Scottish Journal of Political Economy

Published on behalf of the Scottish Economic Society

Edited by:
Robert A. Hart, Andrew Hughes-Hallett and Campbell Leith

Print ISSN: 0036-9292
Online ISSN: 1467-9485
Frequency: Five times a year
Current Volume: 57 / 2010
ISI Journal Citation Reports® Ranking: 2008: 159/209 Economics; 69/99 Political Science
Impact Factor: 0.435

TopAuthor Guidelines

The following notes are meant as a guideline for authors when preparing manuscripts for submission to the Scottish Journal of Political Economy.

1. To be acceptable for publication, authors should make a substantial contribution to the subject and produce a technically well crafted paper. No paper will be rejected solely on the grounds of being too technical or too applied. To assist the general reader, the Editors require that authors take care to motivate their work and to communicate their contribution in a clear manner.

Manuscripts submitted for publication should be sent by email to sjpe@stir.ac.uk. Only documents in standard pdf or Microsoft Word format should be sent. All articles must be typed on one side of A4 paper only using double spacing throughout (including any footnotes or lists of references). In general, articles should not exceed 7,500 words. Overlong papers will be returned without consideration. Contributors are also asked to send an abstract, not exceeding 100 words, a list of keywords (20 characters each) indicating the contents of the article AND the relevant Journal of Economic Literature classification number(s).

2. References should be indicated in the text by the surname of the author(s) with the year of publication. References to more than one publication by an author in the same year should be distinguished alphabetically with small letters. The abbreviated author-and-date reference should be placed in parentheses unless the name forms part of the text. The relevant page(s) may be given if necessary, e.g.,

(Miller, 1991, p 3); (Allen and Gale, 1994a); Fuerbach (1989) has shown that.....

If no person is names as author, the name of the appropriate body should be used, e.g., (Department of Employment, 1994).

The full reference list should be typed in alphabetical order, double spaced, on a separate sheet of paper at the end of the article. Journal title should be set out in full and if a book is quoted, the publisher, publisher's town and year of publication should be included, e.g., Wren, C (1996a), Industrial Subsidies: The UK Experience. London: MacMillan, or, Yosha, O (1995), Privatising multi-product banks. Economic Journal, 105, November, pp 1435-1453.]

3. When setting out mathematical equations, contributors are asked to confirm to the conventions adopted in recent articles published in the Scottish Journal of Political Economy. In order to assist the referee, the full mathematical workings necessary for justifying each step of the argument should accompany all articles of a mathematical character. These workings will not be published.

4. Statistical tables should be clearly headed and the reader should be able to understand the meaning of each row or column without hunting in the text for explanations of symbols, etc. Units of measurement, base-dates for index numbers, geographical areas covered and sources should be clearly stated. Authors are fully responsible for the accuracy of the data and for checking their proofs. Whenever they feel that the referee would have difficulty in testing the derivation of their statistics, they should provide supplementary notes on the methods used. These will not be published. Tables should be submitted on separate sheets and numbered consecutively throughout the article.

5. Diagrams, submitted in their final form (as a good quality laser print), should be clearly drawn and accompanied by the basic statistics that were required for the preparation; the axes must be clearly labelled; the reader must be able to understand the diagrams without hunting in the text for explanations. Figures should be drawn on a scale larger than the reproduction required in order to obtain the maximum clarity in reproduction, and any lettering should be of a size that will be clear upon reduction. Laser printer output resolution must be at least 600 dots per inch. Avoid tints if possible. Figure legends should be typed on a separate sheet.

6. Final version of papers accepted for publication should be submitted as a typescript (two copies), and on disk. Details of hardware and software used to produce the disk should be given (e.g., Word 6 for Windows). Please send your submissions to

The Editors,
Scottish Journal of Political Economy,
Department of Economics
University of Stirling
Stirling
FK9 4LA

Comments on Published Articles: Anyone wanting to submit comments on an article previously published in SJPE should initially send a copy to the author, inviting him/her to send the commentator his/her observations, especially to explain any points on which the commentator has misunderstood what the author was saying. The commentator is asked to allow the author a reasonable time to reply before sending anything to the editors, and to enclose any reply which he/she may have received from the author. If the editors accept the Comment for publication, they will send one copy to the original author and give him/her an opportunity to submit a short Reply which will be considered for publication in the same issue of SJPE

Exclusive Licence Form: Authors will be required to sign an Exclusive Licence Form (ELF) for all papers accepted for publication. Signature of the ELF is a condition of publication and papers will not be passed to the publisher for production unless a signed form has been received. Please note that signature of the Exclusive Licence Form does not affect ownership of copyright in the material. (Government employees need to complete the Author Warranty sections, although copyright in such cases does not need to be assigned). After submission authors will retain the right to publish their paper in various media/circumstances (please see the form for further details). To assist authors an appropriate form will be supplied by the editorial office. Alternatively, authors may like to download a copy of the form here