Submissions

Author Guidelines

General guidelines

• The IJPS accepts submissions from qualified researchers and senior practitioners. Authors do not need to be affiliated with an institution at the time of submission; unaffiliated authors should identify themselves as “Independent Researchers.”
• The IJPS has the right to publish, not publish, add, or omit any part of a submission that conflicts with the IJPS’s publication policies.
• Submissions that do not meet the journal’s requirements may be declined. Reasons for a submission to be declined include (but are not limited to) submissions that address topics outside of the journal’s scope, fail to follow the IJPS author guidelines, are not written in proper English, or fail to meet IJPS ethical standards.
• If an author disagrees with the results of a desk review or peer review, they may submit an appeal to the managing editor with a detailed explanation and evidence supporting their position.
• Submissions that are published but subsequently found to contain errors or ethical violations may be corrected and republished—in coordination with the author(s)—or retracted and reported to the authors’ affiliated institution.
• An author has the right to withdraw their submission from the IJPS at any point during the submission process. Note, when an author submits their manuscript to the IJPS, they declare their intent to have their manuscript published in the IJPS and vow they are not submitting simply to get feedback on a manuscript they intend to submit elsewhere. Authors suspected of abusing their right to withdraw may be reported to their affiliated institution.

Author agreement

By submitting their work to the IJPS, authors agree to abide by every provision of the author agreement defined herein. Authors who do not abide by every element of the agreement may be prohibited from submitting manuscripts to the IJPS and may be reported to their affiliated institutions.

The IJPS will investigate and take appropriate actions to address author misconduct, including acts of plagiarism, misrepresenting author affiliations, manipulating citations, manipulating or fabricating data, manipulating peer review, failing to disclose conflicts of interest, or failing to comply with IJPS policies, including but not limited to those described below. Investigative processes and appropriate actions will be informed by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines (https://publicationethics.org/). We encourage all authors to review COPE guidance to ensure they are following ethical standards when conducting research and preparing manuscripts.

• Professional conduct:
  • Authors must conduct themselves in a professional manner at all times. The IJPS will not tolerate threats, hostility, or harassment directed at editors, editorial board members, peer reviewers, other authors, or anyone associated with the journal.

• Duplicate publication:
  • Submissions must not have been previously published and must not be under review by another publication when they are submitted to IJPS.

• Redundant or overlapping publication:
  • All submissions must be original manuscripts that do not draw substantially from a previously published work and do not represent overly fragmented data or research being published in multiple manuscripts.

• Text recycling:
  • According to COPE, text recycling—also known as self-plagiarism—occurs when an author uses verbatim text from one of their own previously published works without properly citing the previous work (https://publicationethics.org/text-recycling-guidelines). Text recycling is prohibited by the IJPS except when minimal and difficult to avoid (e.g., when describing an identical research method employed for multiple studies). The IJPS will take measures to identify text recycling and request revisions or reject submissions that contain recycled material.

• Plagiarism:
  • According to COPE, plagiarism occurs “when somebody presents the work of others (data, words or theories) as if they were his/her own and without proper acknowledgment” (https://publicationethics.org/category/keywords/plagiarism). The IJPS will take measures to identify plagiarism and reject submissions that contain plagiarized material.

• Copyright:
  • Authors must own the copyright for the materials they submit. If another entity—such as the author’s employer—owns the copyright, the author must provide proof of permission to submit and publish the materials in the IJPS.
  • Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license. Authors are permitted to deposit all versions of their manuscripts in institutional or subject repositories.
• Permissions:
  • Prior to submitting their manuscript to the IJPS, authors are responsible for ob­taining all necessary permissions from copyright holders for their use of illustrations, tables, figures, or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere.

• Prohibited content:
  • Authors are responsible for ensuring their submissions do not contain any language that is libelous, is an unauthorized disclosure, violates the privacy of research subjects, or may otherwise put the author or journal in legal jeopardy.

• Attribution:
  • All text, images, and ideas that are not the original product of the author(s) should be properly attributed to the originator.

• Sources cited:
  • Submissions should cite relevant, timely, validated, and unbiased sources.
  • Citation manipulation—including excessive self-citation or prearrangements to cite other authors’ published works—is prohibited.

• Ethical research:
  • Within their submissions, authors must describe their adherence to appropriate ethical standards when conducting their research: for human subjects, authors must confirm they received informed consent or review committee approval; for animal subjects, authors must confirm they complied with standards of care or obtained review committee approval.

• Data availability and reproducibility:
  • Authors are encouraged to share their research data or make their data available upon reasonable request, unless doing so would present privacy protection, ethical, or security concerns.

• Proper identification of authors and non-author contributors:
  • All authors must have agreed to have their name attached to the final version of the submission and must have agreed to have it published in the IJPS.
  • All individuals listed as an author on a submission must have made a substantial intellectual contribution to the manuscript, and all individuals who made a substantial intellectual contribution to the manuscript must be named as an author. A contribution may include conceiving the idea; designing the study; acquiring, interpreting, or analyzing the data; and writing or critically reviewing the submission.
  • Guest authors (gift or courtesy authorships) and ghost authors are prohibited.
  • Contributors who do not meet the requirements to be identified as an author may be acknowledged in the Acknowledgments section.

• Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools:
  • Authors must disclose if AI tools were used to help create a submission, including (but not limited to) helping authors collect or analyze data, create graphs or images, or write any portion of the submission. Please also see COPE’s position statement on “Authorship and AI tools” (https://publicationethics.org/cope-position-statements/ai-author).

• Conflicts of interest:
  • Authors should clearly declare any potential conflicts of interest—including current or former familial, academic, financial, business, legal, political, religious, ethical, or other circumstances or relationships—that could create a conflict between their personal interests and the journal’s interests or the objectivity of their research. For example, if an author submitted a favorable analysis of a security policy being promoted by a relative running for public office, there would be a potential conflict of interest and the author’s relationship must be disclosed.

Writing standards

Authors should employ high standards for professional writing in order to accurately and appropriately communicate their research to readers.

• Write clearly and concisely (see “Writing Clearly & Concisely” by the University of Arizona).
• Use words and terms that can be easily understood by an international audience with varied experience; refrain from using obscure words, jargon, nicknames, or vague references.
• Write in an objective, impartial, and professional tone.
• Write in the third person.
• Write in the past tense (with few exceptions).

Formatting requirements

• File format:
  • All submissions must be provided in Microsoft Word (other formats will not be accepted).
  • Please do not use any design themes, font style settings, or other formatting templates within your document.

• Language:
  • All submissions should be in English (authors may use either American or British English, but only one style should be used throughout).

• Font:
  • All text should be in the Tahoma font style, if available (Tahoma is easier to read on screens and in print, making it more accessible than other font styles)
  • Title: 15pt Tahoma; bold
  • Abstract, keywords, etc.: 11pt Tahoma
  • Main headers: 12pt Tahoma; bold
  • Sub-headers: 11pt Tahoma; italicized (not bold)
  • Image/figure/table titles: 11pt Tahoma; bold
  • Main body: 11pt Tahoma
  • Block quotes: 9pt Tahoma; indented ½ inch; single space (blank line) above and below
  • Endnotes: 9pt Tahoma

• Margins:
  • Documents should have one-inch margins.

• Spacing:
  • All text, including endnotes, should be single-spaced.

• Alignment and paragraphs:
  • Manuscripts should be left justified, with a ragged right margin.
  • Use block paragraphing (no indents).
  • Separate paragraphs with a single space (blank line).

• Images, figures, and tables:
  • Images, figures, and tables should be used only if they are relevant, provide value to the work, and are referenced and discussed within the manuscript.
  • Insert within the manuscript where they should appear in the document.
  • Each should be numbered and titled (e.g., Table 1: US Population by State, 2020).
  • Images should be high resolution.

• Source citations:
  • Follow the Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.), Notes and Bib­liography style for source citations (https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html
  • Using Microsoft Word’s References function, create reference endnotes.
  • Use Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3) in a superscript position at the end of the sentence, after punctuation. (E.g., The sky is blue.¹)
  • To cite multiple sources associated with one sentence, combine the citations into one endnote, with sources separated by semicolons (;), rather than using multiple endnotes.
  • For electronic resources, include a DOI or website URL as the final element.
  • g., Shao-Hsun Keng, Chun-Hung Lin, and Peter F. Orazem, “Expanding College Access in Taiwan, 1978–2014: Effects on Graduate Quality and Income Inequality,” Journal of Human Capital 11, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 9–10, https://doi.org/10.1086/690235.

• Miscellaneous:
  • Italicize foreign language words and phrases in each instance.
  • Use acronyms sparingly; ensure all acronyms are spelled out in the first instance.
  • Spell out single-digit numbers (zero through nine) and use numerals for 10 and above (except when reporting data more appropriately written using only numerals).
  • Write dates as day month year (e.g., 10 December 2004).

Desk review and peer review checklist

Editors and peer reviewers will review each question in the below checklist when reviewing submissions. Prior to submitting their manuscripts, authors should ensure the answer to each relevant question would be "yes."

• Does the title reflect the contents of the submission?
• Is the abstract clear, accurate, and intriguing?
• Are the keywords accurate and appropriate?
• Is the research topic timely and relevant for policing, law enforcement, or security students, researchers, practitioners, or policymakers?
• Is the research innovative and interesting?
• Are the research questions well defined?
• Does the author provide a sufficient review of relevant and respected literature?
• Does the research challenge or address gaps in existing literature?
• Are the hypotheses clear, relevant, and testable?
• Does the author provide sufficient information on their research methods to enable the research to be replicated?
• Are the research methods appropriate for answering the research questions?
• Does the author provide evidence of their compliance with ethical research standards (if relevant)?
• Does the author provide an appropriate amount or description of data collected?
• Are the data appropriate and sufficient to produce results (quantity, quality, variability, etc.)?
• Are potential sources of bias or error in the data highlighted?
• Are data tables or figures discussed in the text and do they contribute to understanding the research?
• Are analyses of the data appropriate and accurate?
• Does the author provide clear answers to their research questions and address whether each of their hypotheses was validated or refuted?
• Are the research conclusions supported by evidence?
• Are limitations of the research stated and accurate?
• Does the author accurately state the significance of their findings?
• Does the author provide relevant and practical recommendations for students, researchers, practitioners, and/or policymakers (based on the findings of their research)?
• Is the writing logically organized and is the language clear and easy to understand?
• Does the submission comply with all IJPS author guidelines and writing standards?
• Is the submission void of publication ethics or research misconduct concerns?