 km) and percentages (e.g., 50 percent), using the percent sign only in tables and figures.

Dates. Set out specific dates in day-month-year format, omitting commas (e.g., 15 August 1999). When referring to a particular decade, do not use an apostrophe (e.g., 1990s). Spell out centuries (e.g., eighteenth century, not 18th century).

For questions of style not answered here, please refer to The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th ed., or contact the editorial office of Business and Politics.

Early Electronic Offprints: Corresponding authors can now receive their article by e-mail as a complete PDF. This allows the author to print up to 50 copies, free of charge, and disseminate them to colleagues. In many cases this facility will be available up to two weeks prior to publication. Or, alternatively, corresponding authors will receive the traditional 50 offprints. A copy of the journal will be sent by post to all corresponding authors after publication. Additional copies of the journal can be purchased at the authorÕs preferential rate of £15.00/$25.00 per copy.

Publication Procedure

Articles accepted for publication will first be edited by the Business and Politics editorial staff. Papers will then be sent to the first-named author for revisions, if necessary. Authors are asked to return their revisions within one week of receiving the edited article.

Page proofs will be sent to the first-named author for review. It is strongly preferred that the authors make any substantial revisions only during the earlier editing phase, as dictated by the prohibitive expense and effort involved in making corrections at the proofs stage.

Further inquiries or correspondence may be directed to:

Professor Vinod K. Aggarwal
Editor-in-Chief, Business and Politics
802 Barrows Hall #1970
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California 94720-1970
USA
Tel: +1 510 643 1732
Fax: +1 510 643 1746
Email: