ISSN 1647-4090
E-ISSN 2184-2078

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

• Scope and policy
• Form and preparation of manuscripts

Political Observer – Revista Portuguesa de Ciência Política (PO-RPCP), is a peer reviewed journal that provides an outlet for an interdisciplinary and international exploration of the meaning, function and impact of political standards. The focus of the journal is on political observation on how political and cultural factors contribute to the formation and expression on how politics is understood and on how these factors have been shaped and changed over time.

Political Observer publishes papers that reflect on social sciences from any relevant discipline, provided they make an original academic contribution to the study of political science. Papers based on research that is primarily ‘instrumental’ (such as market research) or on research designed for the advocacy of a preconceived institutional position will not be accepted. This does not exclude applied research of high academic quality, particularly research that advances methodology. The journal welcomes papers from a wide range of disciplines, including literature, history, geography, religion and sociology, among others social sciences. Comparative perspectives are encouraged, and the journal features regular review essays as well as book reviews.

As an interdisciplinary and international journal, it requires its contributors to write in a clear and readable style. Some issues of the journal may be designed around specific themes. If you wish to propose a special issue on a particular theme, please contact the Editor.

Peer Review Policy:

All articles in this journal have undergone initial editor screening and when selected, are subject to rigorous peer review, based on double-blind refereeing by at least two expert referees, independent and anonymous. Political Observer is committed to peer-review integrity and upholding the highest standards of review.

Complete guidelines for preparing and submitting your manuscript to this journal are provided below.

Please note that this journal publishes manuscripts in Portuguese and English. All articles written in Portuguese should comply with the rules relating to the 2009 Portuguese orthographic agreement.

Political Observer accepts the following types of article: original articles. Book reviews should examine recent literature, being the publication no longer than two years old. Once the articles are submitted to the evaluation process, at no time they may be submitted to other journals.

Preparing Your Paper

Structure

Your paper should be compiled in the following order: title page; abstract; keywords; main text introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion; acknowledgments; declaration of interest statement; references; appendices (as appropriate); table(s) with caption(s); figures; figure captions.

Word Limits

A typical paper for this journal should be no more than 6000 words, inclusive of endnotes and references.

Book reviews should be no more than 2,000 words.

Style Guidelines

Please refer to these guidelines when preparing your paper, rather than any published articles or a sample copy.

Any spelling style is acceptable so long as it is consistent within the manuscript.

Please use single quotation marks, except where ‘a quotation is “within” a quotation’. Please note that long quotations should be indented without quotation marks.

Citations from third-party sources must comply with current copyright laws in accordance with Ethical Standards.

To ensure the integrity of the blind peer-review for submission to this journal, at no time may the author in the main text identify himself or provide any information that allows his identification, under penalty of being excluded from the process.

Endnotes

Endnotes should be avoided.

Block Quotations

Quotations of 40 words or more shall be structured as block quotes, without quotation marks and with (author, year, p. X) at the end.

Tables and Figures

Tables and figures must be numbered (Arabic numerals) and an explanatory title must be added.

Tables and figures should be inserted in editable format, within the text at the appropriate points.

References

Please use the APA style 6th edition, when preparing your paper.

APA style requires both in‐text citations (Author, Year) and a final references list, so for every in‐text citation there must be a full citation in the reference list, and vice versa.

In-text citations must list the author’s last name, date of publication, and page number(s) when applicable (Author1, Year, p. 6; Author2, Year, pp. 31-35; Author3, Year, pp. 5, 7, 18-20).