Table of Contents
Aims & Scope
The Population Dynamics Lab is an open science forum currently hosted at the University of Washington’s Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology. Its aim is to provide tools and evidence for understanding the distribution and change in human wellbeing at the population level. These tools and evidence are peer-reviewed in real time and rapidly made available to address developing events, advance demographic science and increase popular understanding of population processes and change.
The lab welcomes submissions addressing all areas of demography. Currently, it prioritizes submissions that advance science and insights at the intersection of demography, data science, and health. The Population Dynamics Lab operates with commitments to open science, to reproducibility, and to the power of peer-feedback and community engagement in methodological and theoretical advancements. The Population Dynamics Lab is intended to reach academic and public scholars, industry researchers, students, and professionals interested in open demographic sciences.
Types of Content
Methodological Innovations includes submissions based on original research (primary or secondary data analyses), reviews, or simulations. These might also include material prepared for teaching demographic insights that effectively bring to light cutting edge concepts and research in demography.
Data Tools include submissions based on preliminary tests of model datasets, training datasets, or simulations especially pertaining to methodological advancement and reproducibility techniques, or new tools for population data generation through harmonization and aggregation.
Methodological Insights includes submissions that reflect upon or propose a rethinking of statistical or methodological approaches in demography (statistical, biological, etc), ideally accompanied by suggestions for future directions.
Submission Requirements
In order to submit to the Population Dynamics Lab, you will need to submit the following in the submission portal:
- The Denominator: your full (long-form) written contribution based on the accepted content types (800-1500 words)
- The Download: a shorter piece written for popular dissemination with an image that represents your “download” or bottom-line message (max. 500 words)
- a link to the Git repository that contains data and well-documented code necessary to implement the method and create any tables or figures in your submission (See example.)
See the Submission Guidelines page for more detailed information about submission formatting and requirements. Our Computation & Reproducibility team is happy to support you in creating a Git repository that is ready for publication.
Copyright & Licensing
All of the content on the UW’s Population Dynamics Lab is covered under a Creative Commons License 2.0. You can find the specifics about this license here. This license is not the most restrictive license and was chosen so that authors who submit here can also freely submit to journals. It is important to note that many journals have specific restrictions on any work that has been published or in preprint. Authors should be aware of this and make decisions about their work and what they decide to post on the Population Dynamics Lab site with these restrictions in mind. The CC-BY License allows viewers of this site to share and adapt your work but requires proper attribution.
What is proper attribution?
Proper attribution for posts to our site means citing both the author’s work and the Population Dynamics Lab site itself. Citation features are conveniently located under each article and we provide a set of sample citations for Population Dynamics Lab publications below.
The Denominator
Marquez, N. (2021). A new method for detailed small area projections. The Denominator, Population Dynamics Lab. https://doi.org/XXXXX/YYYY. [Accessed November 3, 2021.]
Repository
Marquez, N. (2021). A new method for detailed small area projections: Computation Supplement. The Denominator, Population Dynamics Lab. https://doi.org/XXXXX/YYYY. [Archived November DD, 2021.]
The Download
Marquez, N. (2021, November DD). Title. The Download, Population Dynamics Lab.https://population-dynamics-lab.csde.washington.edu/the-download/2021/11/DD/title-slug/ [Accessed November 3, 2021.]
CC-BY Licensing and Journals
Please check your intended journals to be sure they do not forbid posting content here, prior to beginning your submission process to the Population Dynamics Lab. You may need to consider what is legally covered with licensing versus intellectual novelty depending on your intended journal. Note: journals that are typically friendly towards pre-prints or reproducibility, should, in theory, be open to posts published here; it is the author’s responsibility to check journal permissions and attitudes. We encourage authors to be creative in advancing reproducibility in light of these challenges. You may want to ask your intended journal outlet about their restrictions around publishing parts of the published work with the Population Dynamics Lab if these parts have been previously or are soon to be it is published with them. The abbreviated format of the Population Dynamics Lab posts is unlikely to inhibit or restrict posting of material, but it is best to check; it could be that a post on the Population Dynamics Lab site actively enhances readership of the longer journal article.
Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs)
Upon publication, each submission will receive a DOI issued by University of Washington Libraries via DataCite. DOIs allow for persistent and unique identification of your published submission, improving accessibility for readers and preserving the record or your work. While the DOI URL will link directly to the publication in The Denominator, it is issued for the entire submission product (i.e., for your post in both The Denominator and The Download). There will be clear links within the publication to both the archived code base and the corresponding publication in The Download. You can read more about the DOI system here.