A Practical Checklist for Submissions

After you submit an article for publication, the PTP staff will send it to three or more “blind” reviewers. The reviewers will not know your name or affiliation. As they read your paper, they will ask these—and so you should answer clearly—key questions:

i. Research Question and Contribution: What’s the fresh, new or novel contribution of this paper? What makes this piece more than another predictable “analysis” or case study showing what we already know? What’s the central question, and why do you, the author, explore it as you do? (If you don’t answer the underlying “Who Cares?” question, your reviewers likely won’t care and won’t recommend the article for publication.)

ii. Credibility and Critical Scholarship: Why should your readers believe your argument? Do you note clearly what literature you build upon, and do you say just what your distinctive contribution to that literature is? What methods do you use: what methods would allow a skeptical reader to replicate your findings?

iii. Significance of Findings: Does your conclusion answer, “So What?” Your conclusions need to be clear about the original contribution of your work to knowledge in the field.

iv. Structure of Argument: Does the body of your paper provide the evidence and analysis to defend each of your conclusions?

v. Consistency and Coherence of Argument: Does your “Introduction” raise just the questions that your “Conclusion” answers? If you raise questions that you do not answer, delete the questions. If you reach conclusions that answer questions that have not been introduced, rewrite your Introduction. Promise just what you’ll do; Do what you promise.

vi. Legibility: Have you rewritten sufficiently so that the paper is well-written, concise, and readable by more than just a half-dozen specialists? Could we give the argument to a bright college student without apologizing for jargon, wordiness, or obscurity? Could we read the sentences aloud—as if to a smart friend—without gasping for breath, without our audience being perplexed, wondering on every page, “What does that mean?”

The editors of Planning Theory and Practice want to publish contributions that will improve our field, not add to jargon-filled, impenetrable academic writing. So we urge prospective authors to think about themselves as the readers for someone else’s article. If you think the other’s subject matter doesn’t matter (#i) you won’t want to publish it. If you think the data or argument doesn’t establish the findings (#ii, #iv), you’ll reject it. If you still wonder “So what?” after you’ve finished reading the article (#iii), you won’t have any good reason to recommend publication. If you find that the paper doesn’t answer the questions it promised to explore, why publish it? Not least of all, if you wouldn’t give the paper to anyone else to read and enjoy, why should you want to publish it?

So, please help the PTP reviewers to help you. The more readable and well-argued, the more cogent and credible your argument, the more your reviewers will want to publish your article. Don’t—do not—inflate your language to “sound more academic”! Make the case. Tell us why it matters. Tell us how you found your results. Read your drafts aloud and let your ear help you edit: Eliminate puzzling phrases. Omit needless words. Favor the active, not passive voice. And before you submit any article, share your all-but-finished draft with colleagues who will tell you what’s not yet convincing, what’s puzzling, what still needs attention. Do NOT submit a paper to PTP that has not been read critically by your critical intellectual friends.