Information for Contributors

Our new JESP European Social Policy blog serves two purposes. As discussed in our editorial post, we have decided to focus in the first instance mainly on discussing the social policy implications of the current COVID19 crisis. During the current crisis, the blog will offer the social policy community a platform to discuss national responses to the corona crisis in the various social policy fields as well as to reflect upon adequate responses at the European level.

While the immediate focus of the JESP European Social Policy Blog will in the near be mainly on providing a forum for discussing the COVID19 crisis from a variety of social policy perspectives, we have a long-term plan for developing the blog further. As we get closer to a return to “normality”, we are looking forward to widening our focus and providing the space for other relevant discussions on comparative European social policy. In the long-term the focus of the Blog remains similar to the overall aims & scope of JESP. In addition to acting as a forum for new ideas and dialogue on various social policy issues, we will also feature blog posts that summarize and celebrate the research published in the pages of the journal by our authors.

Length and Format of Posts

Articles published in the JESP European Social Policy blog should not nomally exceed 1,500 words (all-inclusive). However, we appreciate that at times it might be necessary for some posts to be longer than this. We will be happy to discuss this with prospective authors on a case to case basis.

Audience, Writing Style, and Language

We aim to have as wide an audience for the blog as possible and would like to encourage our authors to write in a concise and accessible manner, and to make the argument of their posts as clear as possible. This also means that authors should try to limit their use of acronyms and academic jargon, including Latin words and specialist terminology.

Referencing

We discourage extensive use of references, and, where possible, would ask authors to provide links to pieces that are free for the readers to access (rather than full “traditional” academic references). We would also ask the authors to limit their use of footnotes to a minimum.

Figures, Tables, Graphs, and Charts

Graphs and charts, tables and figures can be submitted with the posts and we will be happy to publish them as long as they are relevant to the argument made in the piece. If you submit tables, figures, graphs or tables, please provide them in .jpg format but also make sure that, if needed, the full data is accessible for us.

The Editing Process

The submitted posts will be reviewed by the editorial team. We retain the right of making our final decision only when a full final draft has been submitted. We cannot commit to publishing based only on an outline or abstract.

While this blog exists in order to allow for as wide a debate as possible on key areas of European social policy, in the first instance on the relationship between COVID19 and European social policy and, later, on European social policy more broadly, the posts we publish should normally be grounded in scholarly research, facts and evidence. We do not normally publish mere opinion pieces.

If you have an idea for a post that you would want to submit to us, check first our Information for Contributors section and contact us via the central email address of the JESP editorial office at editorsspam prevention@jesp.eu.