PS takes its role as a space for scholarly communication within the political science community very seriously. Such scholarly communication entails clear and transparent sharing of our research across disciplinary subfields and epistemological and methodological approaches. This, in turn, requires clear and transparent communication about the procedures that we use to collect our evidence and to ensure that our research practices are ethical. While epistemological and methodological diversity is a strength of the political science community, this diversity also makes more imperative scholarly communication that is as transparent and accessible as possible across disciplinary subfields and approaches. Consequently, PS expects all authors to comply with ethical and transparency obligations described in APSA’s A Guide to Professional Ethics in Political Science (2012) and in Principles and Guidance for Human Subjects Research (approved by the APSA Council, April 4, 2020).

Researchers have ethical obligations to:

• ensure that research that directly engages human participants in the research process adheres to APSA’s Principles and Guidance for Human Subjects Research, and, if it does not for well-founded reasons, provide reasoned justification in scholarly publications and presentations (APSA 2012, 9);
• declare what compensation was paid (if any) to human participants and how the amount was determined;
• declare any potential or perceived conflicts of interest arising from their research (APSA 2012, 9);
• disclose sources of financial support for their research (APSA 2012, 9);
• “facilitate the evaluation of their evidence-based knowledge claims through data access, production transparency, and analytic transparency so that their work can be tested or replicated” (APSA 2012, 9) whenever legally, ethically and epistemologically possible; and
• acknowledge contributions to the research, including authorship and citations to previous work, as appropriate (APSA 2012, 9, 11).

To ensure that research published in the PS is consistent with these principles, when submitting their research for publication in PS, all authors will be expected to explicitly affirm the ways in which their research practices conform to these standards.

In particular, submitting authors will be asked:

• if the research draws on research directly engaging human participants, including human subjects, expert interviewees, and those exposed to experimental interventions, should answer “yes” to the screening question (even if ruled exempt from further review by the relevant ethics review board),
• discuss in the text or an appendix their ethical practices concerning human participants, particularly those included in the Principles such as consent, deception, confidentiality, harm and impact, as well as whether and how participants were compensated
• confirm compliance with APSA’s Principles and Guidance for Human Subjects Research, or if it is not in compliance, provide reasoned justification in the main text, with additional explanation provided in an appendix (included at the time of submission) if needed;
• adhere to the other ethical principles listed above, including explaining how any other real or perceived ethical issues or conflicts of interest, were addressed, including where these issues are discussed in the manuscript or an appendix as needed;
• declare any agencies, organizations, or institutions that funded the research;
• indicate where in the manuscript or an appendix the data collection procedures (if relevant) are explained; and
• confirm that, if the paper is accepted, quantitative data and related code necessary to produce the results will be made publicly available on the PS Dataverse, or in cases where such confirmation is not possible, provide a reasoned justification in the text or an appendix concerning the legal, ethical, or methodological constraints that prevent public, free access to the data.

This information (including any appendix that provides further details) will be shared with reviewers as appropriate, who will be invited to comment upon the extent to which the research or researchers have adequately addressed ethical and transparency obligations.

Upon conditional acceptance for publication in the PS, authors (particularly those whose work directly engages human participants in the research process) will be expected to:

• affirm a set of ethical and/or transparency declarations related to these principles;
• submit an appendix that explains any exceptions or issues related to the above principles, revised if relevant in light of comments from reviewers and editors, including relevant additional documents, such as but not limited to
• ethics certificates or approvals from all organizations that approved the research and/or
• other research documentation, such as survey instruments, interview guides, or other codebooks; and
• for quantitative research, prepare and deposit in the PS Dataverse the datasets and code necessary to reproduce all results described in the text and any appendix, including in-text references to tests or statistics, tables, figures, or other illustrations, unless legal, ethical or methodological constraints prevent such data sharing.

The corresponding author will be responsible for preparing these materials and submitting them for archiving in the PS Dataverse (explained further here).