The Editor welcomes submissions that contribute to the scientific literature and that are of general interest to population scientists. Demography publishes research conducted in several disciplines, including the social sciences, geography, history, biology, statistics, epidemiology, and public health.
The journal gives priority to the publication of articles reporting on original research, including theoretical developments, improvements in models or methods, policy evaluations, applications of demographic principles or techniques, assessments of demographic data, comparative studies, and historical studies. The editors will also consider review articles on appropriate topics.
- Research articles should not exceed 8,000 words in the main text (excluding the abstract, footnotes, acknowledgments, and references); tables and figures should not exceed a combined total of 8. (Authors are welcome to include additional tables, figures, and supplemental text in an online appendix.) Demography accepts submissions of papers that have been posted on preprint servers; please alert the Editorial Office in the submission letter. Authors should not post an updated version of their paper on the preprint server while it is being peer reviewed for possible publication in the journal. If the article is accepted for publication, the author must include a link on their preprint to the final posted Demography version. Manuscripts submitted to Demography cannot be under review by another journal.
- Research notes should not exceed 4,000 words in the main text (excluding the abstract, footnotes, acknowledgments, and references). They should include “research note” as part of the paper’s title and should be identified as such in the abstract. Research notes are not full academic papers but are short reports providing new empirical evidence on or a novel methodological approach to an important demographic topic.
- Brief commentaries (not to exceed 2,000 words in the main text) on articles previously published in Demography will be considered if they seek improvements in methodology or theory that would generate new substantive conclusions.
Manuscripts submitted to Demography will be judged, in part, by whether they have reconciled their results with previously published research on the same topic. Authors of accepted manuscripts are asked to preserve the data used in their analysis and to make the data available to others at reasonable cost from a date six months after the publication date for the paper and for a period of three years thereafter. Authors wishing to request an exemption from this requirement (e.g., because the analysis is based on a proprietary data set) should notify the editors at the time of manuscript submission or after receiving this notice; otherwise, authors will be assumed to accept the requirement. We strongly encourage authors to ensure that their datasets are either deposited in publicly available repositories (where available and appropriate) or presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files whenever possible.
Demography is a peer-reviewed journal. All manuscripts considered appropriate for the journal are reviewed externally. To preserve anonymity, authors and referees should avoid self-identifying references. Submission of a manuscript to Demography is taken to indicate the author’s commitment to publish in the journal.
A nonrefundable $35.00 submission fee must accompany all manuscripts. Sole student authors are exempt from this requirement.
Authors of manuscripts selected for publication will be asked to pay a standard per-article editorial management fee to help PAA offset the cost of our editorial and management services. This offset amount is calculated by taking a three-year rolling average of expenses minus anticipated income, divided by the annual number of articles. The current offset rate is available on the fees and funding page. Authors will receive an invoice for this amount upon their paper’s acceptance. However, our primary goal is to publish the best demographic research, and we understand that some authors may not have the funds for this offset. For those who do not have institutional or grant support, PAA will waive the fee. Instructions on requesting a waiver will be on the invoice. Please direct any questions to the PAA office via email at offsetwaiver@popassoc.org.