apsr-review-process

Review Process (apsr-review-process)

Knowing how APSR screens and decides lets you pre-empt the failure modes before submitting. APSR is double-anonymous and screens hard at the desk before external review.

When to trigger

• Before submitting, to stress-test against desk-rejection grounds
• Deciding whether to use the Registered Reports (Stage 1) route
• Interpreting a decision letter and setting expectations
• Understanding what reviewers are instructed to weigh

How APSR review works

1. Double-anonymous. Reviewers do not know the authors and authors do not know reviewers. Anonymize the manuscript accordingly (see apsr-submission).
2. Desk screening first. Every paper is considered for desk rejection on three grounds:
   • Remit — not research, not political science, out of scope, or not in adequate English.
   • Ethics — plagiarized/unattributed text, or research based on unethical procedures.
   • Substance — missing a key element of an article, insufficiently significant findings, or failure to engage the relevant literature(s).
   • Substantive desk rejections require at least two editors to agree.
3. External review. Papers passing the desk are sent to expert reviewers.
4. Decision categories: reject, accept, or revise and resubmit — where R&R is reserved for papers very close to publishable quality. Strong support from all or nearly all reviewers is generally necessary, but the decision is at the editor's discretion.
5. Review transfer. Anonymized manuscripts/reviews may be forwarded only to journals that also use double-anonymous protocols (an opt-in initiative).

Registered Reports route (prospective designs)

• Submit a Stage 1 package — theory, design, and analysis plan — that is reviewed before data collection/analysis. In-principle acceptance commits the journal to publish regardless of results if you execute the plan. Choose this before you have results (see apsr-topic-selection).

Shape the paper to pass

• Make general significance explicit (avoids "insufficiently significant" desk rejection).
• Engage the relevant literatures, including across subfields (avoids the literature desk-rejection).
• Clear ethics/IRB and human-subjects compliance up front.
• Write to expert reviewers: anticipate the strongest objection and answer it in the design.

Anti-patterns

• Submitting a subfield-only paper to a discipline-wide journal (substance desk rejection)
• Ignoring an obvious related literature (explicit desk-rejection ground)
• Expecting an R&R for a paper that is far from publishable — R&R is for near-ready papers
• Choosing Registered Reports after results exist

Output format

【Desk-rejection check】remit / ethics / substance — any red flags?
【Significance】general enough to clear "insufficiently significant"? [Y/N]
【Literature engaged】incl. cross-subfield? [Y/N]
【Track】standard vs Registered Reports (Stage 1)
【Realistic outcome】reject / R&R / (rare) accept
【Next】apsr-submission (or apsr-rebuttal if decided)

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — peer-review policy, desk-rejection grounds, decision categories, Registered Reports