Guidelines for Digest Authors
Digest articles articulate robust opinions and respond
rapidly to contemporary ideas, trends, proposals and initiatives.
They will be crisp, engaging, and free from the hedging and qualification
typical of academic prose. Prospective authors are encouraged to
discuss proposed papers with the Editors prior to submission.
Digest submissions are reviewed by the Editors, who may
consult if necessary with outside specialists. They must be original,
not previously published or being considered for publication elsewhere.
The Editors reserve the right to edit Digest manuscripts
for stylistic purposes, subject to the final approval of the authors.
Submissions conforming to the guidelines in this document are more
likely to be accepted promptly.
Articles will appear online promptly upon acceptance. Authors of
accepted papers will be asked to assign to the Australian Review
of Public Affairs permission to offer content to abstracting
and indexing services, now or in future. Authors will also be responsible
for obtaining permission to reproduce materials from third parties. Please see our Mission page regarding details of our open access mission and author copyright.
The Australian Review of Public Affairs is indexed by
the Australian Public Affairs Information Service (APAIS), and archived
by the National Library of Australia.
MECHANICS OF SUBMISSION
Submissions to ARPA’s Digest should be sent in Word format,
attached to an email addressed to the Editor, Gabrielle Meagher.
Submitted articles must conform to the ARPA style guide, set out
in detail below.
COVERING INFORMATION
All submissions must contain the following details.
Title
All Digest articles, including book reviews, will have
a title. This should be accurate, concise, and informative to a
general reader. Where the title is lengthy, only an abbreviated
title may appear on the cover page, although the full title will
appear with the article itself.
Biographical synopsis
Up to 50 words for each author. As a minimum, this should include
current professional affiliation and an email address for publication.
You may also like to name your latest book or your research interests.
STYLE
Writing for a broad audience
Because the Australian Review of Public Affairs aims to
reach a wide audience, the Editors emphasise strong, clear writing.
Like the Editors of Political Studies,
We favour the application of a strict ‘need to know’
criterion, where authors picture their audience and ask what exactly
it is that they will need to know in order to assess the key message
of their paper. Once this question has been answered, it should
guide the whole presentation of the paper from conception through
to structure through to referencing and the explanation of data
analysis or formal elements (where appropriate) (Political Studies,
n.d.).
Language should be as precise and concrete as possible. Accordingly,
many conventions of academic expression are not appropriate for
this publication. In general, authors need to pay attention to the
craft of writing as well as to the soundness of their research methods
and findings.
Please avoid:
- overusing academic jargon. Expressions like
‘post war Keynesian welfare regimes’, ‘discursive
practices’, ‘empty signifier’ don’t always
communicate as much as we’d hoped!
- the use of adjectives as nouns (‘social’,
‘imaginary’). Also avoid using nouns as verbs (‘critique’,
‘access’).
- the passive voice (‘A series of interviews
was undertaken to …’, ‘It has been argued that
…’). Use the first person to describe the research
process, where relevant. At other times, as far as possible, give
sentences concrete subjects (‘Proponents of reform argue
that …’, or simply ‘Reformists argue that …’).
- nominalisation (‘This paper provides
an examination of …’). Instead, use precise verbs
(‘We examine …’).
- vague and wordy expressions such as ‘in
terms of’, ‘in relation to’, ‘in regards
to’, ‘has been associated with’, and ‘is
characterised by’. Too often writers use these locutions
to put a subject and object side by side, leaving the reader to
work out their precise relationship. It’s always better
to let the reader know exactly how subjects and objects relate
to each other. Other overused vague or verbose terms you should
avoid include ‘issue’, ‘the way in which’,
and ‘a number of’.
Intending authors can obtain excellent further advice on style
from Joseph Williams (1991). The Editors reserve the right to edit
accepted manuscripts to enhance their accessibility.
Other points of style
- Realise, analyse | behaviour, colour | acknowledgment, judgment
| co-operation, re-enter
- Ellipsis:#…# (use option+semi-colon (Mac) or Ctrl+Alt+full
stop (PC) instead of three full stops)
- Em dash:—
- 10 January 2001 | 1995–2000, 1995–97 | 1980s | mid-1980s
| 21st century | 6#pm | 50#mya | 25 AD
- 9,999, 10,000 | 34–35, 107–108, 110–19, 134–35
- Ibid., id., op. cit. and et al. Roman (not italic)
- No first line indent for paragraphs in the body of the text
- Spell out:
- One to twenty, digits from 21.
- Per cent, except in figures and tables or technical texts.
- Measurements (eg cm, km), except in figures, tables and
technical texts (3#km).
- US, UK and state names, expect when used adjectivally (eg.
NSW Parliament).
- e.g., i.e., and etc.
- TV.
FORMATTING
Section headings
Please do not number section headings. Use a maximum of three levels
of headings, formatted according to the conventions adopted within
the present document.
Quotations
Please use single quotation marks. Use double quotes only where
a quote occurs within a quote. (See below for usage in block quotes.)
Punctuation marks should be outside quotation marks unless quotations
are full sentences.
Quotations of longer than 40 words should appear in a separate
paragraph, indented 1cm right and left, without quotation marks.
References at the end of these block quotes should appear in brackets
before the full stop or after the ellipsis at the end of the quotation.
Where a quotation ends with an ellipsis, the reference should not
be followed by a full stop.
No footnotes
Digest articles should not contain any footnotes or endnotes.
REFERENCING
All authors are expected to adopt the ‘author-date’
system of referencing, as specified in pages 148–168 of the
fifth edition of the Style manual for authors, editors and printers
(Commonwealth of Australia 1994). (The following guide is adapted
from this publication). Manuscripts that do not comply in detail with this specification—including capitalisation and the usage
and positioning of punctuation markers—for both in-text citations
and the reference list will encounter delays if accepted for publication.
All items cited within the text should appear in the reference list,
and vice-versa. Authors are responsible for verifying the accuracy
of references.
A note on citing electronic sources
Where you refer to materials available online, these materials
may be hyperlinked in the reference list. However, the body of an
article will not in general contain hyperlinking.
Some sources and documents are available in print, but also reproduced
electronically for wide dissemination—government publications
are an obvious example. If you use the electronic version of such
a document, please refer to it as usual, that is, treat it as if
the document you used were printed for the purposes of preparing
your reference list, but add the URL and date on which you last
accessed the electronic file to the citation, as per examples included
throughout this guide.
However, for electronic versions of academic journals that also
appear in print, please do not include a URL or date of access—publishers
make both the print and electronic versions available to subscribers
only, making the URLs of limited general use. One obvious exception
here is citing articles from the Journal of the Australian Review
of Public Affairs: this publication is available freely—and
only—over the internet, so a URL is genuinely useful. Relatedly,
you should treat articles from the Australian Review of Public
Affairs’ Digest as magazine or newspaper article, adding
the URL and date of access.
We include specific instructions for citing material published
solely as web pages as a stand-alone reference category.
Referring to sources in
the text of your paper
Please take careful note of the punctuation of in-text references.
Key points
- Do not use a comma after the author(s) name(s); only to separate
the year and page number details when you cite both.
- Separate multiple references in one instance of citation with
semi-colons.
- Use an ampersand (&) inside bracketed citations, but ‘and’
when you include the authors’ names in the main text.
- Do not include URLs in the text of your paper. Cite any web
pages by author and date (where available), and include the URL
as directed in the reference list.
Examples
Silver (1994) shows that the concept of social exclusion recycles
conservative ideas current when voluntary agencies provided most
welfare services.
It is not clear that workplace relationships and processes have
changed as much as some researchers predicted (Hampson, Ewer &
Smith 1994, p. 534).
Smith and Kettle (1992) are unusual among security analysts, because
they emphasise the profound security risks allies can pose for each
other.
Roughead et al. (1999, p. 2–3) found that the Quality Use
of Medicines program has significantly reduced antibiotic over-prescribing.
However, other research points to the influence of increasing price
(Productivity Commission 2001, p. 231; Phuong & Johnstone 2000,
p. 312) or a reduction in pharmaceutical advertising (Grimston et
al. 2003; Smithies 1998).
Preparing the reference
list
Journal article
Silver, H. 1994, ‘Social exclusion and social solidarity:
Three paradigms’, International Labour Review, vol.
133, no. 6, pp. 531–577.
Quiggin, J. 2001, ‘Active labour market policy and macroeconomic
stabilisation’, The Drawing Board: An Australian Review
of Public Affairs, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 51–66 [Online],
Available: http://www.econ.usyd.edu.au/drawingboard/journal/0111/quiggin.html [2003, Mar 17].
Hampson I., Ewer, P. & Smith, M. 1994, ‘Post-fordism
and workplace change: Towards a critical research agenda’, Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 231–257.
Chapter from edited book
Fournier, V. 2000, ‘Boundary work and the (un)making of the
professions’, in Professionalism, Boundaries and the Workplace,
ed. N. Malin, Routledge, London, pp. 67–86.
Kittay, E.F. 2002, ‘Caring for the vulnerable by caring for
the caregiver: The case of mental retardation’, in Medicine
and Social Justice: Essays on the Distribution of Health Care,
eds R. Rhodes, M.P. Battin & A. Silvers, Oxford University Press,
New York.
Books
Bell, I. (ed.) 2002, Economic Governance and Institutional
Dynamics: The Market, the State, and Networks, Oxford University
Press, Oxford.
Kant, E. 1933 (1781/1787), Critique of Pure Reason, trans.
N.K. Smith, Macmillan, London.
Morehead, A., Steele, M., Alexander, M., Stephen, K. & Duffin,
L. 1997, Changes at Work: The 1995 Australian Workplace Industrial
Relations Survey, Longman, Australia.
Rawls, J. 1993, Political Liberalism, Harvard University
Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Smith, G. & Kettle, St J. (eds) 1992, Threats Without Enemies:
Rethinking Australia’s Security, Pluto Press, Sydney.
Government and parliamentary publications
Australian Bureau of Statistics 2001, Voluntary Work, Australia,
2000, Cat. no. 4441.0, ABS, Canberra.
Department of Foreign Affairs 1975, Annual Report 1975,
AGPS, Canberra.
Productivity Commission 2001, International Pharmaceutical
Price Differences: Research Report, Productivity Commission,
Melbourne [Online], Available: http://www.pc.gov.au/research/commres/pbsprices/finalreport/pbsprices.pdf [2001, Oct 31].
Roughead, E.E., Gilbert, A.L., Primrose, J.G., Harvey, K.J., &
Sansom, L.N. 1999, Report of the National Indicators: Evaluating
the Quality Use of Medicines Component of Australia’s National
Medicines Policy. Publications Production Unit, Commonwealth
Department of Health and Aged Care, Canberra.
Senate Select Committee on Superannuation and Financial Services
2001, Prudential Supervision and Consumer Protection for Superannuation,
Banking and Financial Services, First Report, Commonwealth
of Australia, Canberra, August.
Legislation and legal authorities
Legislation and legal authorities do not generally appear in a
list of references. If they are significant to the understanding
of the work, please list them separately at the end of the article
under an appropriate subheading (viz. ‘Legislation’
or ‘Legal Authorities’). Please consult the Style
Manual (Commonwealth of Australia 1994, paragraphs 9.161–9.179)
for detailed guidance on how to cite such documents.
Discussion/working/research paper
Cowling, S. 1998, Understanding behavioural responses to tax and
transfer changes: A survey of low-income households, Melbourne Institute
Working Paper No. 15, University of Melbourne.
Conference/workshop/seminar paper
Lyons, M. & Chan, V. 1999, The effect of competitive markets
on non-profit organisations, paper presented to the National Social
Policy Conference, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 22 July.
Sissons, J. 2002, Maori tribalism and post-settler nationhood in
New Zealand, paper presented at a workshop on Custom: The Fate of
Non-Western Law and Indigenous Governance in the 21st Century, University
House, Canberra, 1–2 October.
Newspaper/magazine article
Lampe, A. 2001, ‘Super a mystery for most workers’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 16 May, p. 3.
Apps, P. 2001, ‘Howard’s family tax policies and the
first child tax refund’, The Drawing Board: An Australian
Review of Public Affairs, 5 Nov [Online], Available: http://www.econ.usyd.edu.au/drawingboard/digest/0111/apps.html [2003, Mar 17].
If an article has no identified author, set out the reference as
follows:
‘Investors endorse choice of fund’, 2000, Superfunds,
June p. 5.
Media transcripts, press releases
Costello, P. 2001, Transcript of interview with Jon Faine, Radio
3LO, Melbourne, 23 May [Online], Available: http://www.treasurer.gov.au/tsr/content/transcripts/2001/074.asp [2003, Mar 10].
Costello, P. 2003, National accounts: December quarter 2002, Media
release no. 010, 5 March [Online], Available: http://www.treasurer.gov.au/tsr/content/pressreleases/2003/010.asp [2003, Mar 10].
Web pages
The Campbell Collaboration 2003, About the Campbell Collaboration
[Online], Available: http://www.campbellcollaboration.org/FraAbout.html [2003, Jan 14].
If the web page has no identified author and/or, set out the reference
as follows:
Glossary, n.d. [Online], Available: http://www.utilitarianism.com/glossary.htm [2003, Jan 20].
FIGURES AND TABLES
Please cite any figures and tables you use in the text of your
paper. Number them sequentially, and give each descriptive title
or caption of up to two sentences. Please supply the summary data
you used to generate any figures, preferably as Excel worksheets.
Do not send whole data sets, only the information required to generate
the figures themselves. Supply illustrations, diagrams, maps, and
photos as high-resolution files in any standard machine-readable
format. Please contact Assistant Editor Rhondda Hollis if such materials
as are essential to a submission cannot be supplied in electronic
format.
REFERENCES
Commonwealth of Australia 1994, Style Manual for Authors, Editors
and Printers, 5th edn, Australian Government Publishing Service.
Department of Education, Science and Training 2002, Register
of Refereed Journals.
Political Studies n.d. Advice for Authors and Style Guide.
Williams, J. M. 1991, Style: Toward Clarity and Grace,
Chicago University Press, Chicago.
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