The Texas National Security Review is committed to excellence, scholarly rigor, and big ideas in the world of national security. We are an interdisciplinary, open-access, peer-reviewed journal that aims for our articles to end up on university syllabi and policy desks worldwide, and to be cited as foundational research and analysis on world affairs.
The Texas National Security Review publishes three kinds of articles.
- Academic articles in “The Scholar” section.
- Policy and practitioner articles in “The Strategist” section.
- Roundtables on books or on specific topics.
Each of these require different standards, guidance, and considerations.
The Scholar
We publish peer-reviewed, scholarly articles in our quarterly print edition and online.
We are open to a range of disciplinary and methodological approaches—including but not limited to history, political science, international relations, economics, law, sociology, science, engineering, and ethics and philosophy. We are especially eager to publish works that connect and transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries in ways that inform and encourage important national and international security debates and discussions. And we are particularly interested in hearing from young scholars and emerging voices with innovative ideas—particularly those who are working toward or have recently achieved tenure.
While we are catholic when it comes to discipline and methodology, we are not interested in arcane arguments that are only of interest to the high priests of established disciplines. If your arguments and methods are not accessible to policymakers, they are not a good fit for TNSR.
Our editorial team, editorial board, associate editors, and outside reviewers vet submissions in the most rigorous and useful way possible. Our review and editorial processes are oriented towards generating the most cutting-edge, impactful scholarship on national and international security. We embrace and build upon the best practices of scholarly review, while striving to avoid the pathologies that plague the academic review process.
We begin with a desk review process by our editorial team (and sometimes members of our editorial board) to ensure that the manuscript is a good fit for TNSR’s peer review process. (At times, we ask authors to make revisions prior to peer review to best set their manuscripts up for success in that process.) If our editorial team chooses to proceed to peer review, then we follow a double-blind peer review process with at least two reviewers. Based on the peer review, our editorial team may then reject, recommend revision and resubmission, or accept the manuscript.
If you are interested in submitting an academic manuscript to this section of the journal, please follow these steps:
- Send your manuscript as a Word document with a cover letter that contains a 150-word abstract and a short biography of 150 words or less (per author) to submissions@tnsr.org, with subject line “Scholar Submission: [Article Title Here].”
- Ensure your manuscript does not contain your name or any information that would enable a reviewer to identify who you are.
- Please ensure that the manuscript is between 8,000-16,000 words, not including footnotes. We sometimes review longer manuscripts, but please consult with the editorial team before submitting. If you submit a longer manuscript, it is likely that your editorial review will pay special attention to precision, accessibility, and concision, to present your arguments in the most effective manner possible for TNSR’s readership.
- We use the Chicago Manual of Style (with minor exceptions) for text and footnotes. Please read our footnote guidelines and apply them to your citations before submitting.
- Those employing quantitative methods must use readable and well-labeled graphs and charts (as opposed to in-text formulae and regression tables). Authors are responsible for obtaining permission from the copyright holder to use any third-party material, including graphics, tables, or images.
- Let us know at the time that you submit your article whether it will need to go through an internal review process before you are cleared for publication.
- All submissions must be original and should not be under consideration elsewhere. The Texas National Security Review does not accept manuscripts that have been published in whole or in part in other journals, regardless of whether the author retains the copyright.
- Please ensure that you disclose any conflicts of interest, funding sources, and institutional review board approvals at time of submission, redacted appropriately to ensure anonymity during peer review.
Authors are also welcome to email submissions@tnsr.org to ask if an article might be the right fit for the Texas National Security Review.
The Strategist
Strategist articles are also published in our quarterly print edition and online.
Strategist articles conform to the journal’s broader stylistic requirements of intellectual rigor, accessibility, and relevance, but are written from the perspective of strategists and policymakers. Authors of pieces in this section commonly have significant and high-level policy experience relevant to the experience that they are writing on, though this experience may be military or civilian in nature, American or international.
Because Strategist articles often reflect, at least in part, the authors’ direct experiences, they may be less-densely footnoted than Scholar articles, but should still include references where appropriate and helpful to readers (see our footnote guidelines). Regardless of the level at which the author has worked, it is important that the manuscript identify why the author’s perspective and recommendations on strategy should be given special weight.
Strategist articles typically range from 3,000 to 8,000 words in length; we may entertain longer submissions as content and topic warrant. TNSR’s Strategist articles are single-blind reviewed, though we reserve the right to send submissions to one or more reviewers as part of the editorial team’s deliberations.
You can submit a Strategist article via submissions@tnsr.org. Please use the subject line, “Strategist Submission: [Article Title Here].”
Roundtables
Roundtables are where TNSR’s readers hear from multiple experts. Roundtables in our journal have typically taken two forms: roundtables on a recently published book in the field of national or international security, or roundtables that are a collection of essays in conversation with each other on a significant national security challenge or topic.
Roundtables are typically solicited by the editorial team at the Texas National Security Review. However, if you have a topic or book that you believe would be a strong candidate for a future roundtable discussion, please contact us at submissions@tnsr.org, using the subject line “Roundtable Proposal: [Topic/Book Here].”
Ethics Policy
The Texas National Security Review expects all authors to comply with the ethical obligations of their discipline. We employ standards outlined in APSA’s A Guide to Professional Ethics in Political Science (2012) and Principles and Guidance for Human Subjects Research (2020).
For studies that constitute human subjects research (i.e., involve living individuals from whom data was obtained by intervention or interaction or about whom identifiable private information was collected), the submitting author must:
- Declare whether the research has received IRB (or equivalent institutional body) approval or exemption. (As appropriate, this information should be redacted during peer review, but must be provided in full upon conditional acceptance of a manuscript.)
- Discuss in the text or an appendix, as appropriate, the ethics of the human subjects research conducted, including (but not necessarily limited to) consent, deception, confidentiality, potential harm, and compensation.
Authors whose institutions do not have an IRB (or equivalent institutional body) should:
- In an appendix intended for circulation to reviewers, indicate the absence of such an institutional body, and describe in detail their research practices with respect to human subjects and any other ethical obligations.
- Provide the editorial team at the Texas National Security Review with official documentation substantiating the absence of such an institutional body at the time of submission.
Upon conditional acceptance for publication in the Texas National Security Review, authors of studies involving human subjects should expect to provide evidence of IRB (or equivalent institutional body) approval or exemption, and other relevant documentation as requested.
AI Policy
University and academic norms are evolving rapidly in the area of artificial intelligence (AI), and we may adapt or modify policies in accordance with evolving standards. The use of AI, including but not limited to software tools, large language models, and chatbots, is discouraged in submissions to the Texas National Security Review. AI cannot be listed as an author of a paper, and as a non-legal entity, it cannot be responsible for the submitted work, nor can it assert the presence or absence of conflicts of interest, copyright, and license agreements.
Authors are fully responsible for the content of submitted manuscripts, including any portion produced by AI software or tools, and are liable for any breach of academic or professional ethics.
Authors who use AI in any capacity to write their manuscript, produce images or graphic elements, or to collect or analyze data, are expected to be open and transparent in disclosing what AI software was used, how, and for which parts of the manuscript, and to answer further questions if requested.