Libertarian Papers welcomes original research from a wide variety of fields, especially philosophy, politics, and economics, but also legal theory, history, literary criticism, and social or cultural analysis. Submissions should be interesting to the libertarian community, broadly conceived, but this does not mean they must adopt a libertarian approach: criticisms of libertarian ideas are also welcome. Authors are expected to submit a polished and professional manuscript. After an initial inspection by the editors, manuscripts will be submitted to a double-blind review process. Research articles, distinguished lectures, review essays, and book reviews are all considered. We also encourage debate with previously-published papers in the journal. Interested authors should contact the editor before writing a reply.
Please send submissions via email to the Editor (contact); no fax or hard copies permitted. Submission of an article implies that is has not been published before and that it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else. Submissions should be in the form of a Word document consistent with the specifications below. Libertarian Papers will not consider more than two submissions from any author, whether sole author or co-author, at any given time. Furthermore, the journal will not publish more than two articles by the same author in any one volume.
Format & Citations: All submissions should include an abstract of around 150 words. As noted above, articles should be submitted in final form, and be thoroughly proofread. American and British English are both acceptable. All references to the author(s) should be removed to facilitate blind peer-review. Footnotes are preferred to endnotes, but are not required. Authors are asked to use the author-date method of citation, through we allow for some discretion so long as the references are consistent and complete; we do, however, prefer in-text citations with a separate references section at the end of the paper. As noted in our inaugural welcome message, the exact citation style is not our major concern, as long as it is consistent, professional, and enables the reader to locate the work referenced. Neither our time nor the author’s need be wasted converting from one citation style to another.
Regarding citations to articles in Libertarian Papers:
For vols. 1-3 (2009-2011), cite articles as: Author, “Title,” Libertarian Papers [volume #], [article number] (year). Example: Jan Narveson, “Present Payments, Past Wrongs: Correcting Loose Talk about Nozick and Rectification,” Libertarian Papers 1, 1 (2009).
For vol. 4 (2012) onward, cite articles as: Author. Year. “Title.” Libertarian Papers. Volume # (issue #): [page numbers]. Example: Michael F. Reber. 2012. “The Role of Work: A Eudaimonistic Perspective.” Libertarian Papers. 4 (1): 1-26.
Length: There are no fixed limits on the length of submissions. Nevertheless, authors are encouraged to bear in mind the difficulties of reviewing and reading extremely lengthy manuscripts.
Foreign Languages & Translations. We are interested in previously-unpublished English translations of foreign-language book chapters or journal articles of significant historical importance to libertarian scholarship. Interested parties should contact the Editor before beginning work to ensure the proposal will be acceptable.
Previously Published: We do not usually publish previously-published papers (for translations, see above). On occasion we may re-publish important works that originally appeared in now-obscure fora, or that are otherwise inaccessible (such as two articles by Bruno Leoni published in Volume 1 of the journal).
Fees: There are no submission or publication fees.
Copyright: Articles will be published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, where possible. By submitting a manuscript to us, you grant a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License to the public, unless agreed otherwise in writing. We will also ask authors to sign a (simple and straightforward) Publication Agreement agreeing to publication on these terms.