Submission Guidelines

Supported Electronic Formats
Submission Procedure
Page Numbers
Section Headings and Numbers
Length of Submission
Abstract
Notes
Graphics
Tables
Formulae and Symbols
Statistical Measures
Photographs and Images
Video and Sound Clips
Acknowledgments
References
Replicability

Please download our house style here.

We require that authors

• submit contributions in English,
• consistently follow conventions of either American or British spelling,
• use a 12-point or larger font throughout the text
• double space lines throughout the text
• submit a structured abstract (described below) on the web form and in the main text
• follow the other requirements listed in the next sections

Submissions must meet these requirements before they can be considered for review.

We will not review poorly written submissions, and the editorial staff cannot edit contributions or assist with translation. Specifically, this means that we will not:

• edit the incorrect usage of words or punctuation,
• revise poor sentence construction,
• reorganize the structure of contributions, or
• correct spelling mistakes.

1. Supported Electronic Formats

We accept the following formats, in descending order of preference

• MS Word [.docx]
• PDF [please remove author names and identifying information from the file]
• Rich Text Format [.rtf]
• LaTeX [Download LaTeX template here]

Contributions, once refereed and accepted, will be published in PDF.

Please submit your file(s) to our submissions desk via the weblink: www.demographic-research.org/authors/submission.
In special circumstances, or in times of maintenance on our website, you may also send us your submission by e-mail.

2. Submission Procedure

When submitting your work via the weblink, you will be asked to supply the following information:

• Disclosure indicating whether or not this submission has already been published in any other language or in any other publication. Give details.
• Title (and subtitle) of the submission
• Names, academic degrees, affiliations, and e-mail addresses of all authors. If the authors have personal homepages, include their URLs here, but only if each author who has a homepage has agreed to the publication of the URL.
• Name, address, e-mail, telephone number and fax number of the corresponding author
• Source of funding, if applicable
• A structured abstract (250 words or fewer, see instructions below). The abstract or summary should also appear in the attachment which contains the main text of your submission.
• Type of submission (Research Article, Descriptive Finding, Review, Research Material, Reflection, or Summary)
• Keywords or keyword phrases. Please list up to ten words or phrases describing the subject content of your contribution.
• Word count of the full submission
• Word count, as above, but excluding notes and references
• Brief listing of all attachments, including information about their formats

You will be able to upload up to three files with your submission. Please label each file with a descriptive name. The first file should contain the abstract and the main text or body of your submission. Should you wish to include larger figures, photographs, sound clips, video clips, or large tables which have not been incorporated into the text of the article, include these as separate attachments and label them accordingly. Should you have more than two additional submission files, please group them in a zip file, making sure each item has a descriptive file name.

3. Page Numbers

Please do not number the pages of your contribution or enter any other automatic headers or footers. Our staff will insert temporary page numbers prior to the review process.

4. Section Headings and Numbers

For any contribution of more than 1,000 words, your text should be divided into sections labelled with appropriate section headings.

5. Length of Submission

Except for Descriptive Findings, there is neither an upper nor a lower limit on length. However, we strongly recommend that the main text of contributions not exceed 8,000 words. Please remember that reviewers and readers prefer compact and succinct writing.

6. Abstract

We require an abstract of no more than 250 words, in structured form. It should appear in the attachment file which contains the text of your submission, and it must also be entered into the web form when submitting your work.

A structured abstract for Demographic Research consists of up to six sections:

The CONTRIBUTION section is mandatory; all other sections are optional. Sections that are used should remain in order. Depending on content and type of submission, it may be appropriate to omit some sections. For example, an abstract for a literature review might omit METHODS and RESULTS, or an abstract for a Formal Relationship might include only BACKGROUND, OBJECTIVE, and CONTRIBUTION. If a submission's content does not fall naturally into these categories, authors are free to interpret the meanings of the headings very broadly.

Examples of structured abstracts are available here: Example 1 and Example 2.

7. Notes

We ask authors to provide notes and comments as footnotes within the flow of the text, generally at the bottom of the page. Should your notes contain charts, tables, long equations, or other items that make a footnote impractical, it is also acceptable to include this information in an appendix or as an endnote. Please indicate an endnote with the use of parentheses in the flow of text (see Endnote 1), or make reference to the Appendix in the text or in a footnote.

8. Graphics

Once a manuscript has been accepted for publication, the editorial office will review the included graphics to see whether or not they conform to our guidelines. Authors will have to make sure that the graphics satisfy the technical and typographic requirements.

Please find our graphic guidelines here.

9. Tables

Use the table creation tools available in your word processor to make your tables. Do not use the "tab key" or the "space bar" approach. Please define any symbols or abbreviations used in a table immediately below the table itself. Include the caption you want to use for the table either in your main text file or in the attachment containing the table, should you decide to send the table as an attachment. If your work is accepted, we may request that you forward the original data used to create tables and diagrams.

10. Mathematical Formulae and Symbols

Most word processors have formula editors. We recommend that authors use these formula editors for their contributions. Typing simple formulae or mathematical expressions directly into the contribution using normally available keyboard characters and sub- and superscripts is also acceptable. The formula editors should be used when any special mathematical characters are required. In either case, formulae should be italicized.

Formulae, such as (1), which for various reasons become separated from the text to which they relate, should be numbered. Numbering the formulae in your contribution will make it easier to refer back to them. Complex expressions and formulae should be centered in the appropriate text location of the contribution.

(1)

11. Use of Statistical Measures

As a general rule, we discourage authors to use the phrase ‘(statistically) significant’, and stress that significance alone is not sufficient to claim a finding. Additionally, we do not condone the use of asterisks and/or similar symbols referring to discretized p-value intervals in tables.

We are asking authors to instead report on uncertainty ideally through confidence or credible intervals, or error bands or bars. The following papers are examples of reporting confidence intervals in figures and tables.

If p-values are reported, we expect that they are used as continuous measures. The following paper provides an example of reporting p-values in tables.

For further information, please see the Editorial: P-values, theory, replicability, and rigour.

12. Photographs, Images, Other Visual Material

Please provide captions for images and photographs (and other visual material) as part of the file. We encourage authors to place images in the appropriate position in the text. Please make sure that all images should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi. We strongly prefer .png image files.

13. Video and Sound Clips

Acceptable formats for video and sound clips include: .mpeg, .mpg, .avi, .mp3, and animated .gif files. Be sure to describe all video and sound clips fully in your text or in an e-mail cover letter. Name the video and sound clip file attachments in such a way that their format and content are clear. We recommend that video and sound clips be relatively small in size so as to make them accessible to as large an audience as possible.

14. Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments should be placed at the end of the contribution, just before references list. The acknowledgments section is generally the last numbered section of a publication.

15. References

Website URLs should not be given directly in the text of your contribution, but only in your references or footnotes listing. For the review process, authors will want to include the date they last accessed this site.

List all sources cited in the text in a section at the end titled "References." Place them in alphabetical order, and do not number them. Include all authors' names. Reference citations within the text should include the author's surname and the year of publication. For exact details on how to compile your reference list, please see our Reference Guidelines. It is not necessary to format your reference list before the work is submitted, but once your submission is accepted we will request that you reorganize the list so that it conforms to our standards.

16. Replicability

Scientific research should be transparent and replicable. Demographic Research expects authors, whenever possible, to publish data and computer code that will allow readers to reproduce published results. We designate articles as Replicable if authors meet that expectation, and we also welcome the submission of Replication papers that seek to replicate other published work.

Complete replicability is our default expectation for empirical papers, but we recognize that it is not always possible. In some circumstances data may not be shared because it is confidential, because it was purchased from a third party, or for other good reasons. In such cases we expect authors to share all relevant computer code (e.g., program files, spreadsheets producing tables or figures from summary data, and so on) and, if possible, to provide a small sample dataset from which interested readers could generate illustrative results. Where the data cannot be provided, we would also need a separate document with basic meta-information about the data files: where and how to obtain the data, under what conditions (license), and how many records and which variables were used in the analysis, along with some basic description of these variables.

Code should be well commented, with information that allows users to understand the purpose of the various commands or formulas, and to understand their relationship to results in the text of the paper. Please also mention the version of the software that was used to generate the results.

We will be completely flexible about file formats for data and code. However, authors should remember that the use of proprietary formats creates barriers for many readers. Whenever possible, we recommend open-access software for code and non-proprietary formats for data files. For example, an R program is preferable to Stata, and a data file in .txt or .csv format is preferable to one in Stata or Excel format.

Please prepare materials as follows:

(1) create a single archive, in .zip format, containing all programs, data and meta-information.
(2) create a separate plain text file – called readme.txt – listing and describing each file in (1).

To help with the process, we have prepared a checklist for replicability. Please do not submit your replicability materials until you have ensured that they meet our replicability criteria, as mentioned on the checklist.

Examples are available here and here.

Responsibility for the correctness and completeness of submitted files lies entirely with authors. Demographic Research does not edit submitted files or verify that they work as claimed. We only report that "Author has provided data and code for replicating results."