Ectheory Review Process

Review Process (ectheory-review-process)

When to trigger

• You want to anticipate how ET referees will read a theorem-proof paper before you submit
• Unsure what single-anonymous review means for anonymization and self-citation
• Choosing among ET article types (Article, Miscellanea, and the invited ET Interview)
• War-gaming the objections a careful theory referee will raise

ET's review model: single-anonymous

ET uses single-anonymous peer review: "the author does not know the identity of the reviewers, but the reviewers know the identity of the author." Practical implications:

• Do not anonymize the manuscript the way a double-blind journal requires — your identity is visible to referees. Self-citation can be in natural voice, but argue the contribution on merit.
• Editorial leadership transitioned on 1 January 2026 to three joint Editors-in-Chief (Guggenberger, Su, Sun), succeeding founding editor Phillips; the program now includes invited papers with discussions and themed special issues.

Article types

• Articles — Regular, plus Invited, Themed, and ET-lecture papers; full-length theorem-proof contributions (must not exceed 50 pages; overflow → online Supplement).
• Miscellanea — short papers presenting one or two key innovations, stated and proved concisely (typically <20 pages, often ~15).
• ET Interviews — a signature, invited oral-history genre (since the 1985 first issue, which opened with Phillips interviewing Denis Sargan). Invited only — not author-submitted.

What an ET referee checks (war-game these)

1. Every assumption — is it necessary, minimal, and satisfied by a leading example? Is any assumption secretly assuming the conclusion?
2. Every proof step — is the hard step (uniformity, the non-standard limit, the edge case) actually established, or sketched past?
3. The limit claims — correct mode of convergence, rate, and limiting law?
4. Generality and novelty — is this more than a special case of known theory? (See ectheory-literature-positioning.)
5. Simulations — do they probe where the asymptotics are delicate, not just the easy region?

Pre-empt these: tighten assumptions, fill proof gaps, and add the boundary-case simulation before a referee forces it — at a theory journal a single unproven step can sink the paper.

Checklist

• Confirmed single-anonymous: manuscript NOT over-anonymized; identity visible is expected
• Article type chosen (Article vs Miscellanea); invited ET Interview not targeted
• Each assumption stress-tested for necessity and a leading example
• Hard proof steps verified, not sketched
• Limit mode/rate/law double-checked
• Boundary-case simulations added pre-emptively
• Novelty over special cases made explicit

Anti-patterns

• Double-blind-style anonymization for a single-anonymous journal
• Submitting with a known proof gap, hoping referees miss it
• A paper that is a corollary of existing theory framed as a major Article
• Simulations that avoid the regime where the approximation is weakest
• Targeting the invited ET Interview as a submission

Desk-reject and red-flag screen for theory papers

Before a referee sees it, the handling editor screens the manuscript for whether a general, proved, foundational result is present, in ET's rigorous limit-theory tradition.

War-gaming the proof-checking referee

For a new limit theory for a nonstationary estimator, read adversarially as the referee will: they (1) check whether the dependence condition is primitive or hides the conclusion; (2) ask whether the o_p(1) bound at the uniformity step is uniform in the local-to-unity parameter or only pointwise; (3) verify the normalizing rate matches the claimed limit; (4) ask whether the Monte Carlo visits the near-unit-root neighborhood; (5) ask "is this the i.i.d. special case of an existing FCLT?" Pre-empt all five — add the uniformity lemma, the boundary-spanning simulation, and a remark naming the prior result you generalize. The fixes: a proof gap → isolate it as a lemma and prove it; a known special case → state the generality dimension up front (route ectheory-literature-positioning); an over-anonymized manuscript → restore identity, as ET review is single-anonymous.

Calibration anchor: editorial leadership moved on 1 January 2026 to three joint Editors-in-Chief (Guggenberger, Su, Sun) succeeding founding editor Phillips; expect demanding technical review, and treat any specific turnaround or acceptance figures as unverified unless confirmed on the journal's current pages.

Output format

【Review model】single-anonymous (reviewers see author)
【Article type】Article / Miscellanea
【Assumptions stress-tested】[Y/N]
【Proof gaps closed】[Y/N]
【Boundary simulations】added? [Y/N]
【Novelty over special cases】stated? [Y/N]
【Next step】ectheory-submission