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© Wilson, Charles-Edwards and Corcoran 2017. Published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence 
3.0 Australia (CC BY-NC 3.0 AU). Journal website: www.australianpopulationstudies.org 

Editorial  

Introducing Australian Population Studies 

Tom Wilson*  Charles Darwin University 

Elin Charles-Edwards  The University of Queensland 

Jonathan Corcoran  The University of Queensland 

*Corresponding author. Email: tom.wilson@cdu.edu.au. Address: Northern Institute, Charles Darwin 

University, Ellengowan Drive, Darwin NT 0909, Australia 

Published on 20 November 2017 

Welcome to this inaugural issue of Australian Population Studies. The aim of the journal is to 

disseminate and promote high-quality peer-reviewed research which extends our knowledge and 

understanding of population issues in Australia. In doing so, we wish to become the leading 

publication for Australian population research. 

Importantly, Australian Population Studies is open access, online and does not charge fees of any 

kind. Academic publishing is witnessing a growth in open access journals, and we are pleased to be 

part of this growing movement. The benefits are numerous. It brings greater visibility and impact for 

research, with several studies concluding that open-access papers are cited more (e.g. Atchison and 

Bull 2015; Wagner 2010, 2016; Wang et al. 2015). Where research has been funded by the taxpayer 

it is available without readers having to pay further to access findings. Research is also readily 

available to practitioners, policy makers and members of the public who typically do not have access 

to subscription journals, as well as to academics in countries which cannot afford such journals.  

All content in Australian Population Studies is not only open access, but may be reproduced 

elsewhere. It is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence 3.0 

Australia (CC BY-NC 3.0 AU), which means content may be shared and reproduced for non-

commercial purposes providing the authors of the work are fully acknowledged. Authors are 

welcome – and in fact are strongly encouraged – to upload papers published in Australian Population 

Studies to researchers’ social networking sites such as ResearchGate. 

Our expectation is that there will be two issues per year, published in May and November, though 

the annual number of issues may be reviewed in the future. The latest dates for the submission of 

contributions are 15th January for the May issue and 15th July for the November issue, offering 

relatively fast submission-to-publication turnover.  

Contributions consist of three main types. First, we publish short Research Papers which should not 

exceed 4000 words. We do not carry full-length papers. Traditional population issues, contemporary 

‘hot topic’ demographic debates, policy-relevant studies, local case studies, new population datasets 

and relevant software and code are all suitable topics for Research Papers. Supplementary files of 

data, code, detailed results and similar can accompany papers. We particularly encourage papers 

focusing on ‘core’ demographic processes and patterns, such as fertility, mortality, migration, 

 

http://www.australianpopulationstudies.org/
mailto:tom.wilson@cdu.edu.au


2 Editorial: Wilson T, Charles-Edwards E and Corcoran J Australian Population Studies 1 (1) 2017 

 

population ageing, household change, population distribution, relationships, families and population 

policy. Sometimes demography and population studies can seem like a doughnut of specialised 

studies with relatively little filling in the middle! 

Second, we encourage the use of data visualisation to present demographic data in interesting, new 

and innovative ways. These appear as DemoGraphics. We would like this to become a key element of 

the journal and will announce a data visualisation competition shortly. Third, we publish 

Introductory Guides which consist of an introduction to demographic methods, approaches, data, 

theories or software which are not well covered in the textbooks. We hope these guides will be of 

use to students, researchers, practitioners, teachers and others wishing to learn about demography. 

The common requirement for all three types of contribution is that they should be written for a 

wide-ranging audience and not limited to academics. 

Many people have generously given their time and expertise to make this first issue of Australian 

Population Studies possible. We wish to extend our sincere thanks to all authors, reviewers, Editorial 

Advisory Board members, our Copy Editor Ros Moye, our logo designer James Daley, Charles Darwin 

University Library, which is providing web hosting for the journal, and the Northern Institute at 

Charles Darwin University, which is providing financial support. 

We hope you enjoy reading the first issue. We welcome feedback (via the email address shown 

above). Finally, we encourage researchers working on population issues in Australia to submit 

contributions for future issues. Submission guidelines are available at 

www.australianpopulationstudies.org/index.php/aps/about/submissions.  

References 

Atchison A and Bull J (2015) Will open access get me cited? An analysis of the efficacy of open access 

publishing in political science. PS: Political Science & Politics 48(1): 129–137.  

Wagner A B (2010) Open access citation advantage: an annotated bibliography. Issues in Science & 

Technology Librarianship (60), viewed 30 October 2017, http://www.istl.org/10-

winter/article2.html. 

Wagner A B (2016) Citation impact advantages of open access (OA) articles over non-OA articles – 

Updated 12/21/2016 with 16 new 2015–16 studies, viewed 30 October 2017, 

https://ubir.buffalo.edu/xmlui/handle/10477/75108.  

Wang X, Liu C, Mao W and Fang Z (2015) The open access advantage considering citation, article usage 

and social media attention. Scientometrics 103(2): 555–564. 

 

http://www.australianpopulationstudies.org/index.php/aps/about/submissions
http://www.istl.org/10-winter/article2.html
http://www.istl.org/10-winter/article2.html
https://ubir.buffalo.edu/xmlui/handle/10477/75108

