Author Guidelines

We will accept submissions which fall into a variety of categories, differentiated by type and content. 

By type

1. Full Length Original Research Papers (Between 2000 and 5000 words): Detailed research studies which are the original works of their authors, classified as primary literature.
2. Academic Essays (both short and long): As long as they satisfy the core research requirement of 3rd year BSc Economics research modules.
3. Limited Literature Reviews (Around 2000 words): These can be shorter one-off pieces which explore existing research, point out possible gaps and present opportunities for research with a novel angle or new approach. 

By content

1. Works relating to any sphere and niche of economics are welcome - the journal has a generalist approach to content.
2. Works with a focus on applied theory would be preferred to those which are purely theoretical.
3. We also welcome interdisciplinary studies such as those integrating political science, geography, psychology and computer science, as long as the core of the analysis is Economic

Structure

Abstract
A single paragraph of about 200 words maximum. For research articles, abstracts should give a pertinent overview of the work. We strongly encourage authors to use the following style of structured abstracts, but without headings: (1) Background: Place the question addressed in a broad context and highlight the purpose of the study; (2) Methods: Describe briefly the main methods or treatments applied; (3) Results: Summarize the article's main findings; and (4) Conclusions: Indicate the main conclusions or interpretations. The abstract should be an objective representation of the article, it must not contain results which are not presented and substantiated in the main text and should not exaggerate the main conclusions.

Keywords
List three to ten pertinent keywords specific to the article; yet reasonably common within the subject discipline.

Introduction
The introduction should briefly place the study in a broad context and highlight why it is important. It should define the purpose of the work and its significance. The current state of the research field should be reviewed carefully and key publications cited. Please highlight controversial and diverging hypotheses when necessary. Finally, briefly mention the main aim of the work and highlight the principal conclusions. As far as possible, please keep the introduction comprehensible to scientists outside your particular field of research.

Literature review
A section discussing relevant literature surrounding your research question/topic. This section would ideally answer the relevant modelling or empirical strategies discussed and used by other authors, finding of other researchers, their methodology, and comments on data used. It is also essential, in this section, to mention how your research adds to the existing literature. 

Materials and methods
Please note that for the journal this detail goes in the Appendix section for any coding replication, mathematical derivations, dataset creation steps.

Materials and Methods should be described with sufficient details to allow others to replicate and build on published results. Please note that publication of your manuscript implicates that you must make all materials, data, computer code, and protocols (Walsh, 1993) associated with the publication available to readers. Please disclose at the submission stage any restrictions on the availability of materials or information. New methods and protocols should be described in detail while well-established methods can be briefly described and appropriately cited.

Research manuscripts reporting large datasets (Mortimore and Sammons, 1997) that are deposited in a publicly available database should specify where the data have been deposited and provide the relevant accession numbers. If the accession numbers have not yet been obtained at the time of submission, please state that they will be provided during review. They must be provided prior to publication.

Interventionary studies involving animals or humans (Fenwick et al., 2012), and other studies that require ethical approval, must list the authority that provided approval and the corresponding ethical approval code.

[For] (i) Enjoyment; (ii) Good entertaining films; (iii) Greater understanding of [the] issue portrayed; (iv) Insight into literature and film making; (iv) Discussion on current perspectives in treatment or research on topic; and (v) Opportunity to socialise and catch up with friends.

Results
This section may be divided by subheadings. It should provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results (Royal Institute of British Architects, n.d.), their interpretation as well as the experimental conclusions that can be drawn.

Discussion
Authors should discuss the results and how they can be interpreted in perspective of previous studies and of the working hypotheses. The findings and their implications should be discussed in the broadest context possible. Future research directions may also be highlighted.

Conclusions
This section is not mandatory, but can be added to the manuscript if the discussion is unusually long or complex.

Up to three level headings may be present and must be clearly identifiable using different font sizes, bold or italics. We suggest using Headings 1, 2 and 3 in MS-Word’s ‘Style’ section.

Acknowledgements (optional)
Any acknowledgements must be headed and in a separate paragraph, placed after the main text but before the reference list.

Competing interests

If any of the authors have any competing interests then these must be declared. A short paragraph should be placed before the references. Guidelines for competing interests can be found here.

Ethics and consent (if applicable)
Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the UCL Ethical guidelines and/or the Declaration of Helsinki. Where applicable, the studies must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee (e.g. the UCL Ethics Committee) and the authors should include a statement within the article text detailing this approval, including the name of the ethics committee and reference number of the approval. The identity of the research subject(s) should be anonymised whenever possible. For research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study must be obtained from participants (or their legal guardian).

References - Harvard Style Referencing
All references cited within the submission must be listed at the end of the main text file. References containing works cited within an article will be listed at the end of the article, in alphabetical order of authors’ surnames). All reading materials should be included in ‘References’ – even works which may not have been cited within an article but which the author wishes to share with the reader (for these, the author should provide additional information in endnotes explaining the relevance of the work). This journal uses the Harvard (author-date) system for the Reference list.

Examples:

Walsh, P. (1993) Education and Meaning: Philosophy in practice. London: Cassell.

Mortimore, P. and Sammons, P. (1997) ‘Endpiece: A welcome and a riposte to critics’. In J. White and M. Barber (eds), Perspectives on School Effectiveness and School Improvement. London: Institute of Education, 234–46.

Fenwick, T., Mortimore, P. and Sanders, S. (2012) ‘Educating out prejudice: Focusing on homophobia and transphobia’. Race Equality Teaching, 30 (2), 15–18. doi:10.1086/690235.

Royal Institute of British Architects. n.d. ‘Shaping the future: Careers in architecture’. Accessed 8 July 2019. http://ww.careersinarchitecture.net/.

Formatting

Please supply all files as Open Office, Microsoft Word or RTF files.

Capitalisation of titles
Capitalise all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs and subordinate conjunctions (i.e. as, because, although). Use lowercase for all articles, coordinate conjunctions and prepositions. Examples:

    Saving Eighteenth-Century New Smyrnea: Public Archaeology in Action

    Front Yard, Back Yard: Lessons in Neighborhood Archaeology in an Urban Environment

Additional information (if applicable)
Name of editor/photographer/translator, no. of b&w and colour illustrations. NOTE: Tier 1 subheads should follow the same rule as the titles. For lower-level subheads, only capitalise first letter (plus proper nouns).

Language
Articles must be submitted in English. Authors are welcome to use American or British spellings and grammar as long as they are used consistently. Some of the key differences between English and American English include the following:

Programme (UK) vs. Program (US) Labour (UK) vs. Labor (US) Centre (UK) vs. Center (US) Demobilise (UK) vs. Demobilize (US) 13 January 2011 (UK) vs. January 13, 2011 (US)

Please note that when referring to proper nouns and normal institutional titles, you should always use the official, original spelling. For instance, it is World Health Organization, not World Health Organisation.

Grammar
As with language, American or English spelling and grammar rules may be used as long as they are used consistently. For instance, you may use a serial comma (red, white, and blue) or not (red, white and blue).

Numbers
We are happy for authors to use either words or figures to represent large figures (i.e. one million or 1,000,000) as long as the usage is consistent within an article. For numbers between zero and twelve we would recommend using words rather than figures, except for when it is a part of a dataset or presented in a table. When referring to a percentage, please use the words ‘per cent’ rather than the symbol %, again except for when it is a part of a dataset or presented in a table.

Currencies
Use £ for British Pound Sterling, € for Euro, e.g. £50, €100. Use US$, C$, NZ$, A$ to distinguish between the different dollar currencies.

Quotation marks
Please use single quotation marks except for quotes within another speech, in which case double quotation marks are used.

Acronyms and abbreviations
With abbreviations, the crucial goal is to ensure that the reader – particularly one who may not be fully familiar with the topic or context being addressed – is able to follow along. Spell out almost all acronyms on first use, indicating the acronym in parentheses immediately thereafter. Use the acronym for all subsequent references. You do not need to spell out abbreviations for US, UK, EU, UN and DC, as in Washington, DC.

Images and figures
As long as they provide key information related to the submission then the journal welcomes photographs/pictures to accompany the main text. Such images may ultimately be removed from your piece at the editors’ discretion, if deemed unnecessary. Figures, including graphs and diagrams, are acceptable if they are professionally and clearly presented. If a figure is not easy to understand or does not appear to be of a suitable quality, you will be asked to re-render or omit it.

NOTE: Please supply all figures separately, if possible in colour and at a resolution of at least 150dpi (300dpi preferred), and each file should not be more than 20MB. Standard formats accepted are: JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, EPS.

Tables

The same principles which apply to figures apply to tables. They should be necessary and should not repeat significant pieces of information already included in the text.

Use of footnotes/endnotes

In-text citations
All external sources must be clearly cited. Authors are strongly encouraged to use parenthetical citations according to the Chicago style (Adam 1984: 120ff.) For publications authored and published by organisations, use the short form of the organisation’s name or its acronym in lieu of the full name. For instance, do NOT do the following (International Committee of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies 2000); instead, you should write (ICRC 2000). Also, please do not include URLs (web addresses) in parenthetical citations.

Citing
All external sources must be clearly cited. Authors are strongly encouraged to use parenthetical citations according to the Harvard Style. Eg: (Smith, 1776) For publications authored and published by organisations, use the short form of the organisation’s name or its acronym in lieu of the full name. For instance, do NOT do the following (International Committee of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies 2000); instead, you should write (ICRC 2000).

How to Cite: Lastname, F., Lastname, F., & Lastname, F. (2021). Title. UCL Journal of Economics, x (x), x. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/LRE.x.x.x.