Skills Productivity Academic Manuscript Submission Preflight Checklist

Academic Manuscript Submission Preflight Checklist

v20260724
govern-submission
This guide provides a comprehensive preflight checklist for authors submitting academic manuscripts to major journals (e.g., Wiley/Governance). It ensures compliance with critical submission requirements, including double-blind anonymization, strict word count limits, abstract length, Data Availability Statements, and adherence to specific scholarly scopes. Use this before hitting submit to minimize desk rejection risks and submission errors.
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Overview

Submission Preflight (govern-submission)

The last check before pressing submit on the Wiley submission system. Governance is double-blind, so the single most common avoidable failure is an under-anonymized manuscript — followed closely by a scope miss (corporate governance or a literature review) that the desk rejects on sight. Verify the volatile specifics on the official page before relying on them.

When to trigger

  • "Submitting tomorrow" — last pass before upload
  • Unsure which files/metadata the Wiley portal expects
  • Confirming the cap is met, the manuscript is anonymized, and the scope is in remit

Process facts (verify volatile items on the official page)

  • Owner / publisher: Wiley(-Blackwell), in association with IPSA Research Committee 27 — Structure & Organization of Government (SOG). Founded 1988; quarterly. ISSN 0952-1895 (print) / 1468-0491 (online).
  • Editors-in-Chief: Paolo Graziano (University of Padova) and Adam Sheingate (Johns Hopkins University) (verified 2026-06-22; re-verify the masthead before submission).
  • Portal: Wiley submission system ("Wiley Authors" / Research Exchange). Older guidance references ScholarOne, but Wiley migrated to its new system — verify the live portal (检索于 2026-06;以官网为准).
  • Review model: double-blind — at least two referees review anonymously; anonymize the manuscript and provide a separate title page.
  • Length: ≤ 9,000 words excluding citations/bibliography as the working cap (a third-party listing cites 3,000–5,000; treat the official 9,000 as binding, 待核实).
  • Abstract: ~150 words.
  • Data Availability Statement: required at submission (states whether replication materials are available and how to access them; DOI-citable repository recommended). It is mandatory as a statement but not a verified pre-publication reproduction gate (see govern-transparency-and-data).
  • Citation style: author-date style typical for the field; confirm the exact style on the live Wiley/ journal guidelines (待核实).
  • ORCID: per Wiley norms for the corresponding author (待核实).
  • Fee: no submission fee (verified 2026-06-22). Hybrid Wiley journal; Gold OA via Wiley OnlineOpen is optional post-acceptance — confirm the journal-specific APC on the live Wiley OnlineOpen pricing page before choosing open access.

Preflight checklist

Scope & length

  • In scope: executive politics / public policy / PA / organization of the state — not corporate governance, not a literature review or bibliometric study
  • Clear, original comparative/institutional intervention stated by the end of the introduction
  • ≤ 9,000 words excluding citations/bibliography; robustness grids in supplementary material
  • Abstract ~150 words, stating question + comparative approach + finding

Anonymity (double-blind)

  • No author names, affiliations, or acknowledgments in the manuscript
  • No obvious self-references ("as we showed in…"); self-citations neutralized
  • Identifying file metadata stripped (document properties, comments, tracked changes)
  • Anonymized pre-analysis plan / OSF link if preregistration is referenced
  • Separate (non-anonymous) title page prepared as a distinct file

Transparency & format

  • Data Availability Statement included and matched to real materials
  • DOI-citable repository (Dataverse/OSF/Zenodo) identified where data/code are shared
  • Author-date citations consistent per the live guidelines
  • Corresponding-author ORCID ready
  • Figures/tables self-contained, accessible, grayscale-legible (see govern-tables-figures)

Files & compliance

  • Anonymized manuscript + separate title page + supplementary material staged for the Wiley portal
  • Ethics / IRB / human-subjects compliance addressed where applicable
  • Original work; preprint status checked against Wiley's preprint policy

Anti-patterns

  • Leaving author identifiers in the text, acknowledgments, or file metadata (breaks double-blind)
  • Submitting a corporate-governance paper or a bare literature review (desk-rejected on scope)
  • Abstract well past ~150 words; manuscript over 9,000 words with material that belongs in the supplement
  • Omitting the Data Availability Statement (it is required at submission)
  • Trusting older ScholarOne references instead of confirming the live Wiley portal

Output format

【Scope】in remit (exec politics / policy / PA / state)? not corporate gov / lit-review? [Y/N]
【Length】≤ 9,000 words excl. citations/bibliography? abstract ~150? [Y/N]
【Anonymized】text + self-refs + file metadata clean; separate title page? [Y/N]
【Data Availability Statement】included + matched to materials? [Y/N]
【Style + ORCID】author-date consistent; ORCID ready? [Y/N]
【Portal】Wiley submission system confirmed live? [Y/N]
【Next】await decision → govern-rebuttal on R&R

Supplementary resources

Info
Category Productivity
Name govern-submission
Version v20260724
Size 5.03KB
Updated At 2026-07-28
Language