Information For Authors

For an article to be accepted for peer review by The Icelandic Review of Politics and Administration (IRPA) it must meet the following conditions:

  1. It has to identify with the journal‘s focus area, which is political science.
  2. It has to address theories related to its subject and put forth a clear research question. Articles which are primarily descriptive, or not within the journal‘s fields, are not accepted for review.
  3. The article‘s methodological approach needs to suit its subject and meet the requirements made by similar journals.

Authors are requested to specify within which of the following fields they position their article:

  • International relations
  • Icelandic and comparative politics
  • Public administration and policy
  • Political theory
  • Other, including gender studies with an emphasis on politics, political communications, political sociology, political economy or political history. An article with a broader relevance for academics in political science and public administration can be considered for review.

Novelty is essential for publication in the journal, and it is the author’s responsibility to illustrate it and to specify her/his article‘s field in a short statement to the editors. Material that has been published previously in books or academic journals is generally not accepted. Novelty can consist in theoretical contributions, methodology and the presentation of new data.

Common requirements in Social Science journals are that articles contain:

  1. An account of the study’s novelty.
  2. An overview of other academics’ writing and research related to the subject.
  3. Explanations of concepts, measurement tools and the methodology of the study discussed in the article.
  4. Analysis of the data.
  5. An account of the main results.
  6. Journal articles are published in English or Icelandic. Articles in Icelandic are accompanied with abstracts and bibliographic information in English.

IRPA is a peer reviewed journal that is double blind; where the reviewer does not receive information on authors and authors do not receive information on reviewers. The Icelandic academic community is relatively small, therefore it is recommended that authors and reviewers alike hand in their work in a way that minimizes the possibility of tracing the material.

There are four possible outcomes of peer-review:

  1. the article is accepted;
  2. the article is accepted subject to certain changes (a statement listing the changes that were made must accompany the next draft);
  3. revise and resubmit: major changes must be made to the article, however, the author maysubmit a revised article for peer-review (same reviewers);
  4. the article is rejected

IRPA journal articles are published in English or Icelandic. Articles in Icelandic are accompanied with abstracts and bibliographic information in English.

Publication dates on the web are: mid-June and mid-December. A printed edition of the two volume issues is published in March the following year.

Submission deadlines are as follows: 1st of April for the June issue (2nd of April in 2024) and 1st of October for the December issue. In 2023 the deadline for the June issue is 11th of April.

Authors need to register with the journal prior to submitting or, if already registered, can simply log in and begin the five-step process by choosing USER HOME. The Journal Ethics can be read here.

We recommend that you review the About the Journal page for the journal’s section policies, as well as the Submission Guidelines and the Guidelines for Authors.

Authors are expected to submit articles in the journals format. The basic template for these can be downloaded from the following link: peer-reviewed article.

Peer reviewed articles published in IRPA are graded in the highest category of the evaluation system of public universities in Iceland.