Submission Guidelines
Global Environmental Politics covers the relationship between global political forces and environmental change. The journal seeks to publish the best and most innovative scholarly manuscripts available on contemporary international and comparative environmental politics. While articles must focus on political aspects of environmental policy and governance, we interpret politics broadly to include political activities by non-state actors, including non-governmental organizations, businesses, and communities. Scholarly topics could include the role of states, multilateral institutions and agreements, globalization, trade, consumption patterns, international finance, corporations, poverty and inequality, nongovernmental organizations, science and technology, and grassroots movements. Typically, we publish on environmental issues that involve two or more countries, such as climate change, ozone depletion, deforestation, biodiversity, desertification, transboundary pollution, waste management, oceans and fisheries, and endangered species.
We encourage submissions from authors with a range of disciplinary backgrounds, including political science, international relations, sociology, history, human geography, public policy, science and technology studies, environmental ethics, law, economics, and environmental science.
GEP encourages submissions from junior scholars and scholars from under-represented groups. We strive to provide these authors with constructive feedback to advance their career goals.
GEP does not evaluate works already published elsewhere or under current review by another publisher.
Types of Articles Eligible for Review in GEP:
The journal publishes Forum Articles, Research Articles, and occasional Research Notes.
Forum articles comprise short commentaries (2000-3000 words, including footnotes and bibliography) that should stimulate discussion on salient issues of interest to other scholars in the field. Forums have a solid theoretical grounding in GEP literature as well. Submissions for the Forum section typically receive two single-blind reviews.
Research Articles are full-length papers (maximum 8000 words, including footnotes and bibliography) that contain an original contribution to research on global environmental politics. These articles should be theoretically grounded and engage deeply with existing literature in global environmental politics. We believe that methodological diversity is important and so accept research papers drawing from a wide range of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods. However, methods used must be documented with sufficient detail to allow readers to evaluate the rigor of the research design and implementation. Research Articles are sent to three referees for double-blind reviews before a final editorial decision is made. If three reviews cannot be attained in a reasonable amount of time, decisions may be made on the basis of two reviews.
Research Notes (3000-5000 words, including footnotes and bibliography) provide discussions of new data sources and/or research techniques relevant to the GEP community as well as analysis of the practice of research relevant to global environmental politics. Papers on research tools and techniques may be qualitative, quantitative, or formal. Authors should demonstrate the broad utility of the approach in the field of Global Environmental Politics.
Papers on new data sources should, in addition to describing the substance, provide a discussion of the range of questions for which the data could be useful. They should also include arrangements for making the data available and accessible to the GEP community. Research Notes are sent to three referees for double-blind reviews before a final editorial decision is made. If three reviews cannot be attained in a reasonable amount of time, decisions may be made on the basis of two reviews.
Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models
In accordance with MIT Press Policies, GEP does not allow artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT or large language models (LLMs) to be listed as authors of our publications. Authors who use AI tools to produce text or images/graphics, or to collect data, must inform the editors of this use and be transparent about it in their manuscripts so that readers understand the role of these tools in the development of the work. Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscripts, including any portions produced by AI tools, and are liable for any ethical breaches that may result from the use of such content. Please read the full MIT Press AI policy before submitting a paper to GEP (https://direct.mit.edu/journals/pages/publication-ethics) . When you submit, you will also be asked if you used artificial intelligence in any portion of the research or writing process and, if so, to describe how it was used.
To submit an article to GEP
All submissions are handled through our peer review management system, Scholastica. You may submit a manuscript for consideration here: https://gep.scholasticahq.com
Special Issues
GEP publishes a Special Issue each year on a topic of special interest to our readers. We may also at times publish a Special Section, which contains a smaller grouping of articles on a topic. Note that we are willing to consider the same topic with the same group of editors for either a full issue or a section if you wish us to do so.
Complete information about Special Issues is available here. This document contains information for all who plan to submit a proposal for either a Special Issue or a Special Section.
GEP special issues have dealt with these topics:
2023: Understanding the Politics and Governance of Climate Change Loss and Damage
2022: Politics and Policies for Supply Side Climate Changes Initiatives
2021: Green Industrial Policy
2020: New Technologies
2019: Transformative Water Relations: Indigenous Interventions in Global Political Economies
2018: The Global Environmental Politics of Food
2017: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading
2016: The Paris Agreement on Climate Change
Book Reviews
All book reviews are commissioned by the Book Review Editor. We do not consider unsolicited reviews. If you are interested in writing a book review for the journal, please send an expression of interest and a CV to Kemi Fuentes-George, [email protected].
Peer Review Taxonomy
Global Environmental Politics and the MIT Press are participating in a pilot of STM's Working Group on Peer Review Taxonomy.
STM, the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers, has recognized a need to identify and standardize definitions and terminology in peer review practices in order to help align nomenclature as more publishers use open peer review models. A peer review taxonomy that is used across publishers will help make the peer review process for articles and journals more transparent, and will enable the community to better assess and compare peer review practices between different journals.
Taxonomy:
- Identity transparency: Double Anonymized
- Reviewer interacts with: Managing Editor
- Review information published: None