Fabio Rojas wrote: "I'd say economics has a pretty decent turn around time."
The following are data from a recent paper by Glenn Ellison of MIT (JPE, October 2002). The data are average times (measured in months) between initial submission and acceptance at various economics journals in the year 1999. (The full paper is available for viewing at http://web.mit.edu/gellison/www/jrnem2.pdf ): American Economic Review 21.1 Econometrica 26.3 Journal of Political Economy 20.3 Quarterly Journal of Economics 13.0 Review of Economic Studies 28.8 Canadian Journal of Economics 16.6 Economic Inquiry 13.0 Economic Journal 18.2 International Economic Review 16.8 Review of Economics and Statistics 18.8 Journal of Applied Econometrics 21.5 Journal of Comparative Economics 10.1 Journal of Development Economics 17.3 Journal of Econometrics 25.5 Journal of Economic Theory 16.4 Journal of Environmental Ec. & Man. 13.1 Journal of International Economics 16.2 Journal of Law and Economics 14.8 Journal of Mathematical Economics 8.5 Journal of Monetary Economics 16.0 Journal of Public Economics 9.9 Journal of Urban Economics 8.8 RAND Journal of Economics 20.9 Journal of Accounting and Economics 11.5 Journal of Finance 18.6 Journal of Financial Economics 14.8 Alex Dr Alex Robson School of Economics Faculty of Economics and Commerce Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200. AUSTRALIA Ph +61-2-6125-4909 -----Original Message----- From: fabio guillermo rojas [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, 14 October 2002 8:47 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Journal response times > >Anyone have any idea why the norm in economics allows referees so much > time to do a report? Why its so different from other fields? Is this one > of those "soft" vs. "hard" field things? Its my impression that the > physical science journals all want fast turn around on their referee > reports. Anybody know what its like with Anthropology, Sociology, or > Political Science? < I'd say economics has a pretty decent turn around time. I currently work at the American Journal of Sociology and we usually get papers back to authors in less than 90 days, often 60 days. My experience is that top tier journals do better than second or third tier because they often have prestige and staff, which encourage quick reviewer response. Most sociology journals do much worse than AJS. As far as discipline goes, economics and political science is best because their is consensus on what constitutes decent research and you don't have to master every detail of a paper to assess its quality. The worst is mathematics because you really have to understand every symbol in every equation. Humanities are also bad - you don't have to understand every word, but humanities professors are very unresponsive. On another list-serv, I saw one math professor complain that a 5 page research note had spent *years* at one journal. You can get similar complaints from humanities professors. In the middle are engineering, sociolgy, education and other fields. Most journals get stuff back from 3 months to a year and these fields are "in-between" fast fields like economics and slow pokes like math. Fabio
