In recent years there has been an explosion of research based on “text-as-data” in a number of disciplines. Essentially, the text is transformed into data by one of a number of methods which have been developed – the simplest of which is perhaps to count the number of “negative” and “positive” words (dictionary-based methods) to measure the sentiment of a document. But more elaborate methods are available, such as text regression, generative models, topic models and “deep learning” techniques. This call for papers invites contributions from the field of economics, but papers from other areas will be considered too.
Our intention in announcing this call for a special issue of the International Journal of Forecasting on Text-based data and Forecasting is to foster research to help address the potential of text analysis for forecasting.
Examples of papers on this topic are:
- Herman Stekler, Hilary Symington, Evaluating qualitative forecasts: The FOMC minutes, 2006–2010, International Journal of Forecasting, Volume 32, Issue 2, 2016, Pages 559-570, ISSN 0169-2070, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2015.02.003.
- Gabriel Mathy, Herman Stekler, Expectations and forecasting during the Great Depression: Real-time evidence from the business press, Journal of Macroeconomics, Volume 53, 2017, Pages 1-15, ISSN 0164-0704,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmacro.2017.05.006. - Matthew J. Schneider and Sachin Gupta, Forecasting sales of new and existing products using consumer reviews: A random projections approach. International Journal of Forecasting, Volume 32, Issue 2, April–June 2016, Pages 243-256.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2015.08.005.
We are interested in empirical and methodological contributions, although methodological approaches will be required to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed approaches. We will require papers to meet the usual high standards of the International Journal of Forecasting in terms of good practice in forecasting research. These include the rigorous comparison of suggested models and methods to a range of robust alternatives and to the status quo.
Submission Guidelines. To submit a paper for consideration for the Special Issue, please upload your paper online and include a cover letter clearly indicating that the paper is for the special issue “Text-based data and Forecasting”. The webpage for online submissions is:
mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ijf.
The deadline for receipt of papers is 31st October 2018. All papers will follow the IJF’s refereeing process. Instructions fo.r authors are provided at forecasters.org/ijf/authors. For further information about the Special Issue, please contact one of the guest editors
Guest Editors
Michael P. Clements
Ulrich Fritsche
Herman Stekler