Information for Authors

International Relations of the Asia-Pacific (IRAP) is a major international journal publishing the best original research in the field. Papers are welcomed from all IR scholars, both within and without the Asia-Pacific region.

All papers will be subject to anonymous peer review, and will be evaluated on the basis of their creativity, quality of scholarship, and contribution to advancing the understanding of the international relations of the region.

Papers should be submitted online via the online submission web site. Detailed instruction for online submission could be found on our Submission webpage.

Submissions will be dealt with swiftly, and the editors aim to communicate a first decision to contributors within 8 weeks of submission. Detailed notes follow:

  • The maximum length of articles including tables, figures, references, notes and abstract is 10,000 words, and the minimum length is 6,000 words.
  • Research Note should not exceed 10,000 words, including tables, figures, references, notes and abstract.
  • Review essays should be between 3000-4000 words.
  • Book reviews should be between 600-1000 words.
  • Subheadings should be used to clarify and divide the structure of the discussions; if more than one level of subheadings is used, they must be clearly differentiated. Sub-headings should not be numbered.
  • Articles and Research Note must be accompanied by an abstract of no more than 150 words.
  • Submission should be made through the online submission system. Please see our webpage for further information on online submission. If you have any problems with online submission, please contact the Editorial office.
  • Manuscripts should be prepared using Microsoft Word. Authors will also need to supply a title page separate to the main text of their manuscript. The title page should include the article title, authors’ names and affiliations and corresponding author’s e-mail address.
  • Papers will be copy-edited and typeset upon acceptance, and journal style applied at that time (text and general content follows US spelling and punctuation; reference style follows a standard APA format).
  • Authors should pay particular attention to the accuracy and correct presentation of references (see below). In-text references should be cited by giving the author’s name, year of publication (Smith, 1999) and specific page numbers after a direct quotation. In-text lists of references should be in chronological order. A reference list should appear at the end and should include only those references cited in the text. References should be double-spaced, arranged alphabetically by author, and chronologically for each author. Publications for the same author appearing in a single year should use e.g. 2001a, b, c, etc. Where there are more than two authors, the reference within the text should be cited as Smith et al. and the date, but include all the authors in the reference list.

Examples:

Book
Keohane, R.O. (1989) International Institutions and State Power, Boulder, Colo, Westview Press.
Edited Book
Krasner, S. (ed) (1983) International Regimes, Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press.
Book Chapter
Boli-Bennett, J. (1979) ‘The ideology of expanding state authority in national constitution 1870-1970’, in J. Smith (ed.), National Development and the World System, Chicago: University of Chicago Pres, pp.222-237.
Article
Carlsnaes, W. (1992) ‘The agency-structure problem in foreign policy analysis’, International Studies Quarterly, 36, 245-270.

  • Footnotes should be avoided, or at least kept to a minimum. They should be indicated in the text by superscript figures and collected at the end of the article in numerical order
  • Diagrams and tables should be provided on separate file appended to the article. They should be numbered, they should be referred to in the text, and their position in the text should be clearly marked. They should be comprehensible without reading the text. Artwork should be of sufficient quality to be reproduced without amendment.
  • On acceptance of the final version for publication in the journal, a figure captions and tables should be inserted at the end of the file. Tables, diagrams, figures, graphs or illustrations generated electronically should be saved as separate files and not embedded into the text file. The article should be typed unjustified, without hyphenation except for compound words. The TAB key should be used once for paragraph indents. Where possible, Times should be used for the text font and Symbol for any Greek and special characters. The word processing formatting features should be used to indicate bold, italic, Greek, maths, superscript and subscript characters. Carriage returns should not be used to obtain spacing between lines, paragraphs, references, etc. Single spaces should be used after each sentence within a paragraph. The running titles and footnote features of the word processing package should not be used.
  • IRAP conducts double-blinded peer review. When uploading your manuscript it should include no identifying author information.
  • All manuscripts must be original and not under consideration with another publication or in another form, such as a chapter of a book. Authors of submitted papers are obligated not to submit their paper for publication elsewhere until an editorial decision is rendered on their submission. Further, authors of accepted papers are prohibited from publishing the results in other publications that appear before the paper is published in the Journal unless they receive approval for doing so from the managing editor.

IRAP takes publication ethics very seriously. If misconduct is found or suspected after the manuscript is published, the journal will investigate the matter and this may result in the article subsequently being retracted.

For queries, please contact the Editorial Office

Forms

It is a legal requirement that the publisher holds a completed Licence to Publish form signed by the author before a paper can be published. Upon receipt of accepted manuscripts at Oxford Journals authors will be invited to complete an online copyright licence to publish form.

Please note that by submitting an article for publication you confirm that you are the corresponding/submitting author and that Oxford University Press (“OUP”) may retain your email address for the purpose of communicating with you about the article. You agree to notify OUP immediately if your details change. If your article is accepted for publication OUP will contact you using the email address you have used in the registration process. Please note that OUP does not retain copies of rejected articles.

Open Access Options For Authors

Authors have the option to publish their paper under the Oxford Open initiative; whereby, for a charge, their paper will be made freely available online immediately upon publication. After your manuscript is accepted the corresponding author will be required to accept a mandatory licence to publish agreement. As part of the licensing process you will be asked to indicate whether or not you wish to pay for open access. If you do not select the open access option, your paper will be published with standard subscription-based access and you will not be charged.

Oxford Open articles are published under Creative Commons licences. Authors publishing in IRAP can use the following Creative Commons licences for their articles:

  • Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY)
  • Creative Commons Non-Commercial licence (CC BY-NC)

Visit the OUP licensing website to find out more about Creative Commons licences.

You can pay Open Access charges using our Author Services site. This will enable you to pay online with a credit/debit card, or request an invoice by email or post. The open access charges applicable are: £2200/ $3300 / €2695. 

Please note that these charges are in addition to any colour/page charges that may apply. 

Orders from the UK will be subject to the current UK VAT charge. For orders from the rest of the European Union, OUP will assume that the service is provided for business purposes. Please provide a VAT number for yourself or your institution, and ensure you account for your own local VAT correctly.

Third-Party Content In Open Access Papers

If you will be publishing your paper under an Open Access licence but it contains material for which you do not have Open Access re-use permissions, please state this clearly by supplying the following credit line alongside the material:

Title of content
Author, Original publication, year of original publication, by permission of [rights holder]

This image/content is not covered by the terms of the Creative Commons licence of this publication. For permission to reuse, please contact the rights holder.

Pre-Submission Language Editing

If your first language is not English, to ensure that the academic content of your paper is fully understood by journal editors and reviewers is optional. Language editing does not guarantee that your manuscript will be accepted for publication. For further information on this service, please visit our Language Services page. Several specialist language editing companies offer similar services and you can also use any of these. Authors are liable for all costs associated with such services.

CrossRef Funding

In order to meet your funding requirements authors are required to name their funding sources, or state if there are none, during the submission process. For further information on this process or to find out more about CHORUS, visit the CHORUS initiative.

For queries, please contact Editorial office at jair@j.u-tokyo.ac.jp