International Studies
International Studies is a peer-reviewed journal that is committed to exploring and understanding Indian foreign policy, the theory and practice of non-alignment and the developmental and security problems of Third World countries.
This scholarly journal publishes original research articles on a wide range of issues and problems of contemporary relevance in the broad field of international studies. The journal provides insights in international politics and organization, international economics, defence and strategic studies, political geography and international law.
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Electronic Access:
International Studies is available electronically on SAGE Journals Online at http://journals.sagepub.com/home/ISQ
International Studies, a peer reviewed scholarly journal, publishes original theoretical and empirical research articles of contemporary relevance in the field of International Relations, Area Studies and allied subjects. This scholarly journal encourages exploration and critical evaluation of new ideas in the field. It is a quarterly journal of the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, but the views contained therein are those of the individual authors and not necessarily those of the University.
| Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit | Vice-Chancellor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India |
| Srikanth Kondapalli | Professor in Chinese Studies, Centre for East Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi |
| Tsupokyemla Pongen | Doctorate, Centre for West Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India |
| Srabani Roy Choudhary | Professor, Centre for East Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India |
| Ajay Dubey | Professor, Centre for African Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India |
| V G Hegde | Professor, Centre for International Legal Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India |
| Arvind Kumar | Professor, Centre for Canadian, US & Latin American Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India |
| Atul Kumar | Professor, Centre for International Trade and Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India |
| Sushama Murthy | Professor, Centre for International Trade and Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India |
| P Sahadevan | Professor, Centre for South Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India |
| Bhaswati Sarkar | Professor, Centre for European Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India |
| Sharad K. Soni | The Human Rights Studies Programme, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India |
| Jayati Srivastava | Professor, Centre for International Politics, Organization and Disarmament, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India |
| Sangeeta Thapliyal | Professor, Centre for Inner Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India |
| Archana Upadhyay | Professor, Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India |
| Hüseyin Bagci | Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey |
| Sachin Chaturvedi | Director General, Research & Information Systems for Developing Countries, New Delhi |
| Ian Hall | Professor of International Relations, International Relations and the Deputy Director (Research) of the Griffith Asia Institute, Australia |
| Takenori Horimoto | University of Japan, Tokyo |
| Alexander Lukin | Department Head, Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs, Higher School of Economic University, Moscow |
| Selim Raihan | Department of Economics, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh |
| A. Subramanyam Raju | Dean, International Relations, Pondicherry University |
| Ashok Sajjanhar | Former Ambassador of India to Kazakhstan, Sweden and Latvia |
| Shulan Zhang | Director, Centre for South Asian Studies, Shandong University, China |
| Meena Singh Roy | Senior Fellow and Head Eurasia- West Asia Centre, Tilottama Foundation |
| Uttam Sinha | Head, Non-Traditional Security Centre, Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi |
| Latha Varadarajan | Director, International Security & Conflict Resolution, San Diego State University, USA |
| Amitav Acharya | American University, USA |
| P R Kumaraswamy | Professor, Centre for West Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India |
International Studies
This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics
International Studies is hosted on Sage Peer Review, a web-based online submission and peer review system. Please read the Manuscript Submission Guidelines below, and then visit https://peerreview.sagepub.com/isq to login and submit your article online. Remember you can log in to the submission site at any time to check on the progress of your paper through the peer review process.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of International Studies will be reviewed.
There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this Journal. Open Access options are available - see section 3.3 below.
As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere. Please see our guidelines on prior publication and note that International Studies will consider submissions of papers that have been posted on preprint servers; please alert the Editorial Office when submitting (contact details are at the end of these guidelines) and include the DOI for the preprint in the designated field in the manuscript submission system. Authors should not post an updated version of their paper on the preprint server while it is being peer reviewed for possible publication in the Journal. If the article is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the Journal's author archiving policy.
If your paper is accepted, you must include a link on your preprint to the final version of your paper.
If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journal Solutions Portal
1.1 Aims & Scope
1.2 Article types
1.3 Writing your paper
2.1 Peer review policy
2.2 Authorship
2.3 Acknowledgements
2.4 Funding
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
2.6 Research data
3.1 Publication ethics
3.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement
3.3 Open access and author archiving
4.1 Formatting
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
4.3 Supplemental material
4.4 Reference style
5.1 ORCID
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
5.3 Permissions
6. On acceptance and publication
6.1 Sage Production
6.2 Online First publication
6.3 Access to your published article
6.4 Promoting your article
Before submitting your manuscript to International Studies, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope [link to A&S].
This scholarly journal publishes original research articles on a wide range of issues and problems of contemporary relevance in the broad field of international studies. The journal provides insights in international politics and organization, international economics, defence and strategic studies, political geography and international law. Area studies research papers having global relevance are also published. Alternative approaches and perspectives from the global south are encouraged.
The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice on how to get published, plus links to further resources.
1.3.1 Make your article discoverable
For information and guidance on how to make your article more discoverable, visit our Gateway page on How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online
International Studies adheres to a rigorous double-anonymize reviewing policy in which the identity of both the reviewer and author are always concealed from both parties.
International Studies is committed to delivering high quality, fast peer-review for your paper, and as such has partnered with Publons. Publons is a third party service that seeks to track, verify and give credit for peer review. Reviewers for International Studies can opt in to Publons in order to claim their reviews or have them automatically verified and added to their reviewer profile. Reviewers claiming credit for their review will be associated with the relevant journal, but the article name, reviewer’s decision and the content of their review is not published on the site. For more information visit the Publons website.
The Editor or members of the Editorial Board may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for possible publication in the Journal. In these cases, the peer review process will be managed by alternative members of the Board and the submitting Editor/Board member will have no involvement in the decision-making process.
All parties who have made a substantive contribution to the article should be listed as authors. Principal authorship, authorship order, and other publication credits should be based on the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their status. A student is usually listed as principal author on any multiple-authored publication that substantially derives from the student’s dissertation or thesis.
Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.
If the named authors for a manuscript change at any point between submission and acceptance, an Authorship Change Form must be completed and digitally signed by all authors (including any added or removed) . An addition of an author is only permitted following feedback raised during peer review. Completed forms can be uploaded at Revision Submission stage or emailed to the Journal Editorial Office contact (listed on the journal’s manuscript submission guidelines). All requests will be moderated by the Editor and/or Sage staff.
Important: Changes to the author by-line by adding or deleting authors are NOT permitted following acceptance of a paper.
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.
Please supply any personal acknowledgements separately to the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.
2.3.1 Writing assistance
Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance. It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.
International Studies requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
International Studies encourages authors to include a declaration of any conflicting interests and recommends you review the good practice guidelines on the Sage Journal Author Gateway
The journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages.
Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:
- share your research data in a relevant public data repository
- include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, we encourage you to consider using the statement to explain why it cannot be shared.
- cite this data in your research
Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway
3.1.1 Plagiarism
International Studies and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the Journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarized other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.
3.1.2 Prior publication
If material has been previously published it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.
3.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement
Before publication, Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive licence agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than Sage. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information please visit the Sage Author Gateway
3.3 Open access and author archiving
International Studies offers optional open access publishing via the Sage Choice programme and Open Access agreements, where authors can publish open access either discounted or free of charge depending on the agreement with Sage. Find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. For more information on Open Access publishing options at Sage please visit Sage Open Access. For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines and Publishing Policies.
4. Preparing your manuscript for submission
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. A LaTex template is available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.
Although there is no word limit, the authors are advised to submit articles between 5000 and 10,000 words; and book reviews between 1200 and 1800 words. Sharp commentaries of about 3000 words on current themes are also accepted.
The manuscript must include the following:
- Title of the paper, name of author, author’s affiliation and institutional address with pin code, email id and abstract of not more than 200 words. In case there are two or more authors, then corresponding author’s name and postal address details must be clearly specified.
- The contributors should provide 4–6 keywords for online searchability.
- All articles must be accompanied by 4–6 keywords and an abstract of 150–200 words. Notes should be numbered serially and presented at the end of the article. Notes must contain more than a mere reference.
- British spellings throughout (‘labour’ not ‘labor’, ‘centre’ not ‘center’); universal ‘z’ in ‘-ize’ and ‘-ization’ words.
- Use single quotes throughout. Double quotes only to be used within single quotes. Spellings of words in quotations should not be changed. Quotations of 45 words or more should be separated from the text and indented with one space with a line space above and below.
- Use ‘19th century’, ‘1980s’. Spell out numbers from one to nine, 10 and above to remain in figures. However, for exact measurements, use only figures (3 km, 9 percent, not %). Use thousands and millions, not lakhs and crores. Avoid saying ‘recently’ but rather give the year.
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines
- Figures, including maps, graphs and drawings, should not be larger than page size. They should be numbered and arranged as per their references in the text. All photographs and scanned images should have a resolution of minimum 300 dpi and 1,500 pixels and their format should be TIFF or JPEG.
- Due permissions should be taken for copyright protected photographs/images. Even for photographs/images available in the public domain, it should be clearly ascertained whether or not their reproduction requires permission for purposes of publishing (which is a profit-making endeavour).
- All photographs/scanned images should be provided separately in a folder along with the main article.
Please Note: All figures and tables should be cited in the text and should have the source (a specific URL, a reference or, if it is author’s own work, ‘The Author’) mentioned irrespective of whether or not they require permissions
Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For specifically requested colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Sage after receipt of your accepted article.
This Journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files
International Studies adheres to the APA reference style. View the APA guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.
There is no limit on the number of references allowed.
International Studies is hosted on Sage Peer Review, a web based online submission and peer review system. Please read the manuscript submission guidelines, and then visit https://peerreview.sagepub.com/isq to login and submit your article online.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created.
As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.
The collection of ORCID IDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this Journal. If you already have an ORCID ID you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID ID will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID ID is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.
If you do not already have an ORCID ID please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. The affiliation listed in the manuscript should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a manuscript note at the end of the paper. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).
Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway
6. On acceptance and publication
Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be made available to the corresponding author via email, and corrections should be made directly or notified to us promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.
Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite Online First articles.
6.3 Access to your published article
Sage provides authors with online access to their final article.
Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.
Manuscripts and all editorial correspondence should be addressed to the journal administrator at https://peerreview.sagepub.com/isq