Policies
MPR publishes research articles, commentaries, and essays. Submissions should represent original, previously unpublished material. The journal occasionally does publish material that has been published elsewhere (assuming all requisite permissions are obtained). This is not the norm, and the editor should be contacted prior to the submission of nonoriginal material.
Authors are encouraged to contact the editor prior to submitting to discuss their proposed piece to receive feedback on the topic and to have any questions answered.
Editorial and Peer-Review Process
All submissions to Maine Policy Review are subject to editorial review. The editorial team reviews all submitted manuscripts and may reject ones of poor quality or submissions that do not fit within the scope of the journal. Articles that do fit within the scope are reviewed using a double-blind method that involves at least one and usually two expert (peer) as well as practitioner assessments of the article's quality, policy relevance, and suitability for a general audience. Authors can expect to hear from the editor within three months of the date of submission as to whether the article has been accepted for publication.
Authors should expect to make revisions to their original submissions. Typically the reviewers' comments indicate additional background that should be supplied for readers, suggest details that may be unnecessary or confusing to readers, and ask for stylistic changes that conform the article to the journal's style.
Publication Frequency
Starting with volume 30, submissions to MPR will be published online incrementally after they are reviewed, edited, and formatted. Publication frequency will be two issues per year (Jan.-June, July-Dec.), with occasional special issues published as a third issue of that volume year. Printed editions of the journal will be published on a volume basis at the end of the year.
Open-Access Policies
Maine Policy Review is an open-access journal, following the Budapest Open Access Initiative definition of open access: "free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited."
There are no article processing charges, submissions fees, or any other costs required of authors to submit articles to this journal. Authors retain copyright of their works. Starting in 2021, articles are licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 license
Contact Information
Articles, commentaries, Margaret Chase Smith essays and/or your questions should be directed to the editor at the address below.
Barbara Harrity, Editor
Ph: (207) 581-4133
Fx: (207) 581-1266
Email: mpr@maine.edu
Maine Policy Review
Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center
5784 York Complex, Bldg. #4
University of Maine
Orono, ME 04469-5784
