Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society)

(Statistics in Society)

Published on behalf of the Royal Statistical Society

Edited by:
S. Day and A. Fielding

Print ISSN: 0964-1998
Online ISSN: 1467-985X
Frequency: Quarterly
Current Volume: 173 / 2010
ISI Journal Citation Reports® Ranking: 2008: 23/92 Statistics & Probability; 10/37 Social Sciences, Mathematical Methods
Impact Factor: 1.484

TopAuthor Guidelines

A complete LATEX style file for DOS for submissions to this journal is available to download as a zip archive (92 KB) but it is not compulsory to use it: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/RSSstylefile.zip

Click here to download the style guide in PDF format.

Disclosure of financial and other interests
Some journals have policies requiring authors of submitted papers to declare potential conflicts of interest. The purpose is not to remove the conflict but to publicise it, and to allow readers to form their own conclusions on whether any conflict of interest exists. For many of the papers submitted to the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society this is unlikely to be an issue. However, such interests may take many forms, including financial considerations and situations where one or more of the authors have acted as consultants or advisors (paid or otherwise) to a project relevant to the submitted paper. This does not imply that there is anything wrong with holding such interests or that research published by authors with such interests is thereby compromised. With the aim of encouraging transparency and accountability, however, authors of material submitted to the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society are asked to disclose any financial or other interest that may be relevant and/or would prove an embarrassment if it were to emerge after publication and they had not declared it. The appropriate place for such disclosures is in the covering letter to the Editor. At the Editor's discretion, this information may be printed at the end of the paper if it is published.

General
1. Submissions will only be considered in English. Manuscripts should be submitted via the ScholarOne Manuscripts (formerly known as Manuscript Central) online submission and peer review system for the journal at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jrss, where instructions on how to create an account and how to use the system can be found. Manuscripts must be original contiributions which are not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

2. A covering note should accompany the paper, giving full contact details of the author for correspondence and any other information that is relevant to the submission.

3. If the paper is to be considered for reading at an Ordinary Meeting of the Society, this should be indicated by selecting the correct manuscript type, i.e. 'Paper for reading'. Papers which are not to be considered for reading should be indicated by selecting 'Original article' as the manuscript type.

4. If accepted for publication, the source files of the final version will be required, preferably LaTex or Tex (or a Word document might be suitable), but for simplicity it is recommended that these forms should not be supplied for initial submission: complete .ps or .pdf files (or Word documents) will upload more quickly and easily and are perfectly acceptable.

5. A short summary (no more than about 100 words) should be included at the beginning of the manuscript, together with five or six keywords or key phrases, arranged in alphabetical order, to describe the content of the paper. Although not compulsory, it is helpful for finding referees also to supply these details in completing the submission form. References should not be cited in the summary.

6. The author to whom proofs are to be sent and full postal and e-mail addresses must be clearly stated on the title page. No new material may be introduced at the proof-reading stage.

7. Illustrations and tables can be either embedded within the text near the point of mention or separately at the end of the manuscript. All illustrations (and tables) should be referred to sequentially in the text. If any illustrations are intended to be reproduced in colour, confirmation that the full cost for doing so will be borne by the author must be given.

8. References should not be numbered but should be standardised as follows:

(a) in the text, only the authors' surnames should be given, followed by the year of publication in parentheses (for three or more authors, only the first surname should be given, followed by et al.; the abbreviations ibid., op. cit. and loc. cit. are not used);

(b) at the end of the paper, the references should be listed in alphabetical order of surnames.

Examples for a paper published in conference proceedings, a paper in a journal, a book and a report on the web are as follows:

Andersson, S. A., Madican, D, and Periman, M. D. (1996) An alternative Markov prperty for chain graphs. In Proc. 12th Conf. Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (eds F. V. Jensen and E. Horvitz), pp. 40-48. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann.
Golm, G. T., Halloran, M. E. and Longini I. M. (1998) Semiparametric models for mismeasured exposure information in vaccine trials. Statist. Med., 17, 2335-2352.
Hughes, B. D. (1996) Random Walks and Random Environments, vol. 2, ch. 3. Oxford: Clarendon.
Office for National Statistics (2000) 2001 hard-to-count index. Office for National Statistics, London (Available from http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/pdfs/sc0015.pdf.)

9. Mathematical equations should be typed on separate lines, numbered consecutively and punctuated in the usual way. Matrixes should be indicated by italics and vectors by bold. The development of mathematical expressions, if necessary, should be presented in appendixes with only the relevant equations stated in the main text. The order of brackets in nested expressions is [{()}].

10. Correspondence for publication relating to papers should be received within one year of publication of the original article. Letters should be typed with double spacing and limited to 400 words. The Editors reserve the right to shorten letters.

Copyright Assignment Form
Authors will be required to assign copyright in their papers to the Royal Statistical Society. Copyright assignment is a condition of publication and papers will not be passed to the publisher for production unless copyright has been assigned. To assist authors an appropriate copyright assignment form will be supplied by the editorial office. (Government employees need to complete the Author Warranty sections, although copyright in such cases does not need to be assigned.)

For further information or advice contact the Executive Editor at the Society's address.

OnlineOpen

OnlineOpen is available to authors of primary research articles who wish to make their article available to non-subscribers on publication, or whose funding agency requires grantees to archive the final version of their article. With OnlineOpen the author, the author's funding agency, or the author's institution pays a fee to ensure that the article is made available to non-subscribers upon publication via Wiley InterScience, as well as deposited in the funding agency's preferred archive. For the full list of terms and conditions, see http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/authorresources/onlineopen.html#OnlineOpen_Terms.

Any authors wishing to send their paper OnlineOpen will be required to complete the payment form available from out website at:

http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/onlineopen_elf_rss.pdf

Prior to acceptance there is no requirement to inform an Editorial Office that you intend to publish your paper OnlineOpen if you do not wish to. All OnlineOpen articles are treated in the same way as any other article. They go through the journal's standard peer-review process and will be accepted or rejected based on their own merit.

Read papers as soon as they publish online with Early View

Articles which have been fully copy-edited and peer-reviewed are published online through our Early View feature before the print edition of this journal is published.

Pre-submission English Language Editing
Authors for whom English is a second language may choose to have their manuscript professionally edited before submission to improve the English. A list of independent suppliers of editing services can be found at www.blackwellpublishing.com/bauthor/english_language.asp. Japanese authors can also find a list of local English improvement services at http://www.wiley.co.jp/journals/editcontribute.html. All services are paid for and arranged by the author, and use of one of these services does not guarantee acceptance or preference for publication.