Submission Preflight (ajps-submission)

The last check before pressing submit on Editorial Manager (editorialmanager.com/ajps). AJPS is double-blind, so the most common avoidable failure is an under-anonymized manuscript — and AJPS's anonymizing rules are strict (no acknowledgments, funding lines, or conference mentions, third-person self-citation). Official AJPS baseline checked 2026-06-20; live-check Editorial Manager prompts before upload.

When to trigger

• "Submitting tomorrow" — last pass before upload
• Unsure which files/metadata Editorial Manager expects
• Confirming the chosen type's cap is met and the manuscript is fully anonymized

Process facts (official baseline checked 2026-06-20)

• Owner / publisher: Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA) / Wiley.
• Portal: Editorial Manager (http://www.editorialmanager.com/ajps/).
• Review model: double-blind — fully anonymize the manuscript.
• Types: Article (<= 10,000 words), Research Note (<= 4,000 — methodology/meta-analysis only), Correspondence (<= 4,000 — critique of published AJPS work).
• Abstract: <= 150 words (background, hypotheses, approach, findings, conclusions).
• Word count: put it on the title page with the abstract; counts include main text, notes, parenthetical references, print appendices, and table/figure headers and notes; exclude the title page, abstract, reference list, online Supporting Information, and math notation.
• Style: APSA Style Manual (rev. 2018, updated 2023) or Chicago 18th ed.; full first + last names in references; double-spaced, 12-point, >= one-inch margins.
• Supporting Information: <= 25 pages for original submissions, uploaded as "Appendix"; anonymized PAPs are separate and do not count against SI pages.
• Human subjects: IRB approval/exemption where an author has IRB access, else an appendix answering the human-subjects questions; not required when relying on publicly available data approved at original collection.
• Fee: no submission fee. Wiley OnlineOpen (Gold OA) is optional after acceptance — APC US $4,300 (verified 2026-06-22; re-verify the current rate before submission). Confirm any ORCID, Wiley-license/open-access, or portal-specific prompt during upload/production.

Preflight checklist

Type & length

• Type chosen and its word cap met (Article <= 10,000 / Note or Correspondence <= 4,000)
• Word count on the title page (incl. notes + table/figure headers and notes; excl. refs + SI)
• Abstract <= 150 words covering background/hypotheses/approach/findings/conclusions

Anonymity (double-blind)

• No author names, affiliations, acknowledgments, funding statements, or conference mentions
• Third-person self-citation only (no "as we showed...")
• Identifying file metadata stripped (document properties, comments)
• Anonymized response memorandum (for revisions) attached as a PDF to the manuscript

Files & format

• One anonymous manuscript (PDF / Word / LaTeX)
• Supporting Information (if any) <= 25 pages, uploaded as "Appendix"; PAP separate if used
• APSA or Chicago 18th style applied consistently; full names in references

Compliance & reproducibility

• Human-subjects / IRB documentation ready per the portal's questions
• Original work; preprint/prior-publication status checked
• Replication package being staged for the AJPS Dataverse — verified after acceptance (see ajps-replication-and-verification)

Desk-reject risk table (avoidable failures at AJPS)

Worked micro-example (illustrative)

An author readies a survey-experiment Article. Preflight catches a funding acknowledgment in a footnote (removed), a first-person self-cite "in our 2022 paper" (made third-person), and a word count of 10,250 that omitted exhibit captions — recounted it exceeds 10,000, so one robustness table moves to the SI to land at ~9,800 (illustrative). The IRB exemption is attached and the replication package staged for the AJPS Dataverse pending verification.

Editor-pushback patterns and the venue-specific fix

• "This reads as a methods Note but is a short empirical paper." -> Resubmit as an Article; AJPS reserves the Note for methodology and meta-analysis.
• "The manuscript still names the authors." -> Re-anonymize and strip document properties.

Calibration anchor: AJPS is Wiley-published for the MPSA, uses Editorial Manager, and is double-blind with a strict anonymizing standard; confirm portal-specific prompts against the live Editorial Manager workflow.

Anti-patterns

• Leaving acknowledgments, funding lines, conference mentions, or first-person self-cites in the text
• Abstract over 150 words; no word count on the title page
• Sending a short empirical study as a methodology-only Research Note
• Supporting Information over 25 pages on an original submission
• Treating Wiley production/license choices as settled before acceptance

Output format

【Type】Article / Research Note / Correspondence (cap met? Y/N)
【Anonymized】no names/affiliations/acknowledgments/funding/conference; third-person self-cites; metadata clean? [Y/N]
【Abstract】word count (<=150)
【Word count on title page】incl. notes + table/figure captions? [Y/N]
【Style】APSA or Chicago 18th, consistent, full names? [Y/N]
【SI】<= 25 pages? [Y/N/NA]
【IRB】human-subjects documentation ready? [Y/N/NA]
【Next】await decision -> ajps-rebuttal on R&R

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/external_tools.md — reference managers, anonymizing, repro tooling
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — official AJPS URLs behind every fact in this pack