brycewang-stanford Review Process (jfi-review-process)
When to trigger
- Before submission, to calibrate expectations on timing, odds, and what "single-blind" implies
- After a decision, to understand what is (and is not) negotiable
- Deciding whether to request a specific Managing Editor
Process facts (verified 2026-06-22; re-confirm on the official Guide for Authors)
- Active desk-rejection. The process is explicitly designed so a large share of submissions are rejected without full review. A clean, well-targeted submission is part of clearing this screen.
- Editor-first triage. Papers are first assessed by the editor for suitability; suitable papers are typically sent to at least one independent expert reviewer — fewer than the two common at many finance journals.
- Single-anonymized (single-blind) review. Referees see the authors' identities; authors do not see referee identities. You do not need to anonymize the manuscript body.
- Narrow appeal path. Elsevier permits an appeal route, but only one appeal per submission is considered and the appeal decision is final. Plan as if the desk and referee rounds must win up front.
- Choose your Managing Editor. Authors may request the Managing Editor in charge of their submission (accommodated within constraints); papers are reviewed largely by editorial-board-level experts.
- Current official board lists Murillo Campello as Managing Editor and Elena Loutskina / Joao Santos as Co-Editors (verified 2026-06-22). Note that scholars such as Anjan Thakor or Paolo Fulghieri may appear as guest/special-issue editors — that is not the standing masthead. Re-confirm the live board before requesting an editor by name.
How to use these facts
- Pass the desk screen first. Lead with the intermediation mechanism and contribution in the abstract and introduction; do not bury them (see jfi-contribution-framing).
- Plan for one strong referee. A single expert can carry the decision — pre-empt the most likely objection from a banking specialist (see jfi-rebuttal).
- Treat appeal as exceptional. Win up front with a clean submission and tight cover letter.
- Pick the editor deliberately if your topic maps to a board member's expertise — but verify current editors first.
Desk-reject patterns at this journal
| Pattern | Why JFI's screen catches it |
|---|---|
| Correlational bank-panel paper with no design | Empirics here must discipline a mechanism, not document an association |
| Banks as a setting, not the subject | Intermediation must be load-bearing (see jfi-topic-selection) |
| Pure asset pricing or corporate finance | Outside the journal's home ground, however polished |
| Policy commentary without an economic model or design | The journal publishes research, not assessment notes |
| Mechanism buried past page 3 | Triage reads the abstract and introduction only |
Calibration: the shape of papers that survive (hedged)
As reading-based calibration, not stated policy: surviving empirical papers pair a tight introduction with an identification section that confronts demand-side confounds head-on, a main table plus a dynamics figure, and robustness in an appendix; theory papers carry propositions in the text, proofs in an appendix, and often a numerical illustration of the mechanism. Timelines and acceptance shares are not published in a form this skill will quote — confirm against the journal's current author guidelines and recent issues rather than secondhand statistics. A practical proxy: skim the latest two issues and note how quickly each paper states its intermediation mechanism; that is the de facto screen you must match. Note also which sub-literatures the current issues carry — a venue actively publishing fintech and shadow-banking work signals appetite beyond traditional bank-balance-sheet papers.
Anti-patterns
- Anonymizing the body as if double-blind (unnecessary; this is single-blind)
- Assuming a two-referee process and being surprised by a single decisive report
- Planning around appeal rather than fixing desk-screen fit and referee-facing evidence
- Naming a requested editor from outdated secondary sources without re-checking ScienceDirect
Output format
【Desk-screen risk】<what could trip the screen + fix>
【Referee plan】likely-one-expert objection + pre-empt
【Editor choice】request Murillo Campello / Elena Loutskina / Joao Santos by fit, or default
【Decision posture】appeal exceptional; win up front