Mission

The mission of the Economics Bulletin is to foster free and extremely rapid scientific communication across the entire community of research economists. In order to meet this goal, we will rely on the technology of the World Wide Web.  EB will publish original notes, comments, and preliminary results.  We are especially interested in publishing manuscripts that keep the profession informed about ongoing research programs.  Submissions in these categories will be refereed and our objective is to make a decision within eight week. Accepted papers are published immediately.  It is expected that in many cases, manuscripts published in these categories will form the foundation for more complete works subsequently to be submitted to other journals.  In all cases, submissions are restricted to seven printed pages exclusive of references, appendices, tables and figures, and must be in PDF format. EB will also publish letters to the editor, announcements of conferences, and research announcements. 

Refereed Submissions

Notes, Comments and Preliminary Results will be refereed. Submissions in these categories are forwarded to an associate editor based on the JEL category chosen by the author. Since our aim is to make rapid decisions, referees will only be asked to make up or down recommendations with short explanations if possible. As a rule, manuscripts will be either be accepted or rejected.  Requests for revisions will be the exception. In all cases, the standard for publication is that a manuscript be original, correct, and of interest to a specialist in the area.

• Notes: A note is a short original paper intended to make a concise point, extend a theorem, offer alternative interpretations of a model, generalize a result, provide additional empirical results based on published work, and so on.
  
  

• Comments: A comment points out additional elements of interest or flaws in published papers. In general, comments relate to the work of others and our policy is to allow the author of the original work an opportunity to respond.

• Preliminary results: The tradition in economics of publishing only finished work in refereed paper journals greatly hinders scientific communication. While working paper series are a partial response to this problem, circulation is usually limited and a significant lag may still occur between the time that a research program begins and an author is ready to present his results as publicly distributed working papers. Creating a forum for the publication of preliminary work opens up the research process. It creates the possibility that other researchers may be able to offer suggestions on how to proceed, generates new opportunities for coauthorship, helps limit unintentional duplication of results, and allows one's work to see the light of day years before it ordinarily would. It also helps clarify when and where research ideas originated by creating a public record. One of the most important functions of letters journals in other fields of study is to keep their audiences informed about on-going research. Unfortunately, long publication delays have made it quite difficult for the letters journal in economics to credibly serve this function. A primary mission of the Economics Bulletin is to fill this gap. Examples of preliminary results include, but are not limited to, such things as simple versions of theorems that one may plan to generalize later, reports of initial results from empirical investigations and ideas for lines of empirical or theoretical research that one may not wish to pursue oneself, but which may nevertheless be useful or interesting to other economists, especially to graduate students looking for thesis topics.
  
  
  

Non-refereed Submissions

Research Announcements, Letters to the Editor, and Conference Announcements will not be refereed. Research and Conference Announcements will be reviewed for appropriateness and generally will appear within a few days of submission. The authors are responsible for the accuracy of the statements made in such submissions. Letters to the Editor are accepted for publication at the sole discretion of the Editor. In general, it is our intension to give authors the widest possible latitude for expressing their own opinions. Publication does not imply EB endorses the opinions of the author.

• Research Announcements: Publication delays are enormous and it is frequently the case that interesting and relevant work remains unknown for many years after it is complete. Our objective is to connect together researchers who are interested in one another's work and reduce duplication by people working on similar lines. With this in mind, EB will publish announcements of:

  • Manuscripts that have been completed and are available from the author.

  • Manuscripts that have been published in working paper series.

  • Manuscripts that have been submitted to journals.

  • Manuscripts that have been accepted but not yet published by journal.

• Letters to the Editor: EB will publish Letters to the Editor on scientific matters relating to specific research and on matters of interest to the profession generally. Our policy is to publish the author's identity along with the letter.

• Conference Announcements: In the interest of fostering scientific communication, EB will set aside space to publish announcements of upcoming conferences in economics and allied fields.

In the interest of fostering the widest possible dissemination of the results published in EB, notice of all new work in EB is automatically fed into the RePEc economics research paper archive.

User directory and email notification service

To make the Economics Bulletin more useful, we are also offering an email notification service to let you know when the Journal publishes something in your area of interest.  To use this service, simply create a user profile by filling in the web form at the following URL: 

www.economicsbulletin.com/NewProfile.asp

You can ask for monthly, weekly or even instant notification of the appearance of relevant content.  Of course you can change your requests or delete yourself from the system at any time.  You may also choose to appear in our user directory. This will allow other economists to know something about your research interests and make it easy for them to contact you.

Why is there a need for a web-based letters journal? 

The objective of a letters journal is to generate wide and rapid circulation of timely research.  Unfortunately, both the business model and the technology employed by almost all commercial publishers make it very difficult for them to satisfy this objective. We see the major problems with the current approach as the following:

• Cost:  The academic publishing industry has become more and more concentrated and journal prices have risen dramatically in recent years.  An institutional subscription to Economics Letters, for example, costs $1592. The strain this puts on the budgets of major universities in the industrialized world is bad enough.  The consequences for scholars at smaller universities and colleges, especially in the developing world, are even more serious. High journal prices diminish the access of such scholars to current research and place them at risk of becoming intellectually disenfranchised.  Traditional commercial publishers must make a priority of restricting access to information to those who have paid for the privilege.  This necessarily puts them in conflict with the interests of researchers who benefit from the widest possible dissemination of their work. In contrast, at the Economics Bulletin we see our primary mission as supporting the research community.  Thus, EB will be made available completely free of charge to all users. Since subscription fees serve to exclude people from access, do not intend to use them now or in the future. Modest submission fees will eventually cover the costs of the Bulletin.
  
  

• Publication delays:  Paper journals are inherently limited in how fast they can get new research into the hands of interested readers.  Simply mailing a manuscript from author to editor to associate editor to referee and then back up the chain can easily take months by itself.  Typesetting and sending proofs back and forth to authors, correcting proofs, and then printing, binding, sending, and cataloging a physical journal can also take months.  All told, this process builds in an overhead of a four to six month delay in addition the time it takes a referee to provide a review and an editor to make a decision. Add to this to the lags resulting from backlogs and periodic publication schedules, and it is easy to see why a typical article can take years to appear in print. Even at Economics Letters, the submission date on a manuscript is generally is eight to twelve months prior to the publication date of the issue.  In contrast, by moving to an entirely electronic approach, EB will be subject only to refereeing delays.  Our objective is to make decisions within eight weeks.
  
  

• Content: Many journals, including EL, publish notes and comments.  The norm that seems have emerged, however, is that such articles should be short, complete papers. In contrast, one of the major missions of letters journals in other fields is too keep their research communities up-to-date on current and on-going work. Although EB will also published refereed notes and comments, we see our major contribution as providing a place for economists to communicate cutting edge research that is still at a preliminary stage.  We strongly urge authors to submit such preliminary results and will make a special effort to referee such manuscripts as quickly as possible.
  
  

• Copyright: Commercial publishers generally insist that authors transfer the copyrights of accepted papers as a condition of publication. In some cases, even making published articles available on one’s own website may contravene such transfer agreements. Many people find it extremely troubling that we write the papers, referee the papers, edit the papers (usually all for free), and then are forced to give up all commercial interest in our work if we want it published.  At EB, our goal is disseminate information as widely and quickly as possible.  Our copyright agreement simply asks that you give us permission to do so when you submit a paper, but allows the author to retain all other rights.

Mechanics of submission

We have tried to make the submission procedure as easy as possible. The first step is to go to the link below:

www.economicsbulletin.com/submissions.asp

After choosing the type of submission you wish to make, you will be presented with a form that requests "metadata" relating to your manuscript. This includes contact information for the authors and coauthors, title, abstract, keywords, JEL categorization, and possibly other items as well depending on the type of submission. After verifying the information, you will be asked to attach a PDF version of your submission. Advice about how to make this conversion can be found at:

www.economicsbulletin.com/pdf.asp

In the interest of making publication delays as small as possible, papers will not be typeset, and if accepted, the PDF you submit will be what is published in the Journal. It is therefore extremely important that submissions follow the style guidelines found at:

www.economicsbulletin.com/style.asp

as closely as possible. Manuscripts that deviate too greatly may be returned. Please note the following in particular: Do not include a title page in the PDF of your manuscript. Your manuscript should start with the title of the first section ("1. Introduction", for example). A standard title page will be generated from the metadata you provided in the submission form. Your paper then will be automatically forwarded to an associate editor with expertise in the area who will arrange to have your paper reviewed. If your paper is accepted, it will be published immediately in the Economics Bulletin.

Thanks for your interest in the Economics Bulletin.  We sincerely hope that you find this new research tool useful and look forward to seeing you both as a contributor and a reader. 

A PDF of this mission statement is available here