Submissions

The Journal is devoted to international and American foreign relations, including examinations of grand strategy, diplomacy, and issues involving development, military, and commerce. It is to examine the interactions of international relations in a global context, and its broad focus includes a number of disciplines, including political science, international economics, national security studies, and development studies. The purpose of the Journal is to invite practitioners to share their experiences and lessons learned from what they have gained in the field and on the job that include the subject matter previously mentioned.

The editorial staff of the Journal encourages authors to submit manuscripts that address situations that can be found in international relations and would be of practical use to other practitioners or researchers. The journal editors requests practitioners with appropriate specialization who represent diverse backgrounds to submit and review manuscripts as well as participate as commentators in special solicited forums and as book reviewers. The choice of commentators and book reviewing is subject to the Editors’ discretion.

To encourage potential non-academic contributors, manuscripts are to be double-spaced and submitted online. We prefer the use of the Chicago Manual of Style, but will work with the contributor on formatting and citation. Given the nature of use case scenarios, we encourage the use of executive summaries, bullet point lists, graphics, maps, charts, line drawings, and other presentations of information that would be helpful in understanding the application of the knowledge to other fact patterns and situations. We intend to provide a forum that will assist in the work of international civil servants; foreign, commerce, developmental aid defense ministries; those working in, but not limited to, counter-terrorism, intelligence, and trade. We do not allow classified information to be shared and strongly encourage contributors to scrub such information from their works. The aim and purpose of each piece is to provide generalized information that can be utilized and replicated in future similar projects and country scenarios. As such, we emphasize the idea of best practices and lessons learned rather than creating a historical repository of that specific use case. For example, the current effort to distribute vaccines to the developing world has experienced many difficulties, delays, and bureaucratic inhibitors that has greatly slowed the distribution. Tens of thousands of potential vaccine doses have expired while waiting to be distributed, contributing to waste. Inequities have emerged as the countries that have paid for the vaccines have received priority shipments, with quite valid reasoning. Previous experiences in Ebola and Anthrax vaccine distribution, for example, and lessons learned and best practices offered by those in the field could have potentially eased the current international vaccine distribution efforts.

We aim to expand the realm of useful practical knowledge for practitioner’s to draw upon and resides in the public domain.

To submit, please email editor@diplomacystudies.org.