Submissions to the Stata Journal
- Types of submissions
- Copyright information
- Submission guide
- Initial submission
- Review process
- Accepted submission
- Author copy of final version
- Software update/correction submission
Types of submissions
The Stata Journal publishes reviewed papers together with shorter notes
or comments, regular columns, book reviews, and other material of interest to
Stata users.
A paper should potentially be of interest to users of the statistical software
Stata. We are especially interested in publishing the following kinds of
papers:
- Papers that survey a new field of statistics or a major new technique
and provide illustrations using Stata commands or programs.
- Papers that go “beyond the Stata manual” in explaining key
features or uses of Stata that are relevant to intermediate or advanced
users of Stata.
- Papers that discuss new commands or Stata programs of interest either
to a wide spectrum of users (for example, in data management or graphics)
or to some large segment of Stata users (for example, in survey
statistics, survival analysis, panel analysis, limited dependent
variable modeling). The properties of the statistical methods
underlying new commands and programs must have already been
“validated” prior to submitting to the Stata Journal
by reference to publications in appropriate peer-reviewed journals or
comparable outlets. A potential exception concerns papers submitted
under heading 4.
- Papers that analyze the statistical properties of new or existing
estimators and tests in Stata. This includes topics such as simulations
of bias, convergence, or small-sample properties of estimators and tests;
power analyses; and comparisons of tests or estimators.
- Papers of interest or usefulness to researchers, especially in fields
that are of practical importance but not often written up in texts or
other journals (for example, the use of Stata in managing datasets,
particularly large datasets, with advice from hard-won experience).
- Papers of interest to those teaching with Stata. Topics might include
extended examples of techniques and interpretation of results,
simulations of statistical concepts, and overviews of subject areas.
Regular articles should be less than 40 Stata Journal pages in length.
At the Editors’ discretion, additional material (appendices) may be
published as “online supplementary material”.
Notes and comments are normally short (about one page or less).
Notes and comments should refer to material previously published in the
Journal (or in the Stata Technical Bulletin).
Columns and book reviews are solicited by the editors. Book reviews
concentrate on books published by Stata Press.
You can volunteer to review a recently published Stata Press book by emailing
your name, contact information, and Stata Press book of interest to
[email protected].
Stata tips are concise notes about Stata commands, features, or tricks that
users may not have encountered. A tip will draw attention to useful details
in Stata or Stata’s uses. Tips, however, do not include expositions of
community-contributed commands. Tips should be concise and focused, often
no more than three printed pages.
This list is not intended to be exclusive, merely suggestive, and the
editors are happy to consider other kinds of papers with some link to Stata.
We do not publish in the Stata Journal 1) any articles on statistics or
statistical science, however broadly defined, that lack Stata content or
specific application to Stata use, 2) Stata programs or code that lack
sufficient supporting discussion, or 3) empirical case studies that are not
innovative in Stata terms, which are better aimed at relevant disciplinary
or transdisciplinary journals.
Although the Stata Journal focuses on Stata-specific application of a
general technique, the restriction above does not prohibit you from submitting
your technique with a different focus to another journal.
Copyright information
The corresponding or lead contributor must sign and send to
StataCorp a copy of the Stata Journal Contributor
Assignment Agreement before any article can be published.
For multiauthored articles where one or more of the authors need to select a
different copyright ownership on the form (for example, work made for hire,
U.S. government work, work made for their employer), each author must sign
a separate copy of the contributor agreement.
While you are waiting for a decision from the Journal, we are happy if
you make the same material available via personal, institutional, or
collective websites as a draft or working paper (or the equivalent) in your
field. Such material should be flagged as under review by the Stata
Journal. Papers published in the
Stata Journal
may be made available electronically according to the terms of the
Contributor Assignment Agreement.
We are happy if you distribute copies of your paper as reprints or
photocopies in accordance with the
Contributor Assignment Agreement.
If the article is not accepted for publication, the Contributor
Assignment Agreement will terminate and become void. You will be notified
if this occurs.
Submission guide
Initial submission
- Manuscript style
- A PDF file or Word document is recommended for the initial submission.
Other resource files of the article will be requested upon acceptance
of the article.
- For users of LaTeX or TeX, please note the Stata Journal
provides its own document class and Stata output package along with
examples for authors new to the Stata Journal. We recommend
that you use these materials. See
Getting started with the Stata Journal for
instructions.
- For users of Word or similar word-processing software, please follow
the outline and details below, consult articles recently published
in the Stata Journal, or see the
example article from the
Getting started with the Stata Journal
page to see the preferred fonts and layout. Note that where the
typewriter font is used in the published articles, the boldfaced font
would be used in Word. Use of Word's styles for headers, paragraphs,
etc., makes no difference, nor does the page size, margins, or line
spacing.
- Article structure
- The standard article structure is as follows:
- short author list/long author list
- The short author list is only the author initial(s) and
last name, and the long author list is the author initial(s)
and last name, author affiliation(s), and city and state or
country (spelled out with accents applied as necessary).
An email address should be included for, at least, the
corresponding author.
-
- short title/long title
- The short title will appear in the header of even-numbered
pages, and the long title will be the title of the article and
will appear in the table of contents.
- abstract
- The abstract states the purpose of the article and area
of research. Abstracts must be able to stand alone from
the full-text article. For this reason, fully cite references
rather than merely supplying the author and date. Also, avoid
introduction of acronyms in the abstract.
- keywords
- The first keyword will be the article tag (assigned by
Stata Press); other keywords for indexing purposes should
be added by the author(s). Community-contributed command
names should be listed after the article tag. Plural terms
and multiple concepts should be avoided.
- figures
- PDF files are the preferred formats for graphs and line art,
although EPS files are accepted. Figures should be included in
the main text rather than at the end of the document and should
be called out in the text prior to appearance. If your article
is written in Word, you should submit your figures as separate
PDF or EPS files. Avoid exporting figures and graphs to bitmaps,
because even if images are outputted at 300 dpi, bitmaps can
increase the size of the resulting file for printing and will
lose the ability to be edited. (However, bitmaps will be allowed
for photographs, which are used in, for example, the Stata
Journal Editors' prize announcement but they should be
outputted to 300 dpi.) Images should be submitted in black and
white (grayscale). We recommend that graphs created in Stata use
the stsj or sj scheme.
- tables
- Tables should be included in the main text rather than at the
end of the document. Tables should be called out in the text
prior to appearance.
- Stata results
- Results should be reproducible. Begin examples by loading the
data. Code should be written to respect a linesize of 80
characters.
- math formulas
- Formulas should be defined and follow a concise style.
Different disciplines adhere to different notation styles;
however, if the notation cannot be clearly interpreted,
you may be asked to make changes. The bolding and
font-selection guidelines are the following:
- Matrices are capitalized and bolded; for instance,
$\boldsymbol\Pi + \boldsymbol\Theta + \boldsymbol\Phi
- \mathbf{B}$.
- Vectors are lowercased and bolded; for instance,
$\boldsymbol\pi + \boldsymbol\theta + \boldsymbol\phi
- \mathbf{b}$.
- Scalars are lowercased and nonbolded; for instance,
$r_2 + c_1 - c_2$.
- If you think it would be helpful for reviewers, you may include
a separate plain-text file listing your symbols and their
descriptions.
- Sentence punctuation should not be used in formulas set off
from the text.
- Formulas in line with the text should use the solidus (/)
instead of a horizontal line for fractional terms.
- Nesting of grouping is square brackets, curly braces, and
then parentheses, or [{()}].
- equation numbering
- Only those equations explicitly referred to in the text should
be assigned an equation number.
- conclusions
- All articles should include a section called “Conclusions”
as the final substantive section.
- The conclusions will usually include a brief summary of what
the article has covered, but the operative word is “brief”. In
particular, repeating wording that is at most minor revision of
text in the “Abstract” or “Introduction” is not a good use of space.
Instead, the “Conclusions” should focus on genuine conclusions of
the article. For example, what should be the focus of future work
in the light of this article, whether in terms of substantive
modelling or software development? What are the limitations of
current work and how might they be addressed? Naturally, it is best
not to promise too much or to mention problems that should have
been discussed directly in your article.
- acknowledgments
- Acknowledgments should be provided in a separate section at the
end of the article and not on the title page. Thanks to those
who provided assistance in research as well as funding details
can be provided here.
- references
- The Stata Journal follows the
Chicago Manual of Style for in-text citations and
references. Thus, for works by two or three authors, all names
are included in the text citation. However, for more than three
authors, only the name of the first author is used, followed by
"et al." in the text citation. Note that et al. is not italicized
in text citations. In the references, the names of all authors
are listed.
- Do not use issue numbers in references, except if a
journal is not continuously paginated.
- Production staff will confirm this style is adhered
to in the editorial process stage.
- about the author(s)
- Background information is provided on each author. This can
include affiliations and interest, among other details.
- Community-contributed software
- Community-contributed software is often introduced in
Stata Journal articles. If this is the case, you should
submit the current version of the software with the article.
- The community-contributed software package typically includes
the following:
- ado-files
- Your program names should not clash with those of previously
written official commands or community-contributed programs. Typing
search myprogname in Stata will tell you
whether myprogname is already in use. (Naturally, if you
previously used the name, say, by posting on the SSC archive a
program that you are now writing up for the Stata Journal,
that is not a problem.)
- StataCorp requests that you avoid names that might be used in
the future for new official commands. Short, simple words that can
be found in an English dictionary are always attractive to StataCorp
(for example, list, describe,
generate), as are standard abbreviations or
contractions for existing techniques (pca,
anova, irt). It is, admittedly,
difficult for authors to predict what StataCorp might do, or be
thinking of doing, but if doubtful, please contact the editors in
the first instance, who will be happy to take soundings on your
behalf.
- Also, the command name should be written in all lowercase
letters because having a mixture of uppercase and lowercase can
cause problems for Stata users across platforms. For ease in use,
it is best to use all lowercase letters.
- help files
- A detailed help file explaining the features of your command and
each option with examples should accompany your ado-file.
- do-files
- A do-file to reproduce the examples shown in the article should
be included. If you are including figures in the article, see
figures above for specific defaults, including
the recommended scheme.
- log files
- The log files produced with the do-file should be included,
preferably in plain-text (.log) form rather than
SMCL (.smcl) form. If a command in the do-file is
deliberately intended to produce an error message (for example,
to illustrate error-trapping), then produce the log file with
the nostop option of do.
- datasets
- Datasets used with examples in your article or help files should
be included with the submission for reproducibility. If the dataset
used in the examples cannot be distributed, we suggest including a
sample dataset for testing purposes. A note mentioning the dataset
being nonpublic should be included with the submission, preferably
in the notes section of the readme.txt file and in the article where
the dataset is used.
- Also, the dataset name should be written in all lowercase
letters because having a mixture of uppercase and lowercase can
cause problems for Stata users across platforms.
- readme.txt file
- If you are submitting community-contributed software or code to
reproduce examples in the manuscript, you must also submit a
readme.txt file. Here is a
template
and here is an
example.
- Submission
- Submissions should be sent in a Zip file to
[email protected].
Submissions will be acknowledged within a week of receipt.
- When submitting your article for review, include the following:
- A cover letter or email should provide full
contact details for the corresponding author and any other
relevant information for the submission.
- A PDF file or Word
document is recommended for the initial submission. If
accepted for publication, the source files of the final
version will be required.
- The
community-contributed code
(ado-files, help files, do-files, datasets, and readme.txt
file) should be included with the submission.
- Submission to the Stata Journal implies that 1) the identical
or substantially same material is not currently under review by another
academic journal and 2) the authors will not submit such material to
another journal before they receive a decision from the Stata
Journal.
Review process
After a preliminary editorial review, articles will be sent to reviewers
who have expertise in the subject of the article. The Stata
Journal uses an anonymized review system. The review process generally
takes 3–6 months. Authors may contact the editor at any time to
check the status of their manuscript.
Accepted submission
- Submission
- Upon acceptance, the editor will request that you submit an archive of
files to him and the contact at StataCorp. "Archive of files" means all
LaTeX source files, except executable scripts, needed to re-create your
article (.tex, .bib, .log, .pdf) and the final accepted versions of the
community-contributed software files. Also needed is the
Contributor Assignment Agreement.
Submissions should be sent in a Zip file (with the extension renamed from
.zip to .zippy) to
[email protected].
- Editorial process
- Stata Press performs the following:
- confirms the layout of the article adheres to
the Stata Press style, which is similar to the Chicago
Manual of Style with slight variations
- checks grammar (American rather than British
spellings of words)
- reruns the code in the latest version of
Stata
- Galley proof
- A galley proof is emailed to the corresponding author at the end of
the editorial process.
Author copy of final version
The publisher of the Stata Journal, Sage Publications, will send the
author copy to you when the article is available. If you do not receive the
copy, you can contact them directly at
[email protected]
(the UK/ROW team) or at
[email protected]
[email protected] (the U.S. team).
Also be sure to visit
https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/journal-author-gateway
for additional information, including how to set up your ORCID.
Software update/correction submission
Software updates flag that software previously published in the Stata
Journal or the Stata Technical Bulletin has been revised by the
author(s). The revision could be, for example, a bug fix, an extension, a
modernization, or some combination of these. Software updates are matched by
an entry in Stata's .key files so that users who keep their Stata up
to date are pointed to the latest version of any package published via the
Stata Journal when they use search.
- Manuscript style
- The Software update submission should consist of at least one
paragraph explaining the revision concisely and the updated
community-contributed software files (.ado files, .sthlp or
.hlp files, and any others). The text explaining the revision can
be submitted in ASCII (preferred), LaTeX, or Word.
- Community-contributed software
- To submit a software update, download the official software
from the Stata Journal website; see the
Stata Journal FAQ
for downloading instructions. Then, make the necessary changes to the
files.
- Submission
- Submit the text explaining the update and the updated software files to
[email protected].
