Arecon Editor Strategy

Editor & Committee Strategy (arecon-editor-strategy)

When to trigger

• The Editorial Committee invited the topic and you are negotiating the review's scope
• You want to anticipate what ARE referees of a review will push on (different from a paper)
• The editor has asked you to expand, cut, or rebalance coverage
• You are calibrating how the Committee-driven review cycle and the Annual Reviews production timeline work

Who you are working with at ARE

ARE is run by an Editorial Committee of senior economists (current co-editors 检索于 2026-06-22：Philippe Aghion, Hélène Rey, Timothy Besley；re-verify before relying — the Committee rotates on five-year terms；以官网为准) plus the journal's production editors at Annual Reviews. Your primary partners differ by phase: the commissioning editor / Committee owns scope and acceptance; the production editor owns format, figures, copyediting, and the volume schedule. Because the article is commissioned, the relationship is more collaborative than adversarial — the Committee wants the review to succeed — but acceptance is not automatic: an invited manuscript still goes through review for accuracy, rigor, and balance (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准).

How review differs for a review article

ARE referees do not check an identification strategy or replicate results — there are none of the author's own. They evaluate the review as a review:

Referees of an ARE review are often the reviewed authors themselves — the people whose work is being weighed will read how you weighed it. This makes balance and accurate attribution strategic, not just ethical.

Economics-specific editorial posture

• Treat the editor conversation as a scope contract about literatures, mechanisms, and evidence hierarchies: theory, quasi-experimental work, structural models, macro evidence, and applied micro fields may each expect different standards of synthesis.
• When an editor asks for broader coverage, answer by naming the economic question the added work changes: mechanism, welfare implication, identification lesson, policy margin, market design, or macro/finance channel.
• Push back on additions that turn the piece into a handbook chapter; ARE value comes from a field-level economic framework plus selective appraisal, not from listing every empirical setting.

Scope negotiation with the Committee

• Lock scope early, in writing. The invitation/acceptance stage is where scope is cheapest to change. Confirm the boundaries with the editor before months of reading.
• Negotiate, don't capitulate, on coverage asks. If a referee or editor wants an added literature, assess whether it fits the spine; propose where it goes or explain why it is out of scope — a review cannot grow without bound and must stay in the ~25–40-page envelope (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准).
• Surface conflicts of interest. If a likely referee is a central author you must critique, tell the editor — Annual Reviews requires disclosure of potential bias, and it protects both the process and you.
• Respect the volume schedule. ARE publishes one volume per year; production has fixed deadlines. A late draft can slip a whole volume. Confirm the timeline with the production editor and plan backward from it.
• Keep a coverage ledger. Maintain a short, sharable record of what is in scope and why (and what was deliberately excluded), so when the editor or a referee asks "why not X?", you answer with a decision already made.

Checklist

• Scope agreed with the commissioning editor in writing at the invitation stage
• Anticipated the six review-referee questions (coverage, balance/accuracy, framework, accessibility, appraisal, scope)
• Coverage-expansion asks evaluated against the spine and the page envelope before agreeing
• Conflicts of interest (referees who are reviewed authors) flagged to the editor
• Attribution and appraisals double-checked, knowing reviewed authors may referee
• Volume/production timeline calibrated with the production editor (volatile — confirm)
• A plan for which asks you accept vs. push back on, with reasons

Anti-patterns

• Treating an invitation as guaranteed acceptance — invited reviews are still refereed for rigor and balance
• Accepting every "please also cover…" until the review loses its spine and overruns the page envelope
• Mischaracterizing a reviewed author's work when that author may be your referee
• Hiding a conflict of interest instead of disclosing it (Annual Reviews requires disclosure)
• Missing the production deadline and slipping the volume
• Asserting current editors / timeline / process from memory rather than the live Annual Reviews pages

Output format

【Scope agreement】boundaries locked with editor in writing? Y/N
【Referee anticipation】coverage / balance / framework / accessibility / appraisal / scope — prepared each? Y/N
【Coverage asks】evaluated against spine + page envelope; accept/push-back plan? Y/N
【COI】reviewed-author referees flagged to editor? Y/N
【Timeline】volume/production schedule calibrated? Y/N · 待核实
【Source status】current editors/process re-confirmed on Annual Reviews pages? Y/N
【Next step】→ arecon-submission (preflight) → arecon-review-process (what to expect)

Source: brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills → Annual-Review-of-Economics-Skills/skills/arecon-editor-strategy/SKILL.md