Call for Papers / Nominations

To maintain TOPS as a neutral, research-focused forum, we restrict presenters to those with a primary (and active) affiliation in academia, government, or at an independent research institute. All funding for the work being presented, and in the presenter’s recent history, must be disclosed. When disclosures reveal potential conflicts of interest, the Executive Board may require enhanced standards of research transparency — including, where applicable, data availability and reproducibility — as a condition of participation.

Presentations may take one of three formats: 1) traditional single-paper presentations, 2) workshops that describe new tools or methods that are relevant to tobacco policy researchers, or 3) grand rounds presentations that discuss a series of (typically 2 to 3) thematically related papers. Papers may be unpublished work or recently published work.

We encourage submissions / nominations that focus on research with tobacco policy implications using experimental or quasi-experimental study designs. Experimental studies may include randomized trials, discrete choice experiments, and other designs that randomize an exposure variable of interest. Quasi-experimental studies refer here to non-randomized studies that have a well-defined counterfactual for the exposed group, with examples of two common designs being difference-in-differences and instrumental variables analysis. We are also currently interested in systematic reviews of evidence using experimental or quasi-experimental study designs, and micro-simulation / structural modelling that incorporates causally-interpretable parameter estimates.