Submissions

This page is designed to help you ensure your submission is ready for and fits the scope of the journal. Before submitting you should read over the guidelines here, then register an account (or login if you have an existing account).

About

Reaching Regions is an open access, peer-reviewed, outreach journal for social science research relevant to North American regions. Submissions should be written in non-technical language targeted to non-academic audiences. Reaching Regions is the official outreach journal of the North American Regional Science Council (NARSC) and published with support from the Iowa State University Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) and the Regional Research Institute (RRI) at West Virginia University.

Focus and Scope

Reaching Regions will publish contributions on topics of policy-relevance to North American regions including original descriptive analyses, data visualizations, non-technical summaries of published academic research, case studies with broader implications, presidential addresses, research syntheses, and other items approved by the Editors. All submissions should be written in non-technical language that is accessible to non-academics.

Reaching Regions promotes the mission of the North American Regional Science Council (NARSC) by increasing dissemination of knowledge, encouraging scholarly engagement within NARSC, and increasing the external visibility of NARSC and its members. NARSC members have a long history of doing policy-relevant, engaging, and impactful research.

Reaching Regions is peer-reviewed, open access, and published fully online. NARSC members can submit papers with no submission or publication fees.

Submission Checklist

Prior to submission, authors should consult the journal’s Focus and Scope to ensure their paper is a proper fit for the journal.

There are no strict formatting guidelines for initial submissions, but submissions must be well-written, free of technical jargon, and free of errors and typos. Initial submissions should generally be less than 10 pages double-spaced (although longer submissions may be considered). Technical aspects can be included in an appendix for interested readers, so long as the main sections of the submission are fully interpretable without the appendix. Manuscripts must be doc, docx, rtf, or odt files.

Submissions that are conditionally accepted must be formatted to journal specifications before the submission can be fully accepted and published.

During the submission process, authors will need to do the following:

indicate which category their submission fits; please see Section Guidelines at the bottom of this link: https://www.iastatedigitalpress.com/rreg/submissions/
affirm that their paper has been written to be accessible to non-academic audiences
disclose any related work or conflicts of interest by the authors, and
provide information on the author’s affiliation and involvement with the North American Regional Science Council in order to waive the submission fee; this can be addressed in the "Comments to the Editor" field at the end of the submission process on the "Review your submission" page or via a cover letter attached along with the manuscript.

Copyright Notice

Authors must agree to this copyright notice for each manuscript when it is submitted through the Iowa State University Digital Press website. Reaching Regions provides immediate open access to its articles. Author(s) retain copyright in their workm and articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, which allows readers to copy, share, and adapt the article so long as the original article in Reaching Regions is cited. Material produced by authors on official duty as U.S. government employees is considered to be in the public domain, which will be indicated on the published paper.

Authors who are including materials, often tables or figures, from other copyrighted sources must obtain permission to use these materials from the copyright holder and submit the evidence that this permission has been obtained from the copyright holder when the manuscript is submitted to Reaching Regions. Acknowledgment of the use of this material and credit for the source of the material must be included in the manuscript.

Peer Review

All submissions will be evaluated by at least one Editor or Co-Editor. An Editor or Co-Editor may decide to desk reject any submission deemed not appropriate for the journal, i.e., they may decline to publish it without input from an external reviewer. Submissions not desk rejected will be sent to at least one external peer reviewer.

Peer reviewers will be asked to:

assess whether the submission fits the criteria for the relevant submission category,
recommend whether or not the submission should be published, and
provide feedback as appropriate.

Reviewers are not generally expected to provide detailed feedback for submissions they do not recommend publishing, but they are asked to offer some brief explanation for their negative recommendation. Handling editors have the final say in whether a submission warrants publication.

Requests for major revisions will generally be avoided. Most papers will be either rejected or accepted conditional on minor revisions and formatting. Revised submissions following conditional acceptance will typically not be sent back to external reviewers.

Licences

The following licences are allowed:

CC BY 4.0
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Publication Fees

Submissions by scholars unaffiliated with NARSC will require a $100 submission fee for consideration payable online via the following link: https://buy.stripe.com/5kAfZaayy84EbFm28a

The submission fee will be waived for NARSC affiliates, defined as individuals who meet any of the following criteria:

paid registration fees for the North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association International (RSAI) in the past year (also known as the NARSC conference);
made a donation to NARSC of at least $100 in the past year;
served on NARSC Council or the journal’s Editorial Board in the past year;
served as NARSC President or Chair in any previous year; and
current member of the Canadian, Mid-Continent, Northeastern, Southern, or Western Regional Science Associations.

Publication Cycle

The journal is published continuously, with articles released when they are accepted and are ready for publication. This publishing model ensures that research is made available as soon as possible.

Sections

Section or article type	Public Submissions	Peer Reviewed	Indexed
Original Descriptive Analysis
Data Visualization
Non-Technical Summary of Published Academic Research
Case Study with Broader Implications
Presidential Address
Research Synthesis

Section Guidelines

Original Descriptive Analyses

Original descriptive analyses should present insightful data via maps, figures, tables, etc. and discuss implications for North American regions. Care should be taken to avoid causal language and interpretations not supported by the data.

Data Visualizations

Data visualizations can be a single exhibit or set of exhibits presented without textual discussion and interpretation. They are often self-evident and easily interpretable on their own.

Non-Technical Summaries of Published Academic Research

Non-technical summaries of published academic research will be published in the journal if they meet specific criteria including that they:

are based on original research recently published online or in print in an outlet widely respected by regional scientists,
use non-technical language, and
fully comply with copyright laws.

Case Studies with Broader Implications

Case studies with broader implications can span a variety of topics and regions, so long as they are broadly relevant to North American regions. Case studies of small regions on narrow issues that do not generalize to other regions are generally not suitable.

Presidential Addresses

The NARSC President gives an annual address each year at the annual meeting. The Editors plan to invite NARSC Presidents to submit non-technical versions of their address to the NARSC outreach journal.

Research Syntheses

Research syntheses are papers that review and attempt to synthesize the research literature on a particular regional science topic using language accessible to non-academics. These should provide a main takeaway but also a balanced discussion that includes limitations and places of uncertainty in the research literature.

Other Items Approved by the Editors

The Editors may accept other submission items not specifically enumerated above or create new categories if warranted. Outreach related to North American regions is the central focus of the journal, and items will be published based on whether they contain relevant regional science information that is likely to be of interest to North American policymakers and the general public.