Contributions to Voting matters

Please note that Voting matters is not receiving submissions at present.

Anybody can contribute to Voting matters. To avoid difficulties in the process of getting your paper published, the following notes should help.

Understanding your audience:

Please read some previous articles to find out the style required. You should explain technical terms like monotonicity. You can assume the reader understands STV, but not what the Condorcet Paradox is.

Understanding your subject:

Please make sure that your paper does not duplicate material already published in Voting matters. You should study papers related to your own ideas. Since all of Voting matters is now available on the Internet, this is a good place to start - and then the papers which appear as references.

Keep in touch:

The Editor tries to help and brief emails can often avoid unnecessary work on your behalf.

References:

These are important. The title, date and publisher is essential. For material off the Internet, since a URL can change, a title is still essential - but please check that a Web search engine can find the paper from the title you provide. Please give the organisation responsible for the web site if at all possible.

Communication:

Most contact these days is via email. However, authors without email or Internet access should not be disadvantaged. Postal communication should be to Voting matters, McDougall Trust, Unit W219, West Building, Westminster Business Square, 1-45 Durham Street, London SE11 5JH, UK.

Computer-based documents:

If you use WORD, then please email the .DOC or .DOCX file. Otherwise use an .RTF file or, especially for simple documents, use ASCII.

Tables and complex figures.

Rather than re-setting such material, I generally prefer to adapt the author's version.

Timetable for publication:

Over the last ten years, there has never been a significant backlog of papers. This implies that most papers are published in the next issue unless that is within a month or two.

Refereeing.

I plan to referee some papers myself and ask others to referee some papers. Most of the referees will be previous contributors to Voting matters. Except very occasionally, the referees will be anonymous.