Author Guidelines

• Peer review process
• Submission of manuscripts
• Publication ethics
• Authorship and AI tools
• Open access
• Gender and diversity
• Name change policy
• Conflict of interests
• Policy on reproducing material from an unpublished PhD thesis
• Permission to reproduce figures and extracts

Peer review process

All submissions to the journal are initially reviewed by the editorial team. Manuscripts may be rejected without peer review at this stage if it is felt that they are unlikely to pass the peer review process or are not within the journal’s scope. Otherwise, manuscripts are sent out for anonymous peer review, usually to a minimum of two independent reviewers. We aim to make the initial decision within 7–10 working days and we aim to review all submissions deemed appropriate for the journal within 6–8 weeks.

Submission of manuscripts

Please submit your manuscript to the journal’s online submission system. Authors will be asked to upload the manuscript, an abstract of no more than 200 words and a biography of around 120 words.

Any other material they would like to communicate to the editor can also be uploaded here. Instructions on how to use the online system can be found in the ScholarOne User Guide. If you have any queries relating to your submission, please contact Joanne Maher at [email protected].

Submission types

Research articles

Research articles should make an original contribution to our understanding of policy issues and debates in global affairs and international relations. They should be theoretically informed and methodologically rigorous, and should provide significant and original analytically-driven insights into real-world problems in a way that is accessible to the wider field of international relations as well as policy practitioners. We welcome submissions that make novel theoretical arguments, present original and significant empirical findings and engage with pertinent policy issues. We expect all articles to have relevance to both our academic and practitioner readerships. For this reason, submissions that advance purely empirical findings or rely heavily on statistical models and quantitative methods are unlikely to be considered for publication.

Research articles are 7-9,000 words, including footnotes. Submissions that exceed or fall under the word limit will receive a technical rejection. All submissions should be original and should not be under consideration elsewhere.

Special issues and special sections

The editors will consider proposals for special issues (12–15 research articles, excluding a guest-editorial introduction) and special sections (8–10 research articles, excluding a guest-editorial introduction). Proposals should include the following information:

• The fit of the proposed special issue/section with the aims and scope of International Affairs, and how it builds on previously published research in the journal;
• The scholarly puzzle/gap/debates that it aims to address. Proposals that do not make a clear original contribution to the broader scholarship (e.g. beyond making empirical insights into individual case-studies) will be rejected;
• The theoretical or conceptual framework of the special issue/section, and how it will inform each individual submission. Proposals that do not demonstrate how each manuscript engages with the overall theoretical/conceptual framework set out by the guest-editors will be rejected.
• A table of contents including abstracts and a biographical statement for each contributor. Each contribution should follow the usual guidelines for research articles, with the exception of the guest-editorial introduction.
• The editors will reject proposals that do not ensure sufficient diversity across the proposal and among the guest-editors of gender, seniority, and global South institutional representation.
• The relevance of the proposal to the wider readership of International Affairs, including practitioners and policy experts.
• Anticipated timeline for submission. Please note that each manuscript submitted as part of a special issue/section will be sent out for a double-blinded anonymous peer review as per standard research articles.

The journal’s editors will consult with the editorial board about the merit of the proposal and may request the guest-editors to provide more information or to further refine some aspect of the proposal. The editors’ decision to accept the submission of a special issue/section does not guarantee the outcome of the peer review of each individual manuscript. Guest-editors are strongly encouraged to perform a rigorous internal peer review before the manuscripts are submitted to International Affairs.

If you have any questions about these guidelines, or wish to submit a proposal, please email the co-editors-in-chief of International Affairs, Rita Floyd ([email protected]) and Asaf Siniver ([email protected]).

Policy Papers

The submission of Policy Papers on ScholarOne is currently suspended while the editorial team considers their future development.

Early Career Diversity Initiative

We hope to encourage applications from early career scholars (up to 5 years post-PhD) who are based or were trained in global South institutions. To be considered, please state in your cover letter why you feel that this initiative will be beneficial to you.

How does it work?

Please submit your manuscript to the journal’s online submission system as you would with any other article. During the submission process, please indicate that you (and your co-authors) would like to be considered for the Early Career Diversity Initiative.

If your article meets our desk review criteria it will go straight through to anonymous peer review and will not qualify for the initiative. If your article is assessed to require support, fits the remit of the journal and you qualify for the process you will be selected and introduced to a mentor from one of the journal’s editorial boards if someone with appropriate expertise is available.

If you are selected, this mentorship will aim to help build your publishing knowledge as an early career scholar and improve your article’s theoretical framing, policy-relevance, citations and overall structure. We will try, to the best of our abilities, to pair any successful applicants with a member of the board who has significant experience working on the topic they are engaging with. It is important to stress that participation in International Affairs’s Early Career Diversity Initiative does not guarantee that an article will be accepted, as it will be subject to our standard reviewing and selection process, including anonymous peer review, when it is formally re-submitted.

If you have any queries about applying to the Early Career Diversity Initiative, please contact Joanne Maher at [email protected].

Best Article Award

The International Affairs Best Article Award recognizes a research article that is methodologically rigorous, makes an innovative theoretical contribution, and advances academic debates and policy insights in a significant and original way. All research articles published in the previous volume year are automatically considered for the award. The winner of the Best Article Award will receive a £100 voucher for OUP books.

Book reviews

The International Affairs book reviews section covers the latest scholarship across the whole field of International Relations, from the theoretical to the policy-focused and from the regional to the global. Up to 40 books are reviewed in each issue of the journal. A book review should inform the reader of the book’s content, quality and place in the overall context of its field. Criticism is healthy, provided that it is well supported.

Book reviews should usually be 700–900 words long. A review of two books should be approximately 900–1000. Reviews should be written in accordance with the journal’s House style.

If you are interested in reviewing a forthcoming or recently published book, please contact Mariana Vieira at ([email protected]). We cannot guarantee that offers to review books will be successful, but provided the book is topical, current and interesting from an IR perspective, we are usually able to meet your requests. We also accept unsolicited book reviews.

Please submit the completed review to the journal’s online submission system.

Publication Ethics

Authors should observe high standards with respect to publication ethics as set out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Falsification or fabrication of data, plagiarism, including duplicate publication of the authors' own work without proper citation, and misappropriation of the work are all unacceptable. Any cases of ethical misconduct will be treated seriously and will be dealt with in accordance with the COPE guidelines.

International Affairs is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Falsification or fabrication of data, plagiarism, including duplicate publication of the authors’ own work without proper citation, and misappropriation of the work are all unacceptable. Any cases of ethical misconduct will be treated seriously and will be dealt with in accordance with the COPE guidelines.

Authorship and AI tools

In line with the COPE position on the use of AI tools such as ChatGPT in research publications, it is the policy of International Affairs that:

• AI tools cannot meet the requirements of authorship because they are a non-legal entity, and as such they cannot claim responsibility for the submitted work nor assert the presence or absence of conflict of interest.
• Authors who use AI tools in any stage of the writing of the manuscript must disclose on the ScholarOne system what AI tools were used, in what capacity, and in what portions of the manuscript.
• Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, even those produced by AI tools, and as such are liable to any breach of COPE guidelines.

Authors are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the COPE Position Statement on Authorship and AI Tools.

Open Access

International Affairs offers the option of publishing under either a standard licence or an open access licence. Please note that some funders require open access publication as a condition of funding. If you are unsure whether you are required to publish open access, please do clarify any such requirements with your funder or institution.

Should you wish to publish your article open access, you should select your choice of open access licence in our online system after your article has been accepted for publication. You will need to pay an open access charge to publish under an open access licence.

Details of the open access licences and open access charges.

OUP has a growing number of Read and Publish agreements with institutions and consortia which provide funding for open access publishing. This means authors from participating institutions can publish open access, and the institution may pay the charge. Find out if your institution is participating.

Gender and Diversity

International Affairs is committed to improving the gender balance and diversity of the International Relations discipline. We expect guest-editors to keep the gender balance of authors in mind in any special issue and special section proposal, as well as to include an appropriate institutional and geographical mix. We also encourage any submitting author to take gender balance into account in their references.

Name change policy

International Affairs is committed to working with authors who wish to update their name and/or pronouns following article publication and will make such changes upon request.

To update their article(s), authors should contact OUP directly at [email protected]. OUP and International Affairs will respect authors’ privacy throughout the process, and the changes will be made without requiring a correction notice. You can read more about our name change policy on OUP’s Changes to published content page.

Conflict of Interests

Each author should reveal any financial interests or connections, direct or indirect, or other situations that might raise the question of bias in the work reported or the conclusions, implications, or opinions stated—including pertinent commercial or other sources of funding for the individual author(s) or for the associated department(s) or organization(s), personal relationships, or direct academic competition. When considering whether you should declare a conflicting interest or connection please consider this test: Is there any arrangement that would embarrass you or any of your co-authors if it was to emerge after publication and you had not declared it?

Policy on reproducing material from an unpublished PhD thesis

International Affairs will consider submissions containing material that has previously formed part of a PhD or other academic thesis which has been published according to the requirements of the institution awarding the qualification. In accordance with COPE guidelines,  in such cases should a manuscript be accepted for publication, it must include a footnote which indicates the extent to which it draws on the author’s unpublished thesis: “Generally, “a thesis consists solely of unpublished work and if the author owns the copyright, they may subsequently publish thesis material regardless of whether the thesis is freely available via a university’s or research institution’s repository or has a licence allowing reuse (such as a Creative Commons licence). If any part of the thesis has coauthors, they must be in agreement with the decision to submit it for publication. The thesis should be acknowledged as the source of the work and cited in the publication.”

Permission to reproduce figures and extracts

In order to reproduce any third party material in an article—including tables, figures or images—authors must obtain permission from the copyright holder and comply with any requirements the copyright holder may have pertaining to this reuse. When seeking to reproduce any kind of third party material authors should request the following:

• non-exclusive rights to reproduce the material in the specified article and journal;
• electronic rights, preferably for use in any form or medium;
• the right to use the material for the life of the work; and
• world-wide English-language rights.

Further guidelines on clearing permissions can be found on the OUP Rights and Permissions page.