Dear all,
Survey Research Methods (SRM) has just published a call for papers for an Covid-19 Companion Issue on https://ojs.ub.uni-konstanz.de/srm/article/view/7721. I also enclose the call below my signature. Since this issue is going to be "special" in various aspects, I would like to mention here a few important facts upfront:
Deadline for submissions: May 11th 2020 Expected publication date: June 1st 2020 Page limit: 5 pages Quality control: Open peer review
Many regards
Ulrich Kohler Editor of SRM
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SRM COVID-19 COMPANION ISSUE ______________________________
Survey Research Methods (SRM) intends to publish a special issue on "Research Methods in the Corona-Crisis". The plan thereby is to publish an issue that is special not only in terms of the topic but also in terms of the delivery time and the peer-review procedures. More specifically, we are seeking /short/ papers that
1. comment recent endeavours to provide evidence about the nature of the epidemiological events, and the societal consequences of the non-pharmacological interventions (NPIs), 2. propose research designs for the study or topics related to the Corona-Crisis, 3. discuss the consequences of the NPIs for ongoing survey projects, 4. disclose the methods used for actual research done on the Corona crisis, or 5. discuss ethical questions of Corona-related research.
This call for papers details the kind of papers requested and SRM policies for this special issue.
1 Inspiration =============
As Ioannidis ([https://tinyurl.com/uj539o4]) pointed out, the Corona-Crisis is also a crisis in terms of the evidence that is available for making informed decisions. Motivated by urgent requests for reliable estimates of the prevalence, incidence, and case-fatality-rates for larger populations, researchers from various fields have started research projects to this end. All of these projects have in common that they must balance the need for quick findings against the requirement of methodological rigour and reproducibility.
SRM believes that survey methodologists can and should contribute to this debate. The epidemiological questions on prevalence, incidence, hospitalization-rates, and case-fatality-rates requires sample designs that allow generalizations to larger populations -- and survey methodologists have expertise to offer here. The actual research that is being done may very well suffer from nonsampling errors -- as it is usual for survey research. Some of the research designs include questionnaires -- which are our very topic, of course.
In order to contribute to the debate on standards, SRM is seeking for commentaries on Corona-related research. The commentaries requested include the aspects below, among others.
1. Comments on recent endeavours to provide evidence about the nature of the epidemiological events, and the societal consequences of the non-pharmacological interventions (NPIs): Does the research make methodological mistakes that could have been avoided without costs? Do the reports contain statistical mistakes (such as reporting too narrow standard errors, or confidence intervals, etc.)? Is there, perhaps, a tendency to make wrong overall evaluations due to methodological flaws or sloppy statistical language?
2. Proposals of research designs for the study or topics related to the Corona-Crisis: Is there some kind of research that you want to see without necessarily want to do it on your own?
3. Consequences of the NPIs for ongoing survey projects: What is the impact of the pandemic on ongoing data collection, e.g., switching from FTF to web/mail, the effect on longitudinal estimates (e.g., SHARE, GSOEP), or the effect on repeated cross-sections (e.g., ESS)? Do we expect an impact of the pandemic on census data (e.g. April 1st was census day in the U.S.)?
4. Disclosure of the methods used for actual research done on the Corona crisis. How do the national health authorities estimate the number of confirmed cases and, or deaths? How is this done in the Corona-Map of the Johns-Hopkins-University? What are the pros and cons of the various methods? What are the sources for biases, and in which direction?
5. Ethical questions of Research: Should we publish research to a wider audience before it is peer-reviewed? Should we lower the data-protection standards for, say, tracking for Corona-related research? What is Corona-related research, then?
2 Quality Control =================
With this special issue, SRM is facing the same problem of balancing timeliness and quality as the actual research we are commenting on. Therefore, SRM is temporarily modifying its reviewing system for this special issue.
SRM is going to use an open reviewing system. All papers will be read and commented by at least one other researcher. The reviewer will know the name of the author(s), and the review itself might get published with the paper. The author may respond to the review by changing the paper, or by responding to the reviewer. Before publication, the reviewer can withdraw or revise her/his review in light of the revisions.
Both, the original paper and the published review will receive a DOI.
3 Rules =======
SRM is expecting the papers until Mai 11th 2020. The reviewers will be offered one week to review, and the final publication is scheduled for June 1st 2020.
Since the timeline is tough, we ask the authors to submit short papers (5 pages, or below) and abstain from large tables. We also ask authors to send in their submissions in a semi-structured text format such as Markdown ([https://www.markdownguide.org/getting-started/]), ReStructedText ([https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReStructuredText]), HTML, or LaTeX. If in doubt, please use a plain text format and shy away from Word processors.
Authors might be asked to review one of the other papers. The Editor may reject the publication of papers from authors who reject the request to review.
Authors are requested to upload their submissions via [https://ojs.ub.uni-konstanz.de/srm/submission/wizard]. For technical reasons, the submission requirements listed there must be "ticked", but the implementation of them are not controlled for the special issue. Please mention "Corona-Companion-Issue" in the "Comments for the Editor"-field.