Economics Paper Referee Report Text

instructions and advice for referees high quality and timely referee reports are essential to the performance of any journal. We wish to thank you in advance for the thought, time and energy that will be going into the report that you are about to prepare. Most referee reports must ultimately lead to a decision by a jme editor not to publish the manuscript. Because of space constraints, at least 80% of submitted manuscripts cannot not be published.

Help Writing Dissertation Proposal Services

At the same time, it is important that the referee and editorial evaluation provide the author with useful feedback on his manuscript even if it is not to be published in the jme. If you know that you will not be able to make it when you receive a review request, please decline the assignment. If you later learn that you will not be able to hit the deadline, please contact the editor that is handling your manuscript, with a copy to susan north at the editorial office [email protected] . In the discussion below, it is assumed that you are preparing a report on an initial submission.

writing reports on resubmissions provides instructions and advice for reports on second round manuscripts. For a jme report, there are really three audience members: a the editor b the author and c yourself, as an expert and a representative of the economics community. In the discussion below, we will make suggestions about how to provide the necessary information to each member of the audience. As you go, jot down a few notes about what the authors are doing and the literature context of the paper. Then, think for a while about the big picture what are the authors trying to do, are they taking the best approach, and how successful are they at their approach and then jot down some further notes about the paper and highlight any major concerns that you had on this first reading. Then, read the paper carefully, as if it were one written by a colleague or student. As you go through the paper, you should make notes on the following, perhaps on the margins of the paper itself:

the key substantive ideas that the author is seeking to convey to the reader: a the topics that are being studied, b the tools used c the logical arguments made d the conclusions reached and e the contribution to the literature that is being claimed by the author.

Narrative Essay Quinceanera

For theoretical papers, these are places where a the description of the topics is inappropriate to the actual material in the paper b the theoretical constructss are being used inappropriately c the logical argument is not tight, including incorrect application of economic concepts or erroneous mathematical derivations d the conclusions are incorrectly made or expressed and e the contribution to the literature is inaccurately described. For empirical papers, these are places where a the description of the topics is inappropriate to the actual material in the paper b the econometric tools are being used inappropriately c there is only a loose link between the economic model and the empirics d the conclusions are incorrectly made or expressed and e the contribution to the literature is inaccurately described. For theoretical papers, these are a areas where the author's line of thought is hard to follow b spots with spelling and grammatical problems c areas where mathematical notation is inconsistently used or excessively complicated d references to the literature that are missing or incorrect. For empirical papers, these are a areas where the author's line of thought is hard to follow b spots with spelling and grammatical problems c missing data sources and poorly constructed tables or figures d references to the literature that are missing or incorrect. Summarizing the paper: write a brief summary of the paper, at most one or two pages. In this summary, you have three objectives, one for each of the three audience members. When you summarize the paper, without evaluation, write neutrally as you might if you were recording information for yourself or for a member of a research team that you were working in.

It is part of reviewing the literature for a research project that we may be undertaking or a class that we may be preparing or a review article that we may be writing. The key is that this part of your report is like notes that you would put in your files to answer the question: what did the author of this paper view himself as doing? . Your summary of the paper may well be the place that the editor starts his review process, along with reading the introduction to the manuscript itself.

You are providing thus providing the editor with an alternative introduction to and summary of the paper. Your summary of the paper is a way of establishing your credibility with the author, who wants to know that you have carefully studied his paper. This takes work on your part, but avoids unnecessary hard feelings if you must later be critical of the work. You are also providing the author with an alternative introduction to and summary of his work. We all know that it is sometimes hard to keep perspective on where our work fits into a field, so that your summary may be very useful to the author, even if your report is subsequently critical. For both of these purposes, credibility and information transfer, it is important to be careful with the details of your presentation, just as you would if you were preparing your own manuscript for submission.

Evaluating the paper: the critical question to be answered in your report is has this manuscript made an important contribution to its chosen area? . There are three aspects of this evaluation that are worth stressing:

it is the author's responsibility to establish the fact that an important contribution has been made. Many manuscripts are correct in their internal logic and novel relative to the literature in some way, but do not themselves provide a contribution that moves a research area forward in a sufficiently important manner that they are publishable in jme. If there are critical problems that you see with the manuscript in that the author's analysis is incorrect in some manner, then it is important to state these problems clearly in your evaluation. It is also important to state whether you see an internal inconsistency a proof is wrong because there are contradictory elements or an incompleteness a proof does not cover all claimed cases. Your report should not include a recommendation about the decision category or discuss whether the manuscript is appropriate for jme in terms of its chosen area.

Providing feedback to the author: it is important that the author benefit from the hard work that you have put into reviewing the paper. Depending on the nature and status of the paper, this feedback might include:

comments on areas where the logical argument in the paper was hard to follow, important mathematical derivations were obscure, or empirical work was incompletely described.
after you have prepared these elements, assemble them into the referee report, using the format below. I always do my job seriously, take a lot of time to read the paper carefully and write very detailed comments. And i always let some time pass between the first draft of my report and the final version: i want the idea and the approach taken to sink in, to be as impartial as possible, and for me it takes some time. But i think you have a point: as ap sometimes we lack the experience to see through the contribution and understand if it matches the level of the journal.

One referee was clearly a senior, who pointed out in a beautiful way the flaws, and suggested a minor revision. The other was clearly a junior, who got mad for a relatively secondary point and thrashed the paper with few quite rude sentences. He recommended rejection for all of them! this page explains the structure of the reports and three ways of transmitting them to the editorial office. A referee report consists of two parts: i a cover letter with the manuscript number/title and your opinion, and ii the report itself intended to be transmitted to the author s. Kwan choi, review of international economics, department of economics, iowa state university, ames, ia 50011, usa.

Fax: 515 294 9913, tel: 294 59, e mail: [email protected]

how to e mail your referee reports

1. Actually, they are preferred to reports by fax or mail, because snail mail retards the editorial process and fax reports are often difficult to read because of low resolution and small letters. If it is successfully transmitted, you will get a confirmation from the editorial office. Microsoft word or wordperfect or adobe pdf files are acceptable. If your report is e mailed as a separate attachment, it can be e mailed directly to the authors. Please do not list your name as author of documents in file properties as rie relies on the double blind refereeing process. Because e mail is not always reliable, and you can't verify whether your report by e mail has been received by the editorial office.

You can reduce the frustration of authors and help the profession immensely if your cover letter includes:

manuscript number it takes time to locate the manuscript without it. The title in case there is an error in the manuscript number, this insures that the editorial office locate the manuscript. In case the authors have brief questions by e mail concerning how to revise the manuscript, the office will try to convey the message to the referees.

Shrink to a note of no more than 10 pages with suggestions

prepare your comments that include your reasons, suggestions, and concerns. Comment on the manuscript's originality, clarity, contribution to literature, and relevance to real world problems. The bottom line is this: if there is an important idea in the paper, make constructive comments e.g. How to streamline the arguments, what parts should be cut and help authors publish the paper.

jfe advisory editor and former editor of the journal of finance 1. What can i do to make acceptance of my paper more likely? papers succeed or fail depending on their contribution to our field. However, authors should avoid simple mistakes which can substantially obscure their paper's contribution: a paper should be easy for the referee and the editor to read. This means it should be typed in a font large enough so that it can be read without magnifying glasses.

Legal Report Writing Training