Managing Editors’ Statement
The Review of Economic Studies has been particularly strong in the fields of microeconomics, economic theory and econometrics since its foundation by a group of young economists in 1933. We remain committed to continuing and strengthening our publications in these fields while increasing our coverage of other research areas, such as macroeconomics, applied econometrics, finance, experimental economics and political economics. We are also proud to maintain a tradition of promoting the work of young researchers who are not yet established in the profession and so are keen to encourage new and emerging authors to submit their papers to us.
We aim to provide an efficient and high quality editorial review process to our authors. We now receive over 1,200 submissions per year, the majority of which go through a full refereeing procedure. Our referees provide authors with high quality and full reports and feedback. Despite the demand this makes on their time and that of the editorial team most manuscripts are processed within a six month window. Our intention is to increase the proportion of papers which meet this standard — even as the number of submissions we receive annually continues to grow. To meet this goal we have introduced an online manuscript management system which has enabled the individual managing editors and the Editorial Office to co-ordinate and execute their work more efficiently. We expect this to be of benefit to our authors in particular, but also to assist our referees and others involved in the review of papers submitted to the editorial process.
Finally, the Review of Economic Studies relies on the voluntary service of a pool of high-calibre referees who give their time to write thoughtful and thorough reviews of our manuscripts in a timely fashion. Without their contribution we would be unable to provide the constructive and insightful feedback to authors for which we strive. We therefore would like to take this opportunity to thank all those referees who have helped us by providing detailed and professional reports within our deadlines.
Average paper turnaround times
Figures available at September 2012 show that first submissions which entered the editorial process between 1 September 2011 and 1 March 2012 experienced a median delay to decision of 72 days. Ninety nine per cent of papers were returned to their authors in under 210 days.
| Period Submitted | Submission stage | Number of decisions | Mean Delay (days) | %>7 months | Total submissions received | MS pending 31 August 2012 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01/09/2011 to 29/02/2012 |
-1 | 630 | 72 | 1 | 637 | 7 |
| -2 | 21 | 141 | 19 | 25 | 4 | |
| -3 | 14 | 102 | 7 | 15 | 1 | |
| -4 + | 1 | 1 | None | 1 | None | |
| Total | 666 | 678 | 12 | |||
| 01/03/2011 to 31/08/2011 | -1 | 558 | 87 | 2 | 558 | None |
| -2 | 31 | 136 | 6 | 31 | None | |
| -3 | 17 | 86 | 6 | 17 | None | |
| -4 + | 5 | 66 | 20 | 5 | None | |
| Total | 611 | 611 | None | |||
| 01/09/2010 to 28/02/2011 | -1 | 536 | 91 | 3 | 536 | None |
| -2 | 30 | 160 | 27 | 30 | None | |
| -3 | 10 | 132 | 20 | 10 | None | |
| -4 + | 4 | 8 | None | 4 | None | |
| Total | 580 | 580 | None |