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The Stata Journal

The Stata Journal

Promoting communications on statistics and Stata
Published in Association with StataCorp LLC

eISSN: 15368734 | ISSN: 1536867X | Current volume: 23 | Current issue: 4 Frequency: Quarterly

The Stata Journal is a quarterly publication containing articles about statistics, data analysis, teaching methods, and effective use of Stata's language. The Stata Journal publishes reviewed papers together with shorter notes and comments, regular columns, book reviews, and other material of interest to researchers applying statistics in a variety of disciplines.

The Journal Citation Reports of the ISI Web of Knowledge ranks the Stata Journal consistently in the top 20 among journals in the Social Sciences Mathematical Methods category in terms of citations, impact factor, and 5-year impact factor.

The Stata Journal has served as a hub for the collected wisdom of countless Stata users since 2001, continuing a tradition started with the publication of the first issue of the Stata Technical Bulletin in 1991. The Stata Journal includes peer-reviewed articles together with shorter notes and comments, regular columns, book reviews, and other material of interest for Stata users. Papers published in the journal help readers comprehend and apply cutting-edge statistical methods to their research, broaden the understanding of intermediate and advanced Stata users, and cover topics that are of practical importance to researchers yet are not often written about elsewhere.

Covering a broad spectrum of statistical techniques and helpful advice for Stata users, topics presented include survival analysis, panel data, time series, Bayesian analysis, choice models, meta-analysis, treatment effects, semi-nonparametric estimation, simultaneous equation modeling, and general statistical and graphical analysis. Whether you are a biostatistician, economist, data scientist, social scientist, behavioral scientist, survey analyst, or interested in rigorous applied statistical methods, you will find useful and insightful articles.

Editors
Stephen P. Jenkins London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Nicholas J. Cox Durham University, UK
Associate Editors
Christopher F. Baum Boston College, USA
Nathaniel Beck New York University, USA
Rino Bellocco Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, and University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy
Maarten L. Buis University of Konstanz, Germany
A. Colin Cameron University of California, Davis, USA
Mario A. Cleves University of South Florida, USA
Michael Crowther Red Door Analytics, Sweden
William D. Dupont Vanderbilt University, USA
Philip Ender University of California, Los Angeles, USA
James Hardin University of South Carolina, USA
Ben Jann University of Bern, Switzerland
Ulrich Kohler University of Potsdam, Germany
Frauke Kreuter University of Maryland, College Park, USA
Stanley Lemeshow Ohio State University, USA
J. Scott Long Indiana University, USA
Roger Newson Queen Mary University, London, UK
Austin Nichols Amazon, Washington, DC, USA
Marcello Pagano Harvard School of Public Health, USA
Sophia Rabe-Hesketh University of California - Berkeley, USA
J. Patrick Royston MRC CTU at UCL, London, UK
Mark E. Schaffer Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK
Philippe Van Kerm Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research, Luxembourg
Vincenzo Verardi Université de Namur and Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
Ian White MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL, UK
Richard A. Williams University of Notre Dame, USA
Jeffrey M. Wooldridge Michigan State University, USA
  • Clarivate Analytics: Current Contents - Social & Behavioral Sciences
  • Clarivate Analytics: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)
  • Clarivate Analytics: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI)
  • EBSCO
  • Scopus
  • Submissions to the Stata Journal

    Types of submissions

    Copyright information

    Submission guide

    Initial submission

    Manuscript style

    Article structure

    Community-contributed software

    Submission

    Review Process

    Accepted submission

    Submission

    Editorial process

    Galley proof

    Author copy of final version

    Software updates/correction submission

    Manuscript style

    Community-contributed software

    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).

    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.

    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 editors@stata-journal.com.

    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 must be brief, usually one or two printed pages. Tips, however, do not include expositions of community-contributed commands.

    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 or 2) Stata programs that lack supporting discussion.

    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

    Contributors must sign and send to StataCorp a copy of the Stata Journal Contributor Assignment Agreement before any article can be published. If an article has multiple authors, each author must sign the 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.

    Article structure

    The Stata Journal provides its own document class and Stata output package along with examples for authors new to the Stata Journal. See Getting started with the Stata Journal for instructions.

    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

    EPS and PDF are the preferred formats for graphs and line art. 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 EPS or PDF files. Rasterized-based files of at least 300 dpi (dots per inch) are acceptable. Avoid using bitmaps for figures and graphs, because even if images are outputted at 300 dpi, bitmaps can increase the size of the resulting file for printing. (However, bitmaps will be allowed for photographs, which are used in, for example, the Stata Journal Editors' prize announcement.) Images should be submitted in black and white (grayscale). We recommend that graphs created in Stata use the 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.

    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, listdescribegenerate), as are standard abbreviations or contractions for existing techniques (pcaanovairt). 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 editors@stata-journal.com. 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.
    • 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, .eps) 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 editors@stata-journal.com.

    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 authorqueries@sagepub.co.uk (the UK/ROW team) or at authorqueries@sagepub.com (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 editors@stata-journal.com.

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