The APSR is starting a new track for Research Notes. This means that articles may henceforth be submitted initially as Notes or, during the review process—and by agreement of the handling editor and the corresponding author—reclassified as such. Research Notes should be no more than 8,000 words, including footnotes and references (but excluding online appendices), at the time of final publication. Please note that we cannot accept resubmissions of articles that were previously submitted and rejected.

We recommend the Notes track after approximately one year of processing submissions. Although we have aimed to publish excellent papers across various categories, including those that make a contribution concentrated in either theory or empirical research, it is difficult to shape expectations about what constitutes an APSR article. Typically, articles that are very strong along one dimension—either theoretical or empirical—often tend to be evaluated negatively by reviewers, which may discourage authors from submitting these more focused papers. We are introducing this track to encourage authors to submit papers that make a more focused contribution and to encourage reviewers to update their standards when assessing these submissions.