Final manuscript review and evaluation process at JME
Journal of Monetary Economics implemented a new set of manuscript review and evaluation procedures in November 2010, so as to produce high quality final papers. The context is that Elsevier provides little in the way of proofreading or other review, so that final manuscripts must be “publication ready.” The JME seeks to provide authors with maximum control over their final manuscript, so long as journal style and writing standards are respected, as determined in the final manuscript review and evaluation process.
A flow chart at the end of this page provides an overview of the process, which is described in detail in the sections below.
The objective is of the final manuscript review and evaluation process is to produce a high quality final product that can be rapidly published in the Journal. Authors are required to place the manuscript in final JME style and to make sure that “fine sandpaper” is applied to their manuscripts (in terms of grammar, spelling, exposition, etc.). The Journal’s expectation is that these revisions can be accomplished in one step.
A review of selected elements of the manuscript will be conducted by a third party, called a manuscript evaluator below, which will make a recommendation to the supervisory editor as to whether the submitted manuscript is acceptable for publication.
If the manuscript is acceptable, then the author will be asked to upload final manuscript files within two weeks of the editorial decision.
If the manuscript requires additional work, then a further round of revision will be necessitated. Authors may be required to use the services of an external editorial service.
0. Background
When an author receives an “accept with minor revisions” decision letter from a supervisory editor (Jermann, King, or Reis), then the author is asked to prepare a revised version of the manuscripts that meets Journal of Monetary Economics standards for final publication. The decision letter is prepared under the assumption that the resubmitted manuscript will not go back to handling editor or referee for further substantive comments: all such detailed comments are presumed to have been handled at the prior stage of “accept with major revisions”. The decision letter typically contains a detailed list of small revisions that the author needs to implement.
1. Resubmission (via EES)
As detailed in Accept with minor revisions, the author is asked to prepare the manuscript according to Journal of Monetary Economics style guidelines, to produce the paper in 12 point type double spaced with line numbers, to place all figures and tables at the back of the manuscript (with instructions of the form “locate table x about here ” inserted in the manuscript at the desired point) as well as to include caption information for each.
The author’s letter accompanying the “accept with minor revisions” resubmission should respond on a point-by-point basis to the supervisory editor’s requested changes in the manuscript.
2. Editorial Assistant and Managing Editor
The editorial assistant will collect the submission fee and assure that the author has provided a manuscript that meets the guidelines of font size (12), spacing (double), line numbering (left) and explanatory letter regarding changes made.
The managing editor will assign the manuscript to the manuscript evaluator.
The supervisory editor will receive a notice of the assignment of the revised manuscript via the EES system, but need take no action at that stage (this is the light arrow in the flow chart below).
3. The manuscript evaluation
The manuscript evaluator will do evaluate the manuscript and provide a report to the editor using a checklist which the author is encouraged to review prior to submission.
(a) author letter review
The manuscript evaluation will make sure that the author’s letter includes responses to all requests from the supervisory editor;
(b) JME style review
The manuscript evaluator will verify that JME style has been implemented;
(c) Detailed analysis of manuscript pages
The manuscript evaluator will examine some components of the manuscript in detail:
1 page from the introduction to the paper;
1 page from the conclusion to the paper;
2 pages from the body of the paper.
These four pages will be chosen randomly
The manuscript evaluator will determine whether there are significant difficulties with the writing in and appearance of the resubmitted manuscript. For example, the evaluation will look for:
(c-1) run-on sentences (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run-on_sentence) or excessively lengthy sentences (regularly exceeding 3 lines in manuscript);
(c-2) grammatical and spelling errors;
(c-3) inaccurate citations (e.g., Smith (1998) appears in the main text while Smith (1996) appears in the references or Smith (1998) appears in the main text while Banks and Smith (1998) appears in the references).
(c-4) use of inappropriate constructions, such as displayed lists.
(c-5) equations that run over a line, are hard to read, or are incorrectly numbered;
(c-6) displayed equations that are not numbered, but are referred to in the text;
(c-7) text links to material that does not appear in appendices (e.g., the manuscript text reads (see the detailed derivation of equation (15) in appendix C but there is no such discussion or no such appendix).
(c-8) appendices appear that are not “supplemental material” in violation of JME policy, without an explicit statement by the supervisory editor that there is a special reason for the inclusion of the appendix in the published document;
(c-9) supplemental appendices are missing or not readable.
A more complete list is provided by the manuscript evaluation checklist
(d) recommendation to supervisory editor
The manuscript evaluator will prepare a short note to the supervisory editor that:
(d-1) makes a recommendation as to whether the manuscript needs to be sent to an outside editorial service for detailed editorial assistance;
(d-2) provides a list of the problems encountered in the review of manuscript, as described in section (c).
This note will be transmitted to the SE via the EES system as an editorial decision, with the recommendation options being that (1) the manuscript is complete, so that it can be placed in the decision category “accept, subject to uploading of final manuscript files”; (2) that there are small problems which the author appears able to correct, so that another “accept with minor revisions” decision is appropriate; or (3) that there are larger and more frequent difficulties so that the manuscript needs to be sent to an external editorial service for detailed editorial assistance;
4. The supervisory editor makes a decision on the manuscript
The supervisory then places the manuscript in one of three categories:
Accept pending upload of final manuscript files if the manuscript is complete (case (1) above)
In this case, the supervisory editor specifies that the manuscript file uploading must take place within two weeks from the author receipt of letter.
Accept with minor revisions when there are modifications requested from the author.
If it is case (2) or (3), then the supervisory editor’s decision letter specifies whether a paper must be sent to an external manuscript editorial service (which could be a university service, a research department editorial team, or one of a number of firms specializing in this activity).
If the manuscript requires additional work (case (2) or (3)), then:
(a) the manuscript evaluation process will be repeated on the next revision;
(b) manuscript revision and resubmission must take place within two months.
5. Routing through the managing editor and editorial office
The managing editor and editorial office will process decision information to the author within the normal weekly decision cycle. The author will be informed that:
(1) his submission fee is in the process of being refunded if the manuscript decision is “accept, pending upload of final manuscript files”.
(2) an additional submission fee must accompany the next revision if the manuscript decision is “accept with minor revisions”
The author will receive all decision information via EES.
7. Final manuscript review and evaluation process at JME
