Submissions

Author Guidelines

For review, please submit the paper as a PDF, formatted in an easy-to-read style. Note that SRM uses a single blind reviewing system. Thus, the anonymization of papers is neither requested nor appropriate.

After acceptance of the paper, the source file of the PDF will be needed; acceptable formats are all flavours of Microsoft's Word formats, Rich-Text Format (RTF), OpenOffice/LibreOffice Document Format (ODT) and LaTeX. The final manuscript must adhere to the following guidelines:

Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines

SRM supports the Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines of the Center for Open Science. Specifically, before publishing, authors are requested to:

1. Cite the data being used; the article is not being published until appropriate citation for data and replication materials is provided. Citation standards are explained below.
2. State whether data is available, and, if so, where to access it. Authors using original data are requested to make their data available at a trusted digital repository. Examples are:
• GESIS Data Archive for the Social Sciences
• UK-Data-Archive
• Norwegian Social Science Data Services
• ICPSR Deposit Data
For self-archiving see:
• GESIS Datorium
• openICPSR
3. to upload replication materials (Stata Do-files, SPSS syntax files, .R files and the like) as supplementary file to your manuscript. Note that SRM publishes replication materials alongside the papers on its own web-site. Uploading replication materials to other sites (e.g. GitLab, GitHub) is appreciated but does not suffice.

It is understood that in some cases access to replications materials or data is restricted to protect confidential or proprietary information. SRM grants exceptions to data and material access requirements in those cases. Those exceptions must be justified in the submitted manuscript.

Data citation

Data should be cited equivalently to published literature with an author-year scheme while following the citation recommendations of the data set provider; if available, a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) should be provided.

Example: An article that uses data from the European Social Survey could cite this data source as "European Social Survey Round 6 Data (2012)". The entry in the list of references would then be:

European Social Survey Round 6 Data (2012). Data file edition 2.1. Norwegian Social Science Data Services, Norway -- Data Archive and distributor of ESS data.

If replication materials of other authors have been used, it should be cited equivalently to published literature with an author-year scheme following the citation recommendations of the repository being used; if available, a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) should be provided.

Bibliography

We ask for an extract of the database used for creating the citations. We prefer this extract to be in BiBTeX format. Authors creating their bibliography without sending us an extract of the database are asked to format the bibliography such that SRM can easily create the database. Specifically:

• Author/Editor names: Surname, Initials, with slashes between all author names. Example: Heerwegh, D./Abts, K./Loosveldt, G.
• Names of authors and editors should be formated "Surname, Initial" throughout. Do not reverse that order anywhere. 
• Publication data in parentheses, followed by a full stop. Example: (2007).
• Titles of articles and books: Put the title in quotation marks. Example: "Minimizing survey refusal and noncontact rates: do our efforts pay off?"
• Book titles of edited volumes and journal names: Do not use any special punctuation
• Volume (Issue) Pages for journal articles as in "1(1) pp. 3-10". 
• Separate address of the publisher and publisher name with a colon followed by a blank. Example: New York: Wiley
• Highlight names of editors by putting "(Ed.)" behind the name(s).
• Add "pp. " in front of the page range of papers in edited volumes, etc.. Example: pp. 1-20

Graphs

Graphs must be supplied as a separate file in a vector format such as PDF, EPS, or SVG. Note carefully that the PDF should contain the real vector graph, not a pixel-preview of the underlying graph. A good test for having a real vector graph is to enlarge the graph as much as possible. If the graph resolution does not decrease, the graph will be in vector format.

Titles of graphs, as well as any notes to it, are type-setted by SRM. Please do not add such elements to the files for the graphs themselves. 

Tables

Please follow these instructions carefully when preparing your tables for the production process. Tables are by far the most complex aspect of our typesetting process; by attending to the seemingly anodyne details below in detail, you help make the process run more smoothly and reduce typesetting costs. See here and here for screenshots from a word-processing software of a "bad" and "good" table in terms of SRM standards (Print previews: bad vs. good)

• General: To the extent possible, avoid large and complex tables. Particularly avoid multipage sideways-tables.
• Precision: Percentages should be rounded to integers. Apart from that, authors may generally choose the level of precision at which to report numerical estimates, subject to the restriction that no more than three digits be reported after the decimal point. Use leading zeros in presenting decimal numbers between -1 and 1, e.g., 0.234 not .234. To the extent possible, avoid using exponential notation. Similarly, avoid reporting the standard error of a coefficient estimate as 0.000. This can often be accomplished by scaling the variable in question.
• Significance: SRM strongly recommends to stick with one level of significance, i.e. α=0.05 and prints no more than three. Any "stars" denoting levels of significance should be placed immediately to the right of the coefficient (not to the right of the standard error).
• Regression tables: Present the standard errors of coefficient estimates, not t-statistics or z-statistics. Standard errors should be placed in a separate column (preferably) or in a separate row below the corresponding coefficient estimate. Variable names should be in the same row as the coefficient estimate. Do not report variable names used in statistical software (e.g., V234, EDUC, emp_4).
• General design
  • Put each statistic in a separate column. SRM aligns numerical columns at the decimal point. This is not possible if there are several numbers in one cell. Particularly, do not present the upper and lower limits of confidence intervals in one column. Instead, there should be one column for the lower limit, and a second column with the upper limit. The column titles, then,  are "Lower" and "Upper", with a super-title "95% C.I." spanning both columns. 
  • Avoid repetitive information at all costs. Particularly, do not print percentage signs at each number in a column. Instead, use "%" or "Perc." as column title. 
  • Avoid long row titles at all costs. Use abbreviations! We are not allowing row titles to span over several lines for tables with numeric contents. 
  • Do not highlight numbers in tables with background shading, boldface, or italics or other artwork. If necessary, use table footnotes to highlight selected number. E.g. you may use the footnote-symbol "a" to highlight all numbers in a table that belong to some class. 
  • SRM prefers numbers of observations placed in the last row of a table or in the last column, depending on context. Neither print numbers of observations in the column titles, nor in the title of the table. 
  • Sets of Dummy-variables in regression models are introduced in an additional row that describes the name of the variable and the reference category (e.g. "Education (Ref. categ.: no education)". This row may span over several columns. No line breaks, please! 
  • Additional notes that describe the table can be placed below the table. The notes can have three elements: (1) A general note that explains the table. (2) A note that explains the specific table footnote symbols  a, b, ... z. (3) An explanation for the stars to denote statistical significance. The elements, if present, should be placed in that order. The general note does not start with "Note:", or something like that, and it should also be presented as one paragraph. 
  • SRM does not use vertical lines in tables. Nowhere. 
  • Don't rely on horizontal lines to structure your tables. SRM uses horizontal lines to structure the table header and to add contents in columns other than those advertised in the column title, e.g. the numbers of observations in the column holding the regression coefficients. Rely on new rows to structure contents in a table visually.