brycewang-stanford Review Process (jpam-review-process)
Knowing how JPAM judges papers lets you pre-empt the objections that sink them. JPAM is an APPAM / Wiley journal with an anonymized-review preflight and a stated right to desk-reject without review. The reviewer pool is cross-disciplinary, so a paper must satisfy an economist's identification standard and a policy reader's relevance standard at once. (Verify volatile specifics on the author page: 检索于 2026-06；以官网为准.)
When to trigger
- Before submission, to stress-test against likely referee objections
- Deciding which article type to target and whether it is peer-reviewed
- Interpreting a decision letter and planning next steps
- Understanding the desk-screen so you avoid an avoidable desk reject
How JPAM evaluates (the working model)
- Desk screen. Editors may desk-reject without review for fit (not a credible policy
evaluation / out of scope), inadequate identification, or insufficient significance. The submission
must also satisfy the membership-or-fee requirement before it is considered (see
jpam-submission). - Anonymized review preparation. Prepare an anonymized manuscript plus a separate title page; follow the live Research Exchange file labels and anonymity prompts. Anonymize self-references.
- Cross-disciplinary referees. Expect at least one identification-focused reviewer and one policy/field reviewer. Both must be satisfied — strong design, real relevance.
- Decision categories. Reject / major or minor revision (R&R) / accept (exact category labels vary; confirm on the live page). R&R is the common path to publication for promising papers.
Article types and peer review
| Type | Peer-reviewed? | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Feature Research Article | Yes | the main research format |
| Methods for Policy Analysis | Yes | methodological advances for analysts |
| Policy Retrospective | Typically (confirm) | reflective look-back |
| Point/Counterpoint | No (invited) | short scholarly debate |
| Policy Insights | No (invited; ≤ 3,000 words) | rapid, timely take |
| Book Reviews | No (invited/edited) | — |
What JPAM referees reward / punish
- Reward: credible identification, a clear policy implication calibrated to the design, cost-benefit and distributional attention, cross-field relevance, and a reproducible package.
- Punish: overclaiming beyond the estimand, selection-on-observables dressed up as causal, naive TWFE on staggered policies, no policy takeaway, ignoring who bears the costs, and irreproducible code.
Checklist
- Manuscript survives a self-administered desk screen (fit, identification, significance)
- Correct article type chosen; peer-review status understood
- Double-blind anonymization done (text + self-cites + metadata)
- Design pre-tested against the reviewer-objection checklist
- Both an identification reviewer and a policy reviewer would be satisfied
- Replication package staged so it is not a late surprise
Anti-patterns
- Submitting a paper that an editor will desk-reject for obvious fit/identification gaps
- Pitching a full research paper into the non-reviewed Point/Counterpoint or Policy Insights slots
- Satisfying the identification reviewer while ignoring the policy reviewer (or vice versa)
- Leaving anonymization, fee/membership, or the data package to the last moment
Output format
【Desk-screen risk】fit / identification / significance — clear? [Y/N]
【Article type】+ peer-reviewed? [Y/N]
【Anonymization】text + self-cites + metadata clean? [Y/N]
【Referee coverage】identification + policy reviewers both satisfied? [Y/N]
【Package staged】replication materials ready? [Y/N]
【Next】jpam-submission
Supplementary resources
../../../shared-resources/empirical-methods/reviewer-objection-checklist.md— objections by identification strategy../../resources/official-source-map.md— review model, article types, decision-category guardrails