General Information

Have a message. State it. Write nothing else.

Prioritize. Focus on the research, findings, descriptions, or materials that you most wish to share. Convey your main message clearly to the reader.

Supporting material should go into appendices. These can contain less important text, data files, computer programs, detailed technical documentation, non-essential tables, maps, or figures as well as material in languages other than English.

Adhere to commonly used rules for writing scientific papers. That is, formulate your problem clearly, tell the reader why it is important to address this problem, and demonstrate what your findings contribute to the field.

Demographic Research is open to submissions of research and reflections. It also provides researchers with a unique forum for material that conventional journals are unable or reluctant to publish, such as descriptive findings, research replications, and research materials. We do, however, encourage authors to adhere to established standards of publishing format and length in the main texts of their work.

The Journal and its Content

Submissions
No Fees
Publication Schedule and Availability
Speed of Publication

Demographic Research is an online, open-access journal that publishes peer-reviewed

• Research Articles
• Descriptive Findings
• Data Descriptions
• Review Papers
• Research Materials
• Replications
• Reflections
• Summaries
• Formal Relationships

on a continuous basis. Journal content is available online at all times. In order to allow readers an easy reprint option (for printing or downloading), we provide all content in PDF files. Volumes 1–3 provide HTML format for the papers as well.

1. Submissions

Our prime publishing criteria are discovery, innovation, usefulness, and quality – in equal measure. All submissions are subject to peer review.

The journal will not consider for publication papers that have been published elsewhere, unless publication has been as a working paper or in a similar form. Presentations which have not been published as part of a printed or electronic volume of conference proceedings may be submitted.

We welcome submissions in nine categories:

Research articles are traditional journal papers, accepted for review with the stipulation that they are submitted exclusively to Demographic Research.

Descriptive findings are careful, brief presentations of single, new empirical findings without integrated theory or extensive literature review. We encourage descriptive findings because identifying and sharing patterns in demographic data can stimulate further research on important topics. We intend to review and publish descriptive findings rapidly, so there are strict limits on content for this submission category.

A Descriptive finding cannot

• have more than 2,500 words, including all text other than references and table and figure captions
• include footnotes, endnotes, or appendices
• have more than five data exhibits (Tables + Figures, total)
• subdivide data exhibits (e.g., Table 1A, 1B, ...) unless the subdivision corresponds to an important dimension of interest in the data (e.g., Table 1A for females, 1B for males,...)

We will consider very rare exceptions to these rules for situations in which description is necessarily complex, but only if the Editor has given permission in advance.

Data descriptions are short presentations and documentations of new, original data sources that have been assembled by the authors and are not described elsewhere in the literature. It is expected that the data will be of sufficiently general interest to help scholars from different areas of demography and population studies carry out their substantive research. As an indication, the text should be around 2,500 words in length, although some deviations are possible, depending on the complexity and size of the dataset.

The data source being described should:

• Be open access, and have a digital object identifier (DOI) assigned. We will consider submissions of articles describing sources which will have their open access status in progress, but only with a clear timeline for public release
• Be free from third-party intellectual property (IP) rights – in other words, the copyright needs to belong to the authors
• For primary data, be collected in line with established ethical and data protection legislation and guidelines, documented through appropriate permissions

Depending on the type of the source, you will need to include all the relevant meta-information, including (as appropriate) original purpose of data collection, geographic and temporal scope, sample size, mode of collection, sample demographics, variables included in the dataset, and so on. This list is not exhaustive, but please make sure to include everything that would allow the reviewers to assess the quality and usefulness of the source, and would subsequently help the readers make the best use of the data.

In addition, the description should follow our replicability guidelines related to the data, and we would expect you to deposit a static version of the dataset (version of record), corresponding to the published Data Description article, with Demographic Research.

Review papers synthesize a large literature on a particular subject, often across disciplines. Ideally, they present this literature in a common framework. They do not include new findings, other than pointing out differences of interpretation, inconsistencies, etc.

Research materials are nontraditional submissions intended to facilitate research by others. This very open category includes software, web pages, data sets that are ready for analysis, descriptions of data available elsewhere, and any other contributions that could enhance demographic research.

Replications are carefully prepared and executed studies aimed at replicating other results on the same topic, published either in Demographic Research or elsewhere in the literature. The replication can be carried out in the same context as the original work or in a different context, and the results should illuminate and reflect the similarities to and differences from the original study.

Reflections are usually brief contributions that critically assess various aspects of the content published in the journal. They may also focus on current or "hot topic" demographic research findings, data, theory, tools, methods, or publications which have not been previously discussed in the journal.

Summaries are generally brief descriptions of collections of material, conference proceedings, or projects in progress. A summary should serve to make readers aware of material published in this journal or elsewhere, while describing content and relevance.

Formal Relationships are part of an ongoing Special Collection called "Formal Relationships", which presents short reports on mathematical relationships in formal demography.

2. No Fees

There are no fees associated with publication of contributions. Authors will not be asked to contribute to costs of processing, formatting, or storing publications.

3. Publication Schedule and Availability

The journal publishes two volumes each year, each covering a six-month period of January through June or July through December. Readers have free online access to the total content of the journal at all times. All material published is protected by copyright. The copyright for the journal and its contents is held by the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Munich, Germany. Copyright for the content of articles published after October 1, 2006, is held by the individual authors.

4. Speed of Publication

If accepted for publication by our Associate Editors, contributions will be published as soon as possible on a rolling basis. Once peer-review has ended and the author has been notified that the material is accepted, the editorial staff will work together with the author to prepare the content for publication. The date of first submission and the date of online publication will be listed online for each paper.