About us
Mission statement
“Survey Methods: Insights from the Field” is a double-blind peer-reviewed online journal. Its goal is to promote professional exchange on practical survey research issues and discussion on new and promising paths in survey research. The journal is orientated towards the daily work of surveying, including questionnaire design, sampling, interviewer training, fieldwork administration, data preparation, documentation and dissemination. The focus of the journal is on practical issues of survey research. “Survey Methods: Insights from the Field” ensures rapid publication and circulation, but also encourages discussion and replication of experience. The journal helps academic and non-academic researchers and practitioners to share experiences and views on all methodological aspects of survey research and to keep up to date with new scientific results and technical progress.
Description
The journal is free of charge and accessible to everyone involved in survey methodology. The journal does not levy any charges to its authors or readers. The electronic format allows attaching many kinds of additional information like recodification schemes, annexes, videos, interactive graphs and links to datasets. As the journal wants to reflect the newest advancement in methodological research, we ensure a quick peer-review process of 4 to 6 weeks for one turnaround of reviews (depending on time constraints of the reviewers). The journal is edited jointly by FORS, GESIS and Digitze! and supported by a multi-national panel of Associate Editors, an Advisory Board and an Editorial Board.
Readers can subscribe to an e-mail service that keeps them informed about the latest publications. We will never give out any email addresses to any 3rd parties.
We focus on the СОРE definition of Ethical oversight, namely “Ethical oversight should include, but is not limited to, policies on consent to publication, publication on vulnerable populations, ethical conduct of research using animals, ethical conduct of research using human subjects, handling confidential data and of business/marketing practices”.
Periodicity
Since 2023 we publish our articles in volumes and numbers. SMIF appears three times a year, in April, August and December. The number of articles published per annum various from year to year and depends on the number of individual articles handed in and the number of special issues scheduled.
Types of Submissions
“Survey Methods: Insights from the Field” publishes Original Articles, Research Notes, Reports from the Field and Research Syntheses. All types of submissions are subjected to peer-review.
Original Articles are presentations of empirical research or important replications based upon a careful theoretical development and explications of methodological and analytical procedures. Research Syntheses provide systematic overviews of the past research on a topic with insights for new research and for survey practices. Original Articles and Research Syntheses should not exceed 5000 words of text and notes, excluding figures, tables, references, and appendices.
Research Notes and Field Reports are shorter manuscripts (a maximum of 2,500 words of text and notes, excluding figures, tables, references, and appendices). Research Notes are presentations of single findings, extensions or replications of previous research, which can be effectively described without a more extended theoretical discussion or a detailed analysis characteristics. Field reports are presentations or discussions of current challenges, developments or trends in survey practice, e.g. reports about new large-scale survey programs, developments and trends related to the existing programs, or reports about technical innovations in the field.
Open access statement / copyright of the article
“Survey Methods: Insights from the Field” is a fully open access journal. All articles are available online to all users immediately upon publication. We do not demand any article processing charge (APC) or publication fees to make your contribution available open access.
Each article has a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) . The author retains copyright of the article.
Replication data archive
All authors now have the possibility to archive the replication data of their article for reuse via the Austrian Social Science Data Archive (AUSSDA), specifically within the dataverse located at https://data.aussda.at/dataverse/smif. The replication data is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) and also receives a DOI.
We aim to publish the replication data set and the article at the same time.
DOAJ
The journal is referenced in the DOAJ, The Directory of Open Access Journals, which guarantees a great visibility of your article. The DOAJ currently contains more than 12’000 open access journals in 128 countries covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social science and humanities. DOAJ’s mission is to increase the visibility, accessibility, reputation, usage and impact of quality, peer-reviewed, open access scholarly research journals globally, regardless of discipline, geography or language.
ROAD
The journals is also referenced in ROAD, the Director of Open Access Scholarly Resources.
PubMed
Selected journal articles are indexed in PubMed Central.
