Author Submission Guidelines and Editorial Policies

Public Opinion Pros is a monthly online magazine about public opinion, the theory and practice of public opinion research, the polling community, and related subjects.

Article submissions

While articles should be of interest to professionals in the field, they should also appeal to and be easily understood by sophisticated general readers who follow public opinion, polling, and current political and social issues. Authors should avoid the use of footnotes, literature reviews, analytical jargon, and other conventions of standard academic or highly technical writing, and gear their writing toward audiences who might be readers of such periodicals as the New York Times, Washington Post, or American Demographics. In short, this is a magazine, not a journal—please make your work highly readable!

Whenever possible, articles that include survey results should make use of random-sample, nationally representative data. Authors presenting other data should provide information on the survey(s)' source, sample, and methodology. In-text citations of any poll should include the name of the survey sponsor (if any), the organization that conducted the poll, and the month(s) and year(s) when the fieldwork was done.

The inclusion in the article text of hyperlinks to off-site pages containing additional data, related reading, or the author(s)' email or website is encouraged. Humor—as appropriate, of course—is more than welcome.

Submissions should fall into one of the following categories:

Features—articles of 2000 words or less, analyzing public attitudes or views on politics, social issues, culture, religion, or values, as well as examinations of the nature of public opinion in general and relations between the public, media, or policymakers and the polling community. Discussions of the uses and misuses of polling are encouraged. International articles and in-depth presentations or critiques of important new surveys are also welcome. Whenever possible, authors should offer their interpretation of the data they are presenting—that is, don't just give us the numbers; tell us what they mean. Why are the findings important?

Short features—feature articles of 800 words or less.

From the Field—articles of 2000 words or less about the polling industry, pollsters, polling methods and practices, or problems and experiences in the field of polling. From the Field pieces are about the actual work of conducting public opinion research, such as questionnaire design, problems with response rates, split sample experiments, what it's like to be an interviewer, and so forth. While we would like these, like the feature articles, to be suited to general readers, they can be more technical as necessary—we like to think of it as giving nonspecialists the chance to stand outside the pollsters' office windows and peek in on their work. Technical terms that cannot be omitted without undue oversimplification will be hyperlinked to a glossary for the benefit of nonspecialists.

Fillers—items of under 100 words, including announcements, polling news alerts, and slice-of-polling-life-stuff, to be published with or without byline.

Op-ed—opinion pieces of 800 words or less, expressing the authors' views on issues relating to public opinion or polling, or responding to articles recently published in POP. (Please see below for our editorial policy on responding to articles appearing in POP.)

Up-and-Coming—articles fitting into any of the above categories written by students of public opinion and polling. Professors are invited to submit the best work of their most promising students for consideration. Student manuscripts must be submitted by professors to be considered for Up-and-Coming.

In Print—excerpts from forthcoming or recently published books (the past twelve months) in or of interest to the field. This is good for us because it provides us with content; it is good for authors (and their publishers) because it provides them with free promotion to the audience they most want to reach. Authors who would like their books considered for In Print should ask their publishers about sending a review copy to Public Opinion Pros, P.O. Box 844, Storrs, CT 06028. We would also appreciate recommendations of books meeting the In Print criteria that might be good candidates for excerpting.

Note: Authors are kindly asked to refrain from submitting articles or letters that are heavily self-promoting. If you would like to plug your book or your organization, our advertising department would be delighted to talk with you. We also ask that you not submit to us articles that have already appeared elsewhere or are about to appear elsewhere, and to let us know if your manuscript is being considered by other publications.

Prospective authors are strongly encouraged to submit brief proposals for articles rather than prepare manuscripts that may be rejected because they are not compatible with POP's mission or format.

Unfortunately, POP cannot pay for most article submissions at this time. We hope to be able to do so at some time in the future.

Please send article proposals or submissions in the form of attached files by email to editor@publicopinionpros.com. We always acknowledge receipt of electronic files, so if you don't hear from us within a few days, it means we didn't get it.

Manuscripts should be in Microsoft Word or Word-compatible applications. Data can be in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. It is not necessary to create figures, as we do all our own graphics. Authors should be sure, however, to include complete question wordings for any survey data presented, with results in all response categories, including DKs and NAs. We also would need the name of the survey organization, sponsor (if any), and interview dates for all data provided for tables or figures.

Editorial policies

POP greatly appreciates offers of funding in the form of grants of money, marketing assistance, ad purchases, or pro bono professional services. Such grants will be accepted only with the written understanding that the grantor will make no attempt to influence the editorial policies or content of POP in any way either prior or subsequent to acceptance of the grant. Authors of work appearing in POP who are sponsors or who are associated with sponsoring organizations will be clearly identified as such in the body of their articles.

POP welcomes debate pertaining to issues discussed in articles appearing in the magazine. Responses to articles may be expressed in letters to the editor (limit one per correspondent responding to any given article), to which the article author will be invited to offer a brief rebuttal (50 words or less) prior to publication of the letter. Readers may also choose to respond to an article with an op-ed piece or a full-length article of their own. This article must be submitted in time to appear, if accepted, no more than two issues after the issue in which the original piece appeared. The author of the original piece will be invited to read the responding article prior to publication and submit a rebuttal of 300 words or less, which will appear in the same issue with the responding article. The views expressed in any such letters or articles will be the authors' own, but the editors of POP reserve the right to edit out of them anything they interpret as personal attacks, condescending language, or gratuitous sneering.