This page is designed to help you ensure your submission is ready for and fits the scope of the journal.
Before submitting you should read over the guidelines here, then register an account (or login if you have an existing account)
The Journal of Deliberative Democracy (formerly the Journal of Public Deliberation) is an open access journal publishing articles that shape the course of scholarship on deliberative democracy. It is the forum for the latest thinking, emerging debates, alternative perspectives, as well as critical views on deliberation. The journal welcomes submissions from all theoretical and methodological traditions. It aims to be the platform to broker knowledge between scholars and practitioners of citizen engagement.
The journal is supported by the newDemocracy Foundation, the Deliberative Democracy Consortium and the International Association for Public Participation. It is hosted at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra, Australia, and co-edited by Nicole Curato with Kim Strandberg, Åbo Akademi University, Finland, André Bächtiger, University of Stuttgart, Germany, and Graham Smith, University of Westminster, UK
Focus and ScopeThe Journal of Deliberative Democracy (formerly the Journal of Public Deliberation) publishes articles that shape the course of scholarship on deliberative democracy. It is the forum for the latest thinking, emerging debates, alternative perspectives, as well as critical views on deliberation. The journal welcomes submissions from all theoretical and methodological traditions. It aims to be the platform to broker knowledge between scholars and practitioners of citizen engagement.
The journal is supported by the newDemocracy Foundation, the Deliberative Democracy Consortium and the International Association for Public Participation. It is hosted at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra and co-edited by Nicole Curato with Kim Strandberg, Åbo Akademi University, André Bächtiger, University of Stuttgart and Graham Smith, University of Westminster.
As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
All submissions are initially assessed by an Editor, who decides whether or not the article is suitable for peer review.
Submissions considered suitable for peer review are assigned to at least two subject experts, who assess the article for clarity, validity, and sound methodology.
Authors may be invited to recommend or ask for the exclusion of specific individuals from the peer review process. The journal does not guarantee to use these suggestions. All reviewers must be independent from the submission and will be asked to declare all competing interests.
The journal operates a double-blind peer review process, meaning that authors and reviewers remain anonymous for the review process, except in some circumstances such as commentaries, research notes, or ethnographic studies where the author’s identity is central to the narrative.
The review period is expected to take up to forty five days although this can vary depending on reviewer availability. Reviewers are asked to provide formative feedback, even if an article is not deemed suitable for publication in the journal.
Based on the reviewer reports the editor will make a recommendation for rejection, minor or major revisions, or acceptance. Overall editorial responsibility rests with the journal’s Editors who are supported by an expert, international Editorial Board.
Members of the editorial team/board are permitted to submit their own papers to the journal. In cases where an author is associated with the journal, they will be removed from all editorial tasks for that paper and another member of the team will be assigned responsibility for overseeing peer review. A competing interest must also be declared within the submission and any resulting publication.
Reviewer Guidelines
The journal publishes a limited number of articles a year, and so reviewers are encouraged to be selective in endorsing the publication of articles based on the criteria we outline below:
Based on these questions, reviewers will be asked to make a recommendation:
The journal is happy to accept submissions of papers that have been loaded onto preprint servers or personal websites, have been presented at conferences, or other informal communication channels. These formats will not be deemed prior publication. The journal accepts papers that have been published within formal conference proceedings, provided that the paper provides substantially more data, analysis and/or discussion than the original conference paper. Authors must retain copyright to such postings. Authors are encouraged to link any prior posting of their paper to the final published version within the journal if it is editorially accepted.
Preprint Policy
The journal allows authors to deposit draft versions of their paper into a suitable preprint server, on condition that the author agrees to the below:
The author retains copyright to the preprint and developed works from it, and is permitted to submit to the journal;
The author declares that a preprint is available within the cover letter presented during submission. This must include a link to the location of the preprint;
The author acknowledges that having a preprint publicly available means that the journal cannot guarantee the anonymity of the author during the review process, even if they anonymise the submitted files; and
Should the submission be published, the authors are expected to update the information associated with the preprint version to show that a final version has been published in the journal, including the DOI linking directly to the publication.
ORCID
The journal strongly recommends that all authors submitting a paper register an account with Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier (ORCID). Registration provides a unique and persistent digital identifier for the account that enables accurate attribution and improves the discoverability of published papers, ensuring that the correct author receives the correct credit for their work. As the ORCID remains the same throughout the lifetime of the account, changes of name, affiliation, or research area do not effect the discoverability of an author's past work and aid correspondence with colleagues.
The journal encourages all corresponding authors to include an ORCID within their submitting author data whilst co-authors are recommended to include one. ORCID numbers should be added to the author data upon submission and will be published alongside the submitted paper, should it be accepted.
Reproducability
Open Data
The journal strongly encourages authors to make all data associated with their submission openly available, according to the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). Data should be cited and referenced within the manuscript and should be linked to from a Data Accessibility Statement, which must describe how the data underlying the findings of the article can be accessed and reused. If data is not being made available with the journal publication (e.g. legal constraints) then a statement from the author should be provided within the submission to explain why. Data obtained from other sources must be appropriately credited. All data should be curated in a format that allows easy understanding and analysis (e.g. sensible column headers, descriptions in a readme text file). This help will ensure its reuse potential.
Structured Methods
As the traditional Materials and Methods section often includes insufficient detail for readers to wholly assess the research process, the journal encourages authors to publish detailed descriptions of their structured methods in open, online platforms such as protocols.io. By providing a step-by-step description of the methods used in the study, the chance of reproducibility and usability increases, whilst also allowing authors to build on their own works and gain additional credit and citations.
If research includes the use of software code, statistical analysis or algorithms then we also recommend that authors upload the code into Code Ocean, where it will be hosted on an open, cloud-based computational reproducibility platform, providing researchers and developers with an easy way to share, validate and discover code published in academic journals.
For more information on how to incorporate open data, protocols.io or Code Ocean into a submission, please visit our reproducibility page.
Authorship
All listed authors must qualify as such, as defined in our authorship guidelines, which have been developed from the ICMJE definitions. All authors must have given permission to be listed on the submitted paper.
Competing Interests, Funding and Ethics
To ensure transparency, all authors, reviewers and editors are required to declare any interests that could compromise, conflict or influence the validity of the publication. Competing interests guidelines can be viewed here.
In addition, authors are required to specify funding sources and detail requirements for ethical research in the submitted manuscript, ensuring that ethical approval and consent statements are detailed within the manuscript (see Author Guidelines).
In accordance with guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics (where applicable), the Press handles different kinds of error. All articles have their proofs checked prior to publication by the author/editor, which should ensure that content errors are not present. Please contact your editorial manager if an article needs correcting.
Corrections and Retractions
Post-publication changes are not permitted to the publication, unless in exceptional circumstances. If an error is discovered in a published article then the publisher will assess whether a Correction paper or Retraction is required. Visit our Correction Policy page for more information.
Misconduct and Complaints
Allegations of misconduct will be taken with utmost seriousness, regardless of whether those involved are internal or external to the journal, or whether the submission in question is pre- or post-publication. If an allegation of misconduct is made to the journal, it must be immediately passed on to the publisher, who will follow guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) on how to address the nature of the problem. Should the matter involve allegations against a member of the journal or publishing team, an independent and objective individual(s) may be sought to lead the investigation. Where misconduct is proven or strongly suspected, the journal has an obligation to report the issue to the author's institution, who may conduct their own investigation. This applies to both research misconduct (e.g. completing research without ethical approval and consent, fabricating or falsifying data etc) and publication misconduct (e.g. manipulating the peer review process, plagiarism etc). Should an investigation conclude that misconduct or misinformation has occurred then the author, along with their institution will be notified. Should the publication record need to be corrected, the journal's correction policy will be followed.
Should an author wish to lodge a complaint against an editorial decision or the editorial process in general they should first approach the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, explaining their complaint and ask for a reasoned response. Should this not be forthcoming or adequate, the author should raise the matter with the publisher, who will investigate the nature of the complaint and act as arbiter on whether the complaint should be upheld and investigated further. This will follow guidelines set out by COPE.
LicencesJournal of Deliberative Democracy allows the following licences for submission:
Article Processing Charges for this journal are paid by the University of Westminster Press and the journal's sponsors. There are therefore no author facing publication fees to pay.
Where possible, we encourage authors to ask their library/institution to support open access publishing from the University of Westminster Press and other open access-based university presses and their associates in open access publishing networks.
Publication CycleThe journal aims to publish two issues a year. Articles are made available as soon as they are ready to ensure that there are no unnecessary delays in getting content publicly available.
Public Submissions
Peer Reviewed
Indexed
Research Article