Aims and Scope

The Political Data Yearbook documents election results, national referenda, changes in government, and institutional reforms in all of the EU member states, plus Australia, Canada, Iceland, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In addition, recognized experts on the politics of each country provide commentary on these events, as well as on the principal issues in national politics during the year.

Types of Article

The journal accepts the following types of article:

• Original Article*

* For the purposes of Gold Open Access funding, this journal considers these article types to be research articles. All or part of the publication costs for these article types may be covered by one of the agreements Cambridge University Press has made to support open access. For authors not covered by an agreement, and without APC funding, please see this journal's open access options for instructions on how to request an APC waiver. 

Preparing your article for submission 

Ethics and Transparency Policy Requirements

Please ensure that you have reviewed the journal’s Publishing ethics policies while preparing your materials. 

Please also ensure that you have read the journal’s Research transparency policy prior to submission. We encourage the use of a Data Availability Statement at the end of your article before the reference list. Guidance on how to write a Data Availability Statement can be found here. Please try to provide clear information on where the data associated with you research can be found and avoid statements such as “Data available on request”.

A list of suggested data repositories can be found here.

Funding statement

A declaration of sources of funding must be provided if appropriate. Authors must state the full official name of the funding body and grant numbers specified. Authors must specify what role, if any, their financial sponsors played in the design, execution, analysis and interpretation of data, or writing of the study. If they played no role this should be stated. 

Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools    

We acknowledge the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the research and writing processes. The Political Data Yearbook distinguishes between two types of AI tool usage:

• AI tools that provide suggestions to improve or enhance your own work (for example, using AI to improve the language, grammar, or structure of a manuscript). Such use does not require disclosure by authors or reviewers.
• AI tools that generate new content. In this case, we expect the use of AI to be fully declared and described to readers, and to comply with our plagiarism policy and best practices regarding citation and acknowledgements. Specifically, we require the disclosure of AI use in a footnote or in the acknowledgements when it is used for the following purposes:
  
  • generating images within the manuscript - this should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, and declared clearly in the image caption(s);
  • generating text within the manuscript - this should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, include appropriate and valid references and citations, and be declared in the manuscript’s Acknowledgements;
  • analysing or extracting insights from data or other materials, for example through the use of text and data mining - this should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, including details and appropriate citation of any dataset(s) or other material analysed in all relevant and appropriate areas of the manuscript. 

The use of AI is not permitted to present ideas, words, data, or other material produced by third parties without appropriate acknowledgement or permission. 

Descriptions of AI processes used should include at minimum the version of the tool/algorithm used, where it can be accessed, any proprietary information relevant to the use of the tool/algorithm, any modifications of the tool made by the researchers (such as the addition of data to a tool’s public corpus), and the date(s) it was used for the purpose(s) described. Any relevant competing interests or potential bias arising as a consequence of the tool/algorithm’s use should be transparently declared and may be discussed in the article.

Authors are ultimately responsible for ensuring the accuracy of AI generated content.

Acknowledgements

Authors can use this section to acknowledge and thank colleagues, institutions, workshop organisers, family members, etc. that have helped with the research and/or writing process. It is important that that any type of funding information or financial support is listed under ‘Financial Support’ rather than Acknowledgements so that it can be recorded separately (see Funding statement above).

We are aware that authors sometimes receive assistance from technical writers, language editors, artificial intelligence (AI) tools, and/or writing agencies in drafting manuscripts for publication. Such assistance must be noted in the cover letter and in the Acknowledgements section, along with a declaration that the author(s) are entirely responsible for the scientific content of the paper and that the paper adheres to the journal’s authorship policy. Failure to acknowledge assistance from technical writers, language editors, AI tools and/or writing agencies in drafting manuscripts for publication in the cover letter and in the Acknowledgements section may lead to disqualification of the paper. Examples of how to acknowledge assistance in drafting manuscripts:

• “The author(s) thank [name and qualifications] of [company, city, country] for providing [medical/technical/language] writing support/editorial support [specify and/or expand as appropriate], which was funded by [sponsor, city, country]."
• “The author(s) made use of [AI system/tool] to assist with the drafting of this article. [AI version details] was accessed/obtained from [source details] and used with/without modification [specify and/or expand as appropriate] on [date(s)].