brycewang-stanford Review Process at JAE (jape-review-process)
When to trigger
- Setting expectations for how a JAE submission will be evaluated
- Understanding who decides and what referees focus on
- Planning a pipeline around JAE's submission and resubmission rules
How JAE review works
- Single-blind peer review. Official text: manuscripts are "single-blind peer reviewed by anonymous reviewers in addition to the Editor." Reviewers are anonymous; authors are not — do not anonymize the manuscript the way a double-blind journal would.
- Editor-in-Chief decides. Final acceptance or rejection rests with the Editor-in-Chief (Barbara Rossi). Co-editors handle many papers, but the final call is the EiC's. (The full current co-editor roster is 待核实 against a live board page.)
- Rejected papers are not resubmittable unless the Editor invites it. Treat a rejection as final absent an explicit invitation.
- Cap: no more than three papers from the same author may be under review at once — stagger submissions.
What applied-econometrics referees check
Because JAE is empirical and replicable, expect reviewers to probe whether the estimand is identified on your real data; whether the method is useful in that setting; whether inference is appropriate (HAC, clustered, weak-IV-robust); whether robustness is shown (in the unlimited online appendix); and whether the work is reproducible, consistent with the mandatory Data Archive deposit. Treat replication objections as central, not administrative; a clean package pre-empts many. Do not infer process details beyond what the source map verifies.
Desk-screen failure patterns at JAE
Most early exits at this venue trace to scope and replicability, not polish. Audit against the recurring patterns:
| Pattern | Why JAE screens it out | Pre-submission fix |
|---|---|---|
| Pure-theory paper (asymptotics, no real data) | Outside the applied mandate | Add a genuine application or reroute to a theory outlet |
| Simulation-only evidence | The venue wants the method on real data | Anchor the Monte Carlo to an empirical question and dataset |
| Data that can be neither deposited nor documented | Mandatory archive deposit is unworkable | Resolve access/description before submitting |
| Main text far over 35 pages | Limit is hard; appendix is the designed overflow | Move robustness grids out of the article |
| Summary >100 words or carrying citations | House front-matter rule | Rewrite per jape-writing-style |
Decision vocabulary and what each letter implies
- Reject — final; the no-resubmission-unless-invited rule means a reworked version goes elsewhere, not back to JAE.
- Reject with invitation to resubmit / major revision — the Editor sees a path; the resubmission is judged on whether each referee objection got evidence, not prose.
- Minor revision — protect the archive: any number that changes must change in the deposited code too.
- Exact decision categories and turnaround times vary; confirm against the journal's current author guidelines rather than assuming figures.
Planning the pipeline without invented statistics
Do not budget around rumored acceptance rates or review speeds — JAE does not owe you a number, and this skill will not fabricate one. Plan around the verifiable constraints instead: the three-papers-under-review cap forces staggering across coauthor teams; the single-blind model means your identity and prior work are visible context, so the paper must be consistent with your own archived past results; and the EiC's final authority means the response letter's executive summary should be written for the Editor, with referee-level detail beneath it. What is predictable is content: an applied-econometrics referee pool drawn from people who write HAC, bootstrap, and weak-IV papers themselves will test exactly those joints first.
Output format
【Model】single-blind; reviewers anonymous, authors not — prepared? [Y/N]
【Authority】final decision = Editor-in-Chief
【Desk screen】scope + replicability + 35pp + summary all clear? [Y/N]
【Pipeline】≤ 3 papers under review for this author? [Y/N]
【Resubmit】reject is final unless invited — understood? [Y/N]
Supplementary resources
../../resources/official-source-map.md— single-blind, EiC authority, three-paper cap (and 待核实 board notes)