pubar-review-process

Review Process (pubar-review-process)

Knowing how PAR screens and decides lets you pre-empt the failure modes before submitting. PAR is the ASPA flagship, edited by a team (Editors-in-Chief plus associate/handling editors), and runs double-blind peer review with a strong expectation that every article bridges research and practice.

When to trigger

• Before submitting, to stress-test against desk-rejection grounds
• Choosing the right article type for the route through review
• Interpreting a decision letter and setting expectations
• Understanding what reviewers are instructed to weigh

How PAR review works (verify current specifics on the official page)

1. Double-blind. Reviewers do not know the authors and authors do not know reviewers. Anonymize the manuscript accordingly (see pubar-submission).
2. Editorial desk screening first. The editorial team screens for fit and scope (is it public administration, broadly significant, and does it bridge to practice?), basic rigor, and completeness (incl. an abstract ≤ 150 words and, by revision, Evidence for Practice). Off-fit or niche papers can be returned without external review.
3. External review. Papers passing the desk go to expert public-management reviewers.
4. Decision spectrum: typically reject / major revision / minor revision / accept. The handling editor weighs reviews; the bar is a credible scholarly contribution and a defensible practitioner takeaway.
5. Article-type routing. Scholarly Takes, Conceptualizing PA, Early Career Intel, and Practically Speaking pieces are evaluated against the expectations of their type.

Shape the paper to pass

• Make field-wide PA significance explicit (avoids the "too niche for the flagship" screen).
• Make the practitioner so-what real, not decorative — the Evidence for Practice must follow from the analysis.
• Confirm the paper is PAR-shaped, not JPART/JPAM-shaped (broad + practice-bridging, not pure theory or policy analysis).
• Clear ethics/IRB and human-subjects compliance up front; prepare TOP transparency materials early.
• Write to expert reviewers: anticipate the strongest objection and answer it in the design.

Anti-patterns

• Submitting a pure-theory paper to a practice-bridging flagship (fit screen; try JPART)
• Submitting a policy cost-benefit analysis with no administration contribution (try JPAM)
• A niche study with no field-level significance or honest practitioner stake
• Treating Evidence for Practice as optional boilerplate

Output format

【Desk-screen check】fit / scope / practice-relevance — any red flags?
【Significance】field-wide PA, not niche? [Y/N]
【Practitioner so-what】honest and analysis-backed? [Y/N]
【Article type】Scholarly Take / Conceptualizing PA / Early Career Intel / Practically Speaking
【Realistic outcome】reject / major / minor / (rare) accept
【Next】pubar-submission (or pubar-rebuttal if decided)

What PAR reviewers weigh, by question type

The handling editor and reviewers read each submission against the expectations of its article type and against PAR's research-and-practice mission. Calibrate to whichever lens is decisive, but expect both the scholarly and the practitioner lens to be in the room.

What the paper claims	The check a PAR referee runs first	The fix that earns the benefit of the doubt
A causal effect of a reform	Does the design license the causal word — and the policy advice?	State estimand + assumption; sensitivity analysis; scope the takeaway
A behavioral effect (experiment)	Is it pre-registered, powered, and realistic for public servants/citizens?	Pre-registered estimand, MDE, realistic task, randomization inference
A new construct / measure	Is it valid, reliable, and distinct from neighbors?	Construct validation, reliability, discriminant evidence
A conceptual reframing	Does it change what empirical scholars must now account for?	A portable concept with observable implications, not a relabel
A practitioner takeaway	Does the Evidence for Practice follow from the analysis?	Tie each point to a confirmatory estimate, not an exploratory one

Calibration anchors (hedged)

• The bar is field-wide PA significance plus honest practice relevance; a niche result with no practitioner stake rarely clears the desk at the field's flagship.
• PAR practices methodological breadth — a rigorous qualitative or mixed-methods study is not second-class to a regression. Match the inference standard to the design.
• Exact decision-category language, desk-screen criteria, and the editorial team can change — confirm against the journal's current guidelines before relying on them (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准).

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — peer-review model, article types, editorial team