journal

Transport Findings -> Findings

| David Levinson

An announcement from FindingsPress:

October 19, 2020 AEST

You may have noticed that Transport Findings has become Findings. We believe the core idea of open access, peer-reviewed, short form research articles that is central to Findings has applications well beyond the transport domain, and we don’t want to limit ourselves (or you). We could have started a lot of small journals, but it is more cost effective, and probably also more beneficial, to keep everything under one journal name, with multiple sections and editors.

So everything we have published to date is in the section Transport Findings, as will undoubtedly be many future papers. But we are pleased to announce that we have opened up a new section Urban Findings, edited by Somwrita Sarkar, which will be launching soon. Urban Findings welcomes submissions following the Findings model of short, to-the-point research findings in the broad field of urbanism. You can see the Editorial Board here:

So at this time we are about Findings in the domains of Transport and Urbanism, because those are the practical limits of our current expertise, but we see no reason in principle that there should not be other sections.

If you have ideas about a topic area that you would both like to see articles for, and are willing to edit, please let us know. Editors of the new section would have to help recruit an editorial board, solicit articles, find reviewers, and, of course, make editorial decisions.

Unfortunately, we can only pay you in social capital, but those rewards are enormous, you will be helping assemble the knowledge of humanity, brick-by-brick, finding-by-finding.

Logistic Curve Models of CO2 Accumulation

| David Levinson

Recently published:

  • Levinson, D. (2020) Logistic Curve Models of CO2 Accumulation. Transport Findings. [doi]

This article explores the use of logistic-shaped diffusion curves (S-Curves) to predict the accumulation of atmospheric CO2. The research question here is whether forecasts using logistic curves are stable, that is, do they predict consistently over time with different amounts of data? Using data from the Keeling Curve, we find that the best-fit maximum atmospheric CO2 predicted varies significantly by model year when estimating models limited to data available until that point in time. More recently estimated models are more consistent, all indicate that CO2 accumulation will continue in the absence of an external shock to the system.

Measured and Modeled CO2 over time
Measured and Modeled CO2 over time

Transport Findings: A Prospectus

| David Levinson
I tweeted last weekend
which garnered many likes. But of course Twitter is no place to have a discussion like this. So
This is what I am thinking:
TransportFindings
  1. Journal Name: Transport Findings
  2. Open Access. Flat $50 fee payable on submission (with no guarantee of acceptance) and $50 payable on acceptance. This filters the cranks, covers limited typesetting, article charges, hosting, etc. See Scholastica website  for their costs, (the platform looks good for this) if I read it right, this price would more or less cover fixed costs if we had 50 articles per year. This handbook is also of interest
  3. Maximum word count of 1000 (including References). Maximum Figure count of 3, Table count of 3.
  4. The new journal would not be affiliated with existing journals (this creates confusion on the part of authors and reviewers).
  5. Peer Review by 1 Reviewer drawn from the Editorial Advisory Board. (We add to the EAB if we cannot find someone who can review the article). Everyone who has reviewed in the past 3 years stays on the EAB.  The Review should be done in 1 month. So while the Review is anonymous, the reviewers overall are all known.
  6. Articles must be either New Question, New Method, New Data, or New Finding (i.e. it can almost exactly replicate a previous study and find something different), or some combination of the above.
  7. The acceptance test is whether it satisfies the above and appears scientifically correct (no obvious mistakes/flaws) and replicable, and quality of English.
  8. The journal has Accept/Reject decisions only. (Obviously people can submit again if they want to change the manuscript, however NEW submission, NEW reviewer, NEW fee). Acceptance Letters can add some minor comments. No Revise & Resubmit.
  9. Scope: Findings in the broad field of transport
  10. All data must be publicly available if possible (goes to replicability, caveats for personally identifying information)
  11. No special issues, themes, or anything like that, the journal is basically just a list of peer-reviewed short articles in reverse chronological order.
  12. There is a standard template for article submission, (I would say a web form, but that can’t handle equations, figures, or tables well). something like
TITLE
AUTHORS (NAME, AFFILIATION, CONTACT)
ABSTRACT
KEYWORDS
1. QUESTION AND HYPOTHESES
2. METHODS AND DATA
3. FINDINGS
REFERENCES
No sections titled: Intro, No Lit Review, No Theory, No Discussion, No Conclusions

Comments on Twitter, I guess.

Now I am not thinking I should run this journal (I already have my hands full), but that it should exist. I am happy to help if someone has the energy to organize it. It should be fairly straight-forward and mostly self-organizing to the point of being self-sustaining, but it does need an initial investment of energy to get there.

A Markov Chain Model of Land Use Change

| David Levinson

Recently published:

Minneapolis Aerial
Minneapolis Aerial

The set of models available to predict land use change in urban regions has become increasingly complex in recent years.  Despite their complexity, the predictive power of these models remains relatively weak.  This paper presents an example of an alternative modeling framework based on the concept of a Markov chain.  The model assumes that land use at any given time, which is viewed as a discrete state, can be considered a function of only its previous state. The probability of transition between each pair of states is recorded as an element of a transition probability matrix.  Assuming that this matrix is stationary over time, it can be used to predict future land use distributions from current data.  To illustrate this process, a Markov chain model is estimated for the Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN, USA (Twin Cities) metropolitan region.  Using a unique set of historical land use data covering several years between 1958 and 2005, the model is tested using historical data to predict recent conditions, and is then used to forecast the future distribution of land use decades into the future.  We also use the cell-level data set to estimate the fraction of regional land use devoted to transportation facilities, including major highways, airports, and railways. The paper concludes with some comments on the strengths and weaknesses of Markov chains as a land use modeling framework, and suggests some possible extensions of the model.

The Missing Link: Bicycle Infrastructure Networks and Ridership in 74 US Cities.

| David Levinson

Recently Published:

Seattle bike network
Seattle bike network

Abstract: Cities promote strong bicycle networks to support and encourage bicycle commuting. However, the application of network science to bicycle facilities is not very well studied. Previous work has found relationships between the amount of bicycle infrastructure in a city and aggregate bicycle ridership, and between microscopic network structure and individual tripmaking patterns. This study fills the missing link between these two bodies of literature by developing a standard methodology for measuring bicycle facility network quality at the macroscopic level and testing its association with bicycle commuting. Bicycle infrastructure maps were collected for 74 United States cities and systematically analyzed to evaluate their network structure. Linear regression models revealed that connectivity and directness are important factors in predicting bicycle commuting after controlling for demographic variables and the size of the city. These findings provide a framework for transportation planners and policymakers to evaluate their local bicycle facility networks and set regional priorities that support nonmotorized travel behavior, and for continued research on the structure and quality of bicycle infrastructure and behavior.
Keywords Bicycling · Travel Behavior · Networks

Journal of Transport and Land Use.

| David Levinson

We are pleased to announce the Journal of Transport and Land Use.
What, you ask? Another journal amidst an already overcrowded field?
Yes, we respond enthusiastically! Several journals touch on the interaction of transport and land use; however, they do so peripherally. This new venue puts both transport and land use front and center. We seek to be the leading outlet for research at the interdisciplinary intersection of these two domains, including work from the domains of engineering, planning, modeling, behavior, economics, geography, regional science, sociology, architecture and design, network science, and complex systems.
The Journal of Transport and Land Use (JTLU) will be peer-reviewed, web-based, open-content, subscription-free, and free to contribute. All of this is enabled by support from the Center for Transportation Studies at the University of Minnesota, where the journal will be housed. The advantages of this new journal and new process are several:
1. With a rigorous peer-review process, only quality papers that meet scientific standards will be published within the journal.
2. By being web-based (and web-only), we reduce costs significantly compared with paper journals. Web-based publication allows a much faster turnaround time than paper publication. Our goal is six weeks between submission and first reviews returned to the author. Being web-based also allows the inclusion of full color graphics and multi-media content, and the inclusion of datasets with the publication.
3. By being open-content, papers published in JTLU can be freely distributed (with attribution), increasing the value of papers published in the journal, and increasing their likelihood of being used in course readers and being read by the public.
4. By being subscription-free, we overcome a fundamental problem of today’s expensive journals published by for-profit publishers, which many libraries can no longer subscribe to.
5. By being free-to-contribute, we overcome the burden of the open-content journals that charge the authors to publish their paper.
We are now soliciting papers covering topics at the intersection of transport and land use. Details about the journal, its editorial process, and paper submission can be found at the journal’s website http://www.jtlu.org .
If you are interested in organizing a special issue, please contact one of the editors.
There will be a meeting at the World Conference on Transport Research in Berkeley to discuss the journal, contact the editors for details.
We look forward to any comments, questions, or suggestions you may have.
Sincerely,
David Levinson and Kevin Krizek
David Levinson
Richard P. Braun/CTS Chair in Transportation Engineering
Director Networks, Economics, and Urban Systems (Nexus) Research Group
University of Minnesota (612) 625-6354
dlevinson@umn.edu
http://nexus.umn.edu
Kevin J. Krizek
Associate Professor, Urban Planning & Civil Engineering
University of Minnesota (612) 625 – 7318
http://www.kevinjkrizek.org